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Publisher: City Interactive
Developer: City Interactive
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; DirectX 9.0c; 2.0 GHz processor; 512 MB RAM; GeForce 5700 or Radeon 9700 with 128 MB; 3 GB hard disk space; internet or LAN connection
Genre: FPS
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

If I close my eyes and imagine a remote island paradise, the smell of salty sea air grips my nostrils, sending me into a brief imaginary vacation with lapping waves, sand between my toes and humidity so intense that each breath is like drinking a glass of water. Since the most tropical place I’ve ever visited is Florida, I can’t really expand much more on this sensory hallucination before I start chasing an actor in a Mickey Mouse costume down a beachfront whilst hurling oranges and muttering obscenities. So, since I’m not well traveled, I have to leave it up to video games such as Crysis, Far Cry and now Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island to provide the rest of the trip for me.

While the Triple-A blockbuster Crysis has raised our expectations for a first-person shooter, Code of Honor assumes that you haven’t played Crytek’s masterpiece at all. Sure, there are palm trees, ruins and industrial-militaristic facilities through which to wander, but all of the exploration, beauty and free-roaming gameplay that made Crysis such a good game are replaced with a half-cocked facsimile and linear progression. Pity, because I had a vision of paradise brewing when I installed the game, but now all I want is a refund for my flight miles and some aloe for the burns I suffered.

An experimental nuclear facility on Île Royale off the coast of French Guiana has been seized by a terrorist group whose mission could be anything from blowing the reactor and killing millions to harvesting the uranium to make dirty bombs. Whatever the plan might be, this looks like a job for nothing less than the Special Forces or a professional military organization capable of bringing the invaders to justice quickly and discreetly. Yet, those who are expecting Rainbow Squad to come crashing through the nearest window may be surprised. Code of Honor 2 (much like the first game) uses the French Foreign Legion as the heroic tool of choice.

As Sgt. Claude Boulet, you and your squad must walk a linear path through a jungle, a cave, a former prison and an office building that closely resembles the one found in F.E.A.R. on your way to stop leader Hernando Mendoza and his Global Revolutionary Front. If this sounds tired, that’s because it is, and while I commend City Interactive for choosing a lesser-known protagonist for COH2, the setting and plot are common tourism spots for the FPS genre. Also, practically nothing you see looks recent in terms of technology, and there are bugs, glitches and other fantastically arresting problems to be found. You’ll soon wish that you hadn’t volunteered for this duty.

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