Codename: Outbreak

Set in the future, a newly discovered comet heading for a near miss trajectory towards Earth sent meteorites raining through the Earth's atmosphere causing death and destruction.  The meteorites caused tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes. When ash and smoke cleared away, the survivors could see the cities lying in ruins and the meteorite-pitted lands. A sluggish reconstruction after the devastation was begun.  Alien life forms brought by meteorites transformed into parasite organisms capable of total subduing their prey. An infected person lost self-control and proved unable to perceive his environment. An epidemic broke out. The sites of meteorite falls were most severely infected. Whole regions and settlements were under alien control. Their organized groups raided the neighboring territories. Humans, exhausted after the catastrophe, were losing ground every day. The enemy was undetectable: today your neighbor was your friend and tomorrow he was your foe. They accomplish this by leaching on to the neck of their prey and control them. Humans did everything in their power to study and fight the aliens and stop the epidemic.

You can choose two of 6 guys to complete each mission with.  The other team member (which you can toggle back and forth to) can be given commands to aid you in completing your mission objectives. Each member also has a list of different attributes so choose wisely. Though the commands are nice like other team-based games, sometimes the AI of the other team member gets a bit hairy.  He does what he is told, but very often gets stuck around obstacles.  This can be fixed by switching to the other member and manually moving him around the obstacle but can be very annoying.  The enemy AI is pretty awesome when it comes to firing on your position, but rather than effectively take cover, they often run right at you with the guns a blaze. 

You don’t run around collecting different guns; your weapon has a variety of different barrels which each provide a different function, shotgun, auto-gun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, laser, grenade launcher, rocket launcher and mine launcher, though not very realistic, still a nice selection. The ammunition can be replenished by frisking the killed enemies, besides, some parts of equipment can be found in depots. The basic idea is like most mission driven games.  Complete the objectives, kill the bad guys, grab the equipment or power-ups you need, rescue the good guys, and don't get killed in the process.   

During the game I really liked the feel of being able to running behind rocks, corners, etc.  I actually felt like I was taking cover peeking around my monitor to get a good shot from a prone position.  The frisking of killed enemies for additional ammo was a nice touch.  You may be required to pick up items to get you through missions (keys, microchips, etc) if not in plain view, frisk the enemy. The CO-OP play via LAN was really nice and added much fun.  It was this that made the game most enjoyable.  Other than that I would probably pass on this one because fans of this genre will most likely have a title that is quite better then this.  (ie. Ghost Recon, Delta Force, (you get the idea) 

Install: Easy-Medium
Does not need a monster PC to run it, but you have to load some goodies off the disk to play (Game Spy for internet play).

Gameplay: 7
Pretty easy interface, but gameplay slows while toggling between stuck AI team members

Graphics: 7
not to shabby, but nothing new here.

Sound: 7

Petty good sound effects and music, but the dialog is very monotone and boring

Difficulty: 9
The enemy AI is quite good and you can raise and lower the settings.  Multiplayer games will raise the bar for those fps geeks who master the game

Concept: 6
Really nothing new, but I liked grabbing gear from the bad guys

Multiplayer: 8

CO-OP mode rocks with another human player.  Not many players on the server though.  Game Spy only had the demo version available at time of review.

Overall: 7
This title will shine for multiplayer fans or lovers of the genre. In all honesty just another military fps/team based game.