Publisher: OGPlanet
Developer: FIX Korea
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista/Win 7), Radeon X800/GeForce 7600 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 6 GB hard-drive space
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: April 2013

Back in the ancient days of 1999, when Pentiums still roamed the Earth, a guy named Minh Le, along with some other talented guys, created a small mod for Half-Life called Counter Strike. The little mod caught on, and it and Minh were soon snapped up by Valve. Soon, he was hard at work on Counter Strike 2. The project eventually faded, and Minh left to develop his next game on his own. After slow-boiling for more than a decade, that game is ready to be served. Recently, an open beta launched, sundering the seals and letting the masses in (and testing server loads). With the official launch right around the corner, Tactical Intervention should be about finished. So, how does it look?

Well, to be honest, it looks a mess. There’s a fine line between grouping information in the center of the screen (where the player looks) and simply being cluttered. One of Tactical Intervention’s most obvious innovations is to replace the radar with a ring around the center of the screen. This ring has red and blue dots that get brighter the closer someone is. In theory, this lets you keep your eyes forward while still scanning your radar, but in practice, you miss enemies because you’re too busy looking at the dots swirling in front of you. Now, the display does vanish when the action starts, but it’s still more bewildering than helpful.

Tactical Intervention has a remarkably long list of features. By pressing X, you can do a tactical roll, either to dive out of the way of something or to put yourself out if you catch fire. Objects such as fire extinguishers and propane tanks can be picked up and thrown. You can heal teammates by pressing T. To pick up ammo from dead enemies, you have to stop and “use” their ammo pouch, taking precious seconds. Certain locations allow you to rappel down slopes. Attack dogs exist as kill-streak rewards, along with every kind of grenade you can imagine. Every weapon has a melee attack, but there’s no aiming down the sights. The mission game mode even introduces drivable vehicles. Your loadout includes the expected primary and secondary weapons, but also the kind of helmet you wear and even the radio you use. TI is bursting at the seams with “stuff.”

It’s also good to note that locational damage is reflected in the animations. If you get shot in the leg, your character will hobble about, favoring the other leg. The same thing goes for arms. While this might give a skilled player the edge in picking out the wounded ones, I found that it generally results in a server filled with limping, grunting men with guns. It was a very odd experience.

While comparisons to Counter Strike are inevitable, they don’t do Tactical Intervention any favors. These are two very different games. While CS is very tight and focused, TI‘s feature list is the length of your arm. That’s the kind of game it’s trying to be. The issue is that TI doesn’t feel like it comes together. Perhaps introducing different classes would make the huge feature list coherent and help players figure out what to do, but at the moment, it’s remarkably confusing at first.

Le’s an indie developer at heart, as this interview with Polygon clearly uncovers. He likes to experiment with things and never be tied down by design documents or corporate pressure. That’s a very good way to explain Tactical Intervention. There are a lot of ideas all tossed together to make a very interesting, if not very appetizing, murder salad. There’s an ambition at the heart of Tactical Intervention that you don’t find in most free-to-play shooters. While it’s current state is more than a little rough, I hope that Le and his team are able to buff it out in the next few months. There’s something interesting here, if only they’re able to find it.