Customer Reviews

TRIGGER MAN

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Reviewed for Big Boss Games by: JRR

With the wealth of budget titles being released, you have to wonder if they are worth the usual $20 price tag. Sadly, with this game, a $10 price tag wouldn't help.

Trigger Man comes to all platforms, and suffers the same fate equally well.

Your a mob hitman, and the gang wars are about to begin. Sounds cool, right? In concept it is. But poor "execution" in all departments "kills" any chance of fun. I couldn't resist.

Playstation 1 graphics, mixed with sub-par controls, ridiculous character animation and poor level design plague the entire game. No voice samples at all, period. Yup, you'll be reading the whole comedy, er, I mean story.

Basically, a really low budget wanna-be Hitman knock-off, on it's best day. Gettin' rubbed out, would be more worth your time.

To sum it up, "It's curtains for this game, see!"

Alright, at my local video game store i was looking through the bin of cheap games that no-one wants and i stumbled across it. I knew it was going to be crap, but i was bored and i got it for 4.99. When i started to play it is was really confused, the game has no real story line, it strays from a mob story to a homosexual love interest, im not kidding. There was one scene when the main character holds some guys hand and takes him into the bedroom and closes the door. It doesnt show anything, but from the sound effects i can gather that they arnt knocking pillars into the groung.
After this i turned off the game and threw it out, i just couldnt understand what the hell was going on with this stuff, afterall it looked all knarly from the cover.
I would say dont get it, but im not sure what tickles your fancy.

For some reason, I like to collect obscure Xbox games that nobody on the planet has ever heard of before. I don't know why, but when I saw this game "Trigger Man" advertised brand new at a dirt cheap price, I couldn't resist. After playing through this game the whole way through, I can say with conviction that it's good in some parts, bad in others, and primitive overall.

The gameplay of Trigger Man is primarily a 3rd-person shooter with some stealth parts thrown in. There's a big emphasis on headshots, which grant you one-shot kills, because body shots waste too many bullets, especially on enemies with bulletproof vests. In most of the levels, you can be stealthy up to a certain point by using your knife and silenced pistol. Since your enemies are deaf to your footsteps even if you're running at full speed, it's just a matter of making sure they don't see you. This adds a tiny amount of strategic value to the game, since you can't regain health unless you pick up a medpack, in addition to using environmental cover during firefights. The guns are good too, with pistols for headshots, submachine guns for rapid kills, shotguns for heavily armored enemies, and a sniper rifle for long-range kills.

Now, we're on to the bad aspects. The enemies you kill don't drop any ammo for you to take; you have to find one of a few "infinite-ammo boxes" scattered across the levels. Also, there's three stealth parts during the game where you have to avoid the police, but you're not allowed to kill any of them; otherwise, it's "game over." It's extremely easy to be spotted by them, and environmental cover doesn't do the greatest job of keeping you concealed. Therefore, these three parts boil down to repeatedly losing while you figure out the exact route you have to take and the exact time to move so the police aren't looking your way. Yet another part is the bad AI. In one mission, you have to escort Don Montanagano out of a deep subway, but he keeps running out in the open directly exposed to enemy fire, not even trying to hide. And the enemies sometimes take cover in positions that leaves their head extremely vulnerable to a headshot. Lastly, when you use the sniper rifle, you can't move around at all unless you switch to a different weapon. You're stuck in the scoped vision mode, which becomes a headache during the dockside level where you have to snipe a whole bunch of enemies before they see you or see one of their friends die.

Lastly, we have the primitive aspect. The whole game reminds me of a Gameboy Pocket title that's been ported over to the "big dog" consoles. There's absolutly no spoken dialogue whatsoever in the game; speech bubbles over character's heads are used instead, resembling a comic book. The graphics are in the same league; everything generally has a discolored, dark look to it, like the colors were partially bleached out, and the whole game taking place at nighttime doesn't help improve matters. Of course, the Xbox version has the cleanest look to it with only a few rough edges here and there. Still, the presentation is like down in the Stone Age compared to some other titles released in 2004. On the other hand, the music of this game is fantastic and diverse. The subway level I probably loved the most, because the music there is extremely creepy and keeps you tense and on edge that someone will ambush you. The stealth levels had that low-key, yet atmospheric music that was perfect for silently creeping around. And the office building level had a good pulsing beat that supported the big gunfights.

When all is said and done, I can definitly see why practically no one on this planet has ever heard of Trigger Man. Still, the good parts it had, like killing people quietly, using cover and the right weapons to my advantage, and the fantastic, diverse music, kept me going in spite of the bad parts. Like I said, for some reason I love to collect obscure Xbox games that only a microscopic amount of people know about, but this game was dirt-cheap and I couldn't resist. When I have a free afternoon with nothing else to do, I just pop this in and become "The TRIGGER MAN." It's not a top-tier title, but it does serve as a nice distraction occasionly.

This is proof that you should never judge a book by its cover or game case. I had some Crave Entertainment games back on the dreamcast days and thought the idea of this game was appealing and when I put the disc in the controls were so horrid I could not play it. The game could of been decent if the controls worked but there a slop of mess. Basically they wanted to rip you off with this game. Only positive out of this you could tell a kid here have a free mini frisbee. This game went from looking appealing on the box art to once you put it in the system its just plain appalling. Its pretty sad this game was even ever conceived but at least after five minutes with this game you will be able to appreciate a great shooter like Halo or Max Payne.

People just don't have a sense of humor. This game is hilarious, and its easy. If you enjoy running and shooting people this game is fun, you can even throw knife blades and watch them in first person attack the enemy. This game is worth the under $20 price.