Customer Reviews

Shadow OPS Red Mercury

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This game is the most overhyped game in history. The graphics and gameplay is almost identical to the first Medal of Honor game. The load times between levels are horrible and the AI of the enemy and your teammates is like Forest Gump. I can't say enough bad things about this game.

I bought this game thinking it should be in the same league as Rainbow Six 3...... not even close. This game is flat out terrible.

I think you folks are too picky about the small stuff, this game is great.Yes, the load times are long, and the frame rate suffers once in awhile, but the music is great, the levels, locations and the weapons are well crafted, and the story is fun! I also though that the movielike cutscenes moved the plot along quite well, definitely giving it more of a movielike feel.
Reminds me a bit of Blackhawk Down meets The Peacemaker...
When actually playing the game, I thought it was a real rush!
I personally liked it more than Rainbox Six Three. I think it deserves much better than it's gotten in the reviews so far.
If you are lookng for a more action based FPS game I suggest giving this one a try, it's a while until Halo 2 comes out, this is definitely keeping my attention until then.

This game may not be the best thing that ever happened to xbox, but it's certainly worth owning. I just got it the other day and so far I am quite satisfied with it. It has excellent graphics and sound. It's also a First-Person Shooter. I just can't figure out what these other reviewers hate about it so much. The AI isn't that bad, you're teammates do kill some people. And, for the record, it has GREAT!! multiplayer. I might not would pay $50 for it but if you have $30 or $35 bucks that you want to spend on a fun army game, I would strongly consider this.

This game was so unbelievably bad, I don't know where to start. The graphics were pretty good but the missions were just horrible. If you're thinking about buying this game, think again. It isn't even worth renting.

I purchased this game just a few days ago. The beginning was great and so was the start up. However when you begin actual gameplay your experience goes downhill. The graphics make it look like it took Atari every bit of 3 days to put together, and as far as the AI goes it was shockingly poor. There where several times in this game where the enemy will shoot at you from accross the street despite the fact that your allies are standing right next to him. It seems like the Enimy AI cant even see the Allied AI at points. I found multuple cases where they would stand next to each other and not do anything. As far as the weapons go they are horribly represented. Your character can barely hit the broad side of a barn with his rifle and the sidearm you use (which resembles a cross between a baretta 9mm. and a desert eagle) takes almost a half of your magazine to stop one person! It also seems as though your character is holding the pistol sideways instead of straight!! I usually never leave bad reviews but I was just so shocked at how poorly this game was made that I am taking it back to the store today! If you think this was a good game you might want a take a better look at the cover because chances are you are mistaking this for another game. Over all I believe this is one of the worst games I have ever put in my Xbox. (And I have played my fair share of bad games)

Whatever my expectations were of this game, they were completely thrown in my face as I got something else. Shadow Ops is not your typical FPS, which is just the way I like it. Shadow Ops takes you and places you in some of the most hellish combat zones a console game can take you.

While Halo is probably more intense, you're more focused on surviving in Shadow Ops meaning your attention is almost always focused on just making it. In the urban combat levels there are quite literally a dozen things, noises, explosions and misc elements going about to distract you from keeping an eye on your surroundings.

I must admit, the story is almost laughable had I not read the Red Mercury novel back in the 1990s. You are Frank Hayden, a Delta Operator that looks, sounds and acts just like Frank Castle aka the Punisher, which is just plain weird. There is a romance twist and it rather lame if not annoying at times; just ignore it.

The controls are fair, nothing special or too complicated. The leaning function makes cover and concealment much easier and realistic compared to most games. Shadow Ops really stresses cover/concealment and alertness almost to the extreme. To survive even the first level on the easiest setting, you have to watch literally every nook and cranny less some tango will appear out of nowhere and cheap-shot ya or pull a Forrest Gump and nail you in the real.

The musical score is absolutely incredible and with surround sound, the music and sounds will emerse you into the most hellish combat zones the XBox can offer. I get a huge kick out of hearing bullets literally whizz by my head or hearing teammates yell from behind. Watching the making of special features, it is absolutely amazing how they got the sounds to work.

The only real beefs I have are your fellow teammates; they are completely worthless and are extremely whiny. You're supposed to be a Captain, a company grade officer and you're being given orders by a compulsive Master Sergeant... somehow that doesn't make any sense. They also tend to not hit the enemies in the area, they're accuracy is almost at par with the A-Team. For what they're worth, they certainly do whine a lot.

Overall, I give Shadow Ops a 93%.

Short and to the point this game was a let down. Control on this game was good. AI of the enemies and your squadmates in the game for the most part is PATHETIC!! Several times your squadmates and enemy will be standing a couple of feet apart and nothing happens... they just shoot at each other. Only positive is enemy AI does improve a little in the last stages of the game. Another bad point is the load time between missions/levels. It was so nice for the programmers to think we need a POTTY BREAK upon completion of each mission. Only good thing about this game is the surround sound!! Playing on a 5.1 surround system, you'll swear the enemy is setting up an ambush behind your easy chair. Note: I had to return my copy of this game due to sound cutting in/out. Salesperson advised they had received several exchanges due to sound cutting in/out. Overall I would have to say the only thing big about this game was the HYPE!! Rent this first!!

This is the single best military shooter to date.

Reason number one: It isn't about World War II
Number two: It has a Story
Number Three: It isn't impossibly hard

I would rather play this game over Halo or Halo 2. It's that good.
This game also has very good graphics. I think that Frank Hayden,( The main character) looks almost identical to Nick Scryer, from Psi Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy.

