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IGN Review of Exodus From The Earth
Exodus from the Earth, the latest first person shooter from publisher Strategy First, has a story idea I bet you haven't heard. In the near future, humanity's days are numbered due to an approaching disaster. With the survival of the Earth in question, the need for another life-sustaining planet is urgent. The military and big business clash, as both see the impending apocalypse as a means to seize control. And just when everything looks like it's going to hell in a Ziploc bag, a macho, wise-cracking special ops commando is called in to set things right. What? You mean you have heard that one before? Yeah, me too; like a thousand times. And when you've heard a story that many times, it's hard to get excited about it.
While exhibiting many of the traits of a well-designed FPS, Exodus from the Earth also shows symptoms of a terrible disease most often found in tiresome elderly relatives--monotonitis. Not only that, the game is so uneven that while playing it, my analysis inevitably became a game of "On one hand, on the other hand."
You play a tough guy named Frank Rixon. (Actually it's Francis, but how tough is that? It makes me think of that bike-stealing fat guy on PeeWee's Big Adventure.) You're an operative for the generically-named Intelligence Agency and your mission is to infiltrate the gargantuan A.X. Corporation and find out what slimy chief officer Jack Crizby is doing. See what I mean? The story is lazy, even resistant to narrative innovation, and that lack of creativity hamstrings what could've been a pretty solid shooter.
Worse yet, during the first third of the game I was convinced that the apathy of the writers had bled over to the art team and level designers. Weapons, environments and characters were all standard FPS fare. You have your pistol, shotgun, railgun, grenades; your henchmen, commandoes, jumpsuited workers cowering in fear; your corporate offices, air shafts, warehouses and utility tunnels; your dead enemies dropping health packs and ammo, and leaving important access cards lying randomly on storage room shelves.
On the other hand, in spite of the unambitious narrative and ho-hum starting gameplay, it's not all bad news. The game hits its stride after about the first third; in fact, I was surprised at the latter part's length and variety. Boss battles reflect the progression of the larger game; the first being a typically contrived and annoying multi-stage fight, the later ones being more complex confrontations that require cunning as well as fast reflexes. By game's end, you'll use equal parts wits and weaponry to fight your way to the extremely challenging final phase.
The difficulty of Exodus from the Earth ramps up logically; the first levels give you a feel for your weapons and the enemy AI, and on medium difficulty are just challenging enough. As you go along and environments become bigger and more complex, the game gets markedly harder and that could be a problem for some players. What's great is the development team knew that being shot from all sides panics some of us, so they made it possible for us to swap difficulty settings at any time. Jittery types be mindful; difficulty settings in this shooter consist mainly in the number of available health packs and ammo as opposed to fewer enemies or easier AI.
Although the developers seem mostly to like gamers, they must have been having a bad week when they threw in one of the worst possible FPS mechanics--jumping. No, I don't mean jumping to avoid being shot. I mean jumping on crates or boxes or ledges or rocks, when your entire body is represented by nothing more than a gun-toting hand on the screen. Trying to position and time a jump when you have no legs isn't fun and in this game there was an extensive collection, dare I say a veritable smorgasbord, of situations where this was necessary. Not only was it frustrating for the pace to be dragged down by a sudden jump-demanding obstacle, it was ridiculous. Imagine plowing through enemies like a character from a John Woo movie only to be stymied by a stack of boxes.
The unrealistically interactive environments are a headache in this game. In recent years, gamers want increasingly realistic worlds where everything's destructible and they can work through scenarios in a variety of ways. For performance reasons, games can't be like the real world but it helps when designers find believable ways to disguise the game's limitations. For instance, it makes sense if a bridge is blown out and you can't jump the gap. It doesn't make sense if a stack of cardboard boxes is impervious to a handful of grenades.
Not only is the environment unrealistically interactive, it's inconsistently so. Control panels look the same wherever you go, but sometimes you use them by targeting them and hitting the E key; sometimes you mouse click on the panels' interface. Sometimes barrels and boxes are destructible, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes objects can be picked up and moved, and sometimes they're glued to the floor. It's annoying when you find your path blocked by something you know in real life you could just crush or kick aside.
In spite of its many flaws, Exodus from the Earth has real entertainment value. It's unapologetically a linear first-person shooter, unembellished by RPG elements or half-baked, open-world gameplay. If you love to run-and-gun and think stealth isn't even a option, this game has your name written all over it. (Actually since crouch isn't a toggle and you have to hold the C key down while using the WASD keys to navigate, stealth really isn't an option.)
In addition to the chaotic, gun-centric parts of the game, you'll enjoy