(Page 1 of 3)

0:00 I'm not usually one for war games (unless they're of the Advance Wars variety), but after hearing everybody and their cousin Fred praise this one, I decided to borrow a copy and see what the big deal was.

0:01 "50,000 people used to live here. Now it's a ghost town." We're in Pripykat, Ukraine. An old man complains about the West. A TV reporter talks over scenes of anarchy. "Just as they laid waste to our country, we shall lay waste to theirs." Some guy does a voiceover in... Russian? More scenes of firefights and chaos. I can't tell if this is still in the Ukraine... looks slightly more... American?

0:03 An S.A.S. login screen... not sure what that stands for. "Good news first. The world's in great shape." Civil wars, 15,000 nukes at stake. Great... Khaled Al-Asad is a bad guy. Soap is a new good guy... oh, that's me. And I'm already in control. Nice.

0:05 Basic two-stick controls: One moves, one aims. LT zooms in and RT shoots, or you can just shoot from the hip with RT.

0:07 I really like the auto-aim -- tap LT and it just snaps to a nearby target. I hate having to be a crack shot to succeed at these types of games. My fine thumb control is never good enough.

0:08 Some guy is teaching me about sidearms and knives, which are faster than reloading. I knife a watermelon. "Nice. Your fruit killing skills are remarkable." I chuckled.

0:09 Instead of a big red arrow, they put a subtle target and distance indicator on your compass near the bottom of the screen. The little things matter.

0:10 Captain Price is telling me to go through an obstacle course. His character model looks damn near perfect -- very believable mannerisms and mouth movement. In fact, everything looks incredibly smooth and detailed. The environment really grabs you.

0:13 Boy, I suck at this obstacle course. Between Price barking orders and my trying to find where to go next, I'm a mess. Plus, I blind myself with a flash grenade twice. I have no business being in the service. I want to go home. I want my mommy. Waah!

0:14 37.5 seconds my second time through! Now that I know what I'm doing, this is kind of fun. The game even recommends a difficulty based on my performance. I think I'll try again.

0:16 31.4 seconds "That was an improvement, but it's not hard to improve on garbage." OUCH! I like the note for Veteran difficulty: "You will not survive." I'll take that at its word.

0:17 Mission briefing: There's a package aboard an Estonian freighter. It has a small crew and security detail. "Crew expendable." So just shoot anything that moves, then? Gotcha.

0:18 Rushing through the ship... the dark, atmospheric lighting gives a high sense of tension right off the bat. Price shoots two guys in their sleep. I spare them a quick look, but I have to move on quickly. *sniff*

0:20 The environments are amazing, but more than anything, the noise of the sea really draws you into the experience.

0:21 We've got a good firefight going, then a helicopter comes in and absolutely slaughters the opposition. It's nice being technologically superior sometimes.