et’s face it; the PS2 hasn’t been exactly “the” console for FPS games.  Numerous developers have tried their luck with the genre, most recently Sony and their futuristic military title Killzone, but despite that game’s pretty visuals, the gameplay didn’t quite live up to expectations.  Eidos thinks they have what it takes to buck the trend in their upcoming game Project: Snowblind and after having played through the most recent build of the game, they may just be on to something.  Mixing an interesting story with some innovative gameplay, the title grabs you from the moment you fire it up, never letting go for even a second.   But, for all the fun that’s to be had, the game still has its share of problems so far; hopefully Eidos will be able to iron those out before the game hits store shelves.

Project: Snowblind follows the character of Nathan Frost, a young Coalition soldier stationed in Hong Kong.  A radical general has used his military might and Republic army to lay siege to the city and the Coalition has been called in to quell the uprising and restore the area back to peace.  But, the life of a soldier isn’t an easy one, and one fateful day Frost finds himself near death on a Coalition stretcher.  But, his life doesn’t end in quite a mundane way.  He’s made the focal point of a mysterious Coalition experiment and implanted with a multitude of cybernetic enhancements.  He’s no longer just a regular soldier but a man with half-a-billion dollars worth of technology strewn throughout his body.  And thankfully his new mechanical abilities aren’t just for show.

The Hong Kong setting makes for some interesting backdrops

On the battlefield, Frost is quite the force to be contended with.  He can wield a wide number of different firearms, from assault rifles, a handgun, shotgun, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, to a nifty little device called the Ice Pick that allows him to shoot at computer devices and then hack into them remotely.  Where the game really stands out is in the use of secondary weapons, such as grenades.  There are a ton of different grenades at your disposal, including frag, EMP, gas, and flash.  You can also pick up other helpful items like nano-enhancers that can refill your life and special ability meter as well as the cool Riot Wall, which lets you plant down a temporary shield anywhere around you to block enemy gunfire.  While the selection of primary and secondary weapons is impressive in terms of quantity, the means of actually toggling through them is way more complicated and cumbersome than it needs to be.  Switching weapons is mapped to the D-Pad on the PS2 controller (the version I played through), so pressing up and down will cycle through your current inventory of firearms.  To make things a bit easier the L2 button functions as a quick switch means of swapping back to the previous weapon you just used.  Sounds intuitive, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s not, and nothing seems to take you out of the action more than having to fiddle around with the finicky menu and the illogical quick switch function. 

The Bio Augmentation system works in the same way, too.  Thankfully you get quite a few different abilities, each of which serves its own unique purpose.  Much in the same way that you unlocked abilities in Codemasters’ Second Sight, Frost will eventually unlock more abilities the further you progress in the game.  You start off with the ability to use thermal vision to see through walls and detect enemy heat signatures, but you’ll eventually learn abilities like being able to throw up a bulletproof shield around your body, render yourself invisible, and slow down time.  The different abilities can be cycled through by pressing Left on the D-Pad and then initiated by pressing Triangle.  All of your powers are bound by a special meter that sits underneath your health meter, so you can’t just run around using them all the time.  The more you use a power the more your meter will decrease, so you need to track down special items that refill the meter in order to keep using them.  Unfortunately, the items to refill your Bio Augmentation meter don’t appear that often, so most of the time you’ll really end up conserving the power until you get caught in dire situations.  Much like the weapons, the Bio Augmentation system is neat thanks to the number of powers you have, but also falls prey to the clunky means of using the D-Pad to cycle through them.  With so many selection options mapped to the D-Pad, the entire system becomes far too complicated for its own good.

Weapons are deadly and technologically advanced

Control-wise the game follows the pretty standard FPS formula of movement; the left analog stick controls movement while the right controls aim.  Getting around and moving is pretty easy to manage thanks to the fluid controls, but firing can sometimes be taxing thanks to the game’s somewhat sketchy hit detection.  Aiming in first person on the PS2 has always been a hard to perfect feature, and Project: Snowblind doesn’t seem to fare quite as well I think it could.  This really becomes a problem when you’re faced with enemies coming around you from all sides, at which point the game has a tendency to start to chug in terms of frame-rate.  Throughout the game you can also jump behind the controls of a number of different vehicles, such as cars and the mech-like Ogre.  Unfortunately, they don’t seem to control all that well either, with the cars being the worst offenders of the lot.  Cars and other wheeled vehicles are far too quick to turn and slow to accelerate, turning most joyrides into frustrating situations where you either run into walls or get stuck on objects in the environment.  The Ogres, too, suffer from their share of problems and move so slowly that their massive firepower and armor seem almost moot.

But in its credit, Project: Snowblind does offer up a nice visual treat, especially on the PS2.  Environments are usually expansive and full of detail, whether it’s the ambient glow coming from a group of computer consoles or the way water drips from the ceilings of sewers and underground passageways.  The Bio Augmentation effects are also really neat to see, especially when you start throwing up bullet-proof barriers and go invisible.  Character models are also well rendered, and while you don’t actually get to see Frost outside of the occasional cutscene, when you do he’s the embodiment of technological bad-assitude.  Enemies don’t seem to get quite the royal treatment that Frost and his Coalition buddies do, but their visual appearances do vary depending on which level you’re playing.  When you first start off they’ll be little more than almost regular looking soldiers, but as you get further in the game and start encountering the elite Republic guards, their deadliness and upper rank is pretty well exhibited in their looks.

Enemies will usually gang up on you and exhibit smart AI

But what would nice visuals be without equally impressive sound, right?  Thankfully Project: Snowblind delivers in the audio department with an epic score and enough secondary sound effects to keep things interesting.  The score, which could have been ripped from the latest Hollywood blockbuster action flick, is sweeping and appropriate, given the title’s heavy military theme.  But it’s the little details that really stand out, such as the way enemy soldiers will talk back and forth to each other, especially when they’ve spotted you, as well as the occasional voice-overs you’ll hear from Frost.  The weapons sounds are pretty ho-hum, but frankly, you’ll still have plenty to keep your ears perked while playing.

And then there’s the multiplayer…granted, I played through a bunch of online matches on the PS2, so I’m not quite sure how the Xbox fares in comparison.  But, I’m hoping and praying that it’s not like the PS2 experience.  Even though I played a preview build of the game, the online multiplayer features didn't pan out how I thought they would.  First off, either through my network connection or Eidos' servers, the frame rate was choppy, making targeting an enemy pretty difficult to pull off.  I’m all for the challenge of trying to hit a moving target, but seeing an opponent zip around and move like lightning is frustrating to say the least.  Needless to say, the only weapons that really ended up being effective were rocket launchers since scoring a direct hit with something like a machine gun or sniper rifle was pretty much impossible.  On the plus side, however, you do get the ability to choose a player class which dictates which weapons and Bio Augmentation powers you start off with, but as I mentioned before, most weapons seem pretty besides the point.  Hopefully Eidos will have the chance to tweak the frame rate issues.  If they do, the online experience could be a really enjoyable time.

Overall Project: Snowblind is a title of contradictions.  One on hand you have a great sci-fi military story with nice level design and action.  But on the other hand, you also have an illogical system of changing weapons and selecting powers, which really throws things off balance.  And, on the PS2, the online experience is perplexing to say the least.  With enough time, though, Eidos should have the ability to address my concerns.  After all, the core gameplay is fun and full of innovation and the Bio Augmentation powers are a blast to use while playing.  There’s plenty of promise for the game and I’m hoping that it can live up to the hype.