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0:52 Back in the chopper after a successful mission. "That was like taking candy from a crippled baby. I was like p-chow p-chow p-chow boom boom yeah!" says a teammate. Duvall is more contemplative: "I can't believe those little rats got away with our Nectar." He's totally unconcerned about the healthy-looking dead pilot, saying saving him was "not a priority ... we went in there so our men could get their meds."
0:54 So the storyline is pretty clearly pushing the idea that this Nectar is turning our soldiers into drug addicts that don't care about their own humanity, or anyone else's. Not a bad conceit, except the writing and presentation are so ham-fisted as to make the whole thing way too transparent.
0:55 One of my guys says it "looks like someone's been throwing grenades on the deck." Only I see no sign that anything is amiss. Um...
0:57 The radio talks about "Skin Coat," an enemy leader who wears the flayed skin of his defeated foes. My erudite teammates go on about how they are against eating people and stealing their skin thusly: "Suck my balls."
0:58 Oh, I see what they were talking about now -- there are two small fires on a cordoned-off end of the ship. Doesn't look that bad to me.
0:59 Back onto the drop ship for another mission. We're going after "Skin Coat," shockingly enough. "You're going down to gag him and bag him," they tell us.
1:00 Duvall goes on about how our emotions are just chemical compounds in our brain. "You're an ape. A monkey. Doing whatever those chemicals tell you to do." Once I accept that, I can focus on the mission and prioritize based on tactics, not personal relationships. "Don't be one of them. Don't be an ape." Ham. Fisted.
Would I play this game for more than an hour? No.
Why? The Nectar-infused shooting is kind of boring, and the hackneyed story and presentation just aren't doing it for me.
This column was based on a retail version of the game rented from GameFly.
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