Anyway, here are my ratings

Graphics: 9.5
Sound: 15
Gameplay: 8.5
Replayability: 3
Controls: 10
Atmosphere: 10
Fun: 10
Multiplayer: 8 Co-Op: 10

"Shadow Ops: Red Mercury," developed by Zombie Studios, is a classic case of a game whose gameplay is able to triumph over its rough production values. If you can get past the rocky exterior and some apparent glitches, you'll actually find an aggressive, strategic, well-rounded game that will challenge your FPS skills a great deal. It's certainly one of the most intense FPSs I've ever played and it's definitly not geared towards running-n-gunning. It's too bad it received little attention, because if its flaws had been better ironed out, it possibly could've been the next major military shooter purchase of millions of people way back on the original Xbox.

"SORM" plays like a combination of "Medal of Honor," "Rainbow Six 3," and "Delta Force: Black Hawk Down." You carry three different weapons, usually a pistol, a machine gun, and a sniper rifle, though in some levels you'll have a shotgun and a rocket launcher. The machine gun will be your main weapon for most of the game since it has a large clip, automatic fire, and a decent zoom sight. The rocket launcher is reserved for the various tanks and armoured vehicles that get in your way. You have a lean ability, like in "MOH," only here it's much faster and fluid. It ultimately becomes your most valuable manuever, as you can lean all the way out and back in less than a second. Therefore, you can peek around a corner, and if enemies fire at you, you can duck back, wait until they hide again, then lean back out and shoot them when they try to get another shot in. In addition, you have grenades which can be either thrown traditionally in wide-open spaces or rolled in tight, close areas, giving you an advantage in clearing out multiple entrenched enemies. Explosive barrels are also spread throughout the levels for instant kills against enemies before they can even get a shot in.

Like I said above, this is a really hard game for several reasons. The health system is based on old-school health pick-ups, but they don't give you back 100% health like some other games. This way, you have to take every precaution to avoid damage and rationalize them so you pick them up only when you absolutely have to. The enemies are smart, brutal, and relentless. They utilize cover really well, blindfire around corners, throw grenades (including throwing yours back at you), boarding stationary heavy machine guns, and fire rocket launchers. They can kill you relatively quickly in no time flat even on the default difficulty, so like I said above, you have to proceed with caution and examine every inch of the environment. You also have to be somewhat conservative with ammunition, as fallen enemies sometimes drop spare ammo for you and sometimes they don't. Headshots are the key here, as only one shot results in an instant kill, whereas the body takes several. Melee attacks can also help out too, although you'll rarely use it since you'll almost never find yourself that close to an enemy. There's four difficulty modes: Infantry, Ranger, Green Beret, and Delta Force. In Delta Force, you're given only one life to last the entire game. I'm not kidding. If you die, you lose every single bit of your progress. Nobody in their right mind would try that unless they're completely insane. On Green Beret, it's a bit more manageable since you have unlimited lives, but your health and ammo doesn't replenish between most levels, forcing you to pick your shots carefully and conserve as much health as possible. The last and the most frustrating aspect is that never-ending problem with some games: there's no checkpoint system! That's right, if you die, you have to start the entire level from the very beginning, and some of them are really freakin' long. I guess this way, it forces you to play smart and tacticle like a real soldier would instead of runnin'-n-gunnin'.

The production quality of "SORM" is a total mixed-bag. There's a total of 24 levels that take place all around the world, including a Middle-Eastern city, a deep African jungle, a dark and snowy Kazakhstan forest, a massive secret underground base, and even inside the Eiffel Tower, to name a few of them. All of them, courtesy of the Unreal Engine, are well-rendered graphically and definitly feel distinct from each other, so the action never feels boring or confined to one single asthetic area. The sound is another top-notch aspect, with diverse musical scores appropriately fitting the different levels you're in, while the effects of gunfire, explosions, footsteps, vehicles, and enviromental ambient noises really help to totally immerse you in the virtual world. If you have a 5.1 surround sound system, you're in for a massive orgasmic audio treat. The physics, also courtesy of Unreal, are much more realistic in nature and aren't burdened by over-the-top cartoony death animations. Normal gunfire will cause enemies to crumple to the ground where they stand, and ragdoll physics are used tastefully for enemies falling off high ledges or caught in explosions. However, these amazing acheivements are partially drowned out by some really rough areas. When the action becomes a little too intense, the framerate sometimes goes into epileptic seizures and the sound cuts in and out. Even though the cut-scenes thankfully are devoid of these problems, they look really primitive and outdated next to the actual in-game graphics. The squadmates that you have for some levels aren't really that helpful; they usually don't kill an enemy unless they're right next to them, so mostly their purpose is to distract them so you can pull off a headshot. In an unfortunate instance of bad level design, near the end of one of the levels in the massive underground research station, you come to a freight elevator. You have to pull a control lever to power it up, then run as fast as you can to get back on the elevator before it starts to move. Twice you have to do this, once when you first see it and secondly when the enemy activates the emergency brake when you get to the floor below. If you miss either time, there's no way to recall it and you therefore have to start the entire level over again.

When it comes down to it, "SORM" has production values that have ups and downs to them, but gameplay that is engaging and rewarding enough to make it worth playing through to the end. If Zombie had ironed out the flaws better, like I said, perhaps "SORM" would've attracted a lot more attention than it did. But to me, with rough patches and all, this game is one of the most satisfying and challenging FPSs I own, and that's all that counts in the end.

The best FPS I own! Great graphics and gameplay. Just the right amount of difficulty, and you can get through the levels without playing them 20 times in a row! I definately recommend this!