Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Rebellion
System requirements: Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13 GHz or better, or Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core BE-2300 or better CPU; GeForce 8800M GTS or better, or Radeon HD 2900 Pro or better graphics card; 2GB RAM; 4GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
Release Date: Available Now

“Play as Dick Marcinko, real-life founder of SEAL Team Six and the U.S. Navy’s most efficient killing machine.” That’s what it says on the back of the Rogue Warrior box. Sounds pretty exciting, right? What you actually get is far less than what the media hype leads you to believe, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

In Rogue Warrior, Marcinko and his team are sent to Soviet Russia and North Korea on a covert operation. When the SEAL’s comrades are all killed, Marcinko must complete their mission on his own. Gameplay is pretty similar to most modern shooters. In each mission, you begin with a SAP9 silenced pistol with unlimited ammo, an SM5 submachine gun, six grenades and a knife. The blade cannot be dropped, and is used only in the game’s 25+ “kill moves.” When you get close enough to an enemy, you are prompted to press your “E” key to perform a kill move. Which kill move is performed depends on the direction from which you approach the enemy and his location. For example, only if the enemy is standing next to a window will Marcinko throw him off the edge to fall to his death.

You can carry two firearms at a time. Since ammo isn’t interchangeable, you’ll probably end up swapping your SM5 for another weapon for which ammo is plentiful and easily found, like an AK-47 assault rifle. There is no health meter; when Dick takes enough damage, the screen starts to lose color and becomes black-and-white. All you need to do is find cover long enough for Marcinko’s health to be restored. You can fire from cover or use blind fire to suppress enemy troops. You can vault over low obstacles, but only while playing multiplayer matches. I find this to be a very unusual design decision.

The graphics quality is excellent; Rogue Warrior will run well on systems that are slightly below requirements, such as mine (I’ve got 4 GB of RAM and a quad-core processor, but my video card is only a GeForce 8200). The only place where the game really slows down for me is on a level with snow. Also, they hired actor Mickey Rourke to be the voice of “Demo Dick” Marcinko. The weapons sound and perform identically to their real-world counterparts. And that, unfortunately, is where the good part ends.

Let’s talk about the bad stuff now. First of all is the cursing. I realize this game is rated Mature. I realize that Marcinko was in the Navy for 30+ years, so “swears like a sailor” probably applies. But if I had a quarter for every time this game dropped the f-word (10 times before even finishing the first level… yes, I counted), I could go buy a movie or two on DVD. The stealth system is almost pointless. Sure, you can keep the enemies unaware for a while, but as soon as they see a dead body, hear you moving at faster than walking speed, or hear even a single shot from any weapon other than your SAP9 pistol, they’re alerted. And once alerted, they stay alert, no matter how well or how long you hide. Oh, and you can’t hide the dead bodies. But it’s not like it matters much; the enemy AI is so mediocre that it isn’t hard to get close enough to perform a kill move, as long as you take advantage of cover (charging across open ground towards an enemy carrying a machine gun is still suicidal). The game saves your progress automatically when you pass a checkpoint; if you die, you have the choice of restarting at the last checkpoint or back at the start of the level. There is no manual save feature, which I consider to be a cardinal sin in PC games, but there are quite a few checkpoints and you have an unlimited number of lives, so this is relatively minor compared to the game’s other failings.

Worst of all, however, is that single player Rogue Warrior is incredibly short, with only eight missions. On the normal difficulty setting, I can play it from beginning to end in two hours (three hours on expert difficulty). Multiplayer is limited to two modes, deathmatch and team deathmatch. I don’t know who decided that two or three hours worth of dumb AI, boring and useless stealth mechanics and enough profanity to make most sailors blush is worth full price, but they’re wrong. If you wait until the game shows up in the bargain bin, or until Bethesda releases enough DLC to add enough content to the game to make it worth $49.99, then you might want to pick it up. Until then, steer clear.

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