Each week Screen Play gives you the chance to test your gaming knowledge.

All you have to do is name the game.

The review below has been excavated from the archives, and could have been published anytime in the past 20 years.

The tricky part is you won’t get the full review straight away. Instead, only parts of the review will be initially published, with more details following throughout the day.

Here is today's challenge...

 

Taking its cue from Hollywood action flicks, everything in this game is over-the-top. Bullet casings spew everywhere, spectacular explosions rock the screen, and bad-guys never die without hurling themselves through a nearby window.

It’s the guns that are the stars. The visceral impact of powerful weapons like shotguns, grenades, machine guns and rocket launchers is astonishingly replicated.

Your arsenal can cause spectacular damage, triggering euphoria as you shatter glass, blow up cars, destroy refineries and raze entire buildings. The aftermath of an intense gunfight can be apocalyptic.

Even with limited ammunition the urge is strong to shoot everything, and it often pays dramatic dividend. Why snipe foes standing on a balcony when you can destroy the supports and make the entire structure crumble in a huge cloud of rubble, smoke and dust?

The game is explicitly designed to play like the best sequences from your favourite films, offering a series of exciting missions during an overt black ops military operation.

Memorable sequences include crossing a minefield, with reckless blasting initiating chain reactions of explosions, and an intense asylum shootout reminiscent of the Matrix, with pillars splintering from gunfire and glass raining from above.

Little strategy is required to complete each raucous run-and-gun stage, but there are usually multiple ways of tackling scenarios and tactical use of cover is important. Health packs are in abundance and the waves of opponents are merely dim cannon fodder, exhibiting plenty of aggression but little intelligence. 

The replay value lies in higher difficulty settings and completing secondary objectives like retrieving reconnaissance documents and destroying terrorist equipment. But the lack of multiplayer options is a baffling and disappointing omission.

Like its myriad explosions, the game’s fire might not burn for long, but it does burn bright. This is a thrilling, intense and cinematic shoot-‘em-up not afraid of being labeled shallow.

 

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