Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Kill Switch

kill switch

At first glance, Namco's kill.switch looks like a pretty standard third-person military-themed shooter. It has a look to it that recalls both Konami's Metal Gear Solid and Ubisoft's Splinter Cell, though it focuses more on shooting enemy soldiers in the face than on deep storylines and complicated stealthy maneuvers. It presents some relatively cool gameplay techniques, but a lack of length and some rough edges don't make this console-to-PC port go down any more smoothly.

The premise in kill.switch is a mysterious one. You really aren't given much background about who you are or what you're doing, but if you listen closely to the pre-mission dialogue, it quickly becomes apparent that you aren't playing the role of the soldier on the screen. Rather, you're actually taking on the role of a man controlling this supersoldier via some sort of neural link. It also quickly becomes apparent that you're the bad guy of this story, committing dastardly deeds as you try to pit the world's superpowers against one another using this American-looking soldier to ensure the blame is cast elsewhere. While the game has a terrific premise and does have a twist to its plot, the storyline itself is practically nonexistent, which makes the game feel pretty disjointed and, above all, makes your actions feel meaningless, even though according to the back of the box, you're attempting to start a world war. You get a small bit of audio at the front of each mission that's supposed to set things up a bit, but the missions and areas don't feel very related. You just run into a level and kill a bunch of people while trying to accomplish straightforward objectives.

The mission design doesn't really help matters much. By and large, your objective in each mission is to simply get to the end. At the end, you'll surely be doing something slightly different, but that usually boils down to either planting explosives on something, pushing a button, finding an exit, or picking up an item--which are all done in such a way that they all feel like cosmetically different versions of the exact same objective. The game is also very short, and even players starting out on the hard difficulty setting should be able to breeze through kill.switch in six or seven hours. There aren't any unlockable features, multiplayer options, or other bonuses to keep you busy after that.

Sure, the missions just have you running around and shooting enemy goons with nary a boss fight in sight, but the mechanics it gives you to play with are well done. The game is designed to force you to constantly find cover. The left trigger is devoted to ducking or, if you're near a wall or nearby box, pressing your back up against cover and getting out of sight. From there you can find your next target, peek around or above your cover, and then take a shot. Or, if you're under pressure, you can fire without peeking out from your cover. Though this technique, labeled "blindfire" by the game, is cool, it's so inaccurate that it's practically useless. Considering that most enemies die from one or two shots, and aiming at them isn't really a hassle from behind cover, you rarely have a need to blindfire anyway. This may have made a bit more sense on consoles, given the less precise nature of the gamepad, but with a mouse and keyboard, the aiming part of the process is dead-simple. The game's easy aiming also makes grenades pretty useless, which is a shame, because you can carry multiple types of grenades, including flashbangs, which blind your opponents and make them fire wildly while clutching at their eyes.


Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/55616060/KS.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55621410/KS.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55626716/KS.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55631736/KS.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55636867/KS.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55643110/KS.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55648449/KS.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55653996/KS.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55659848/KS.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55665914/KS.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55672141/KS.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/55678889/KS.part12.rar

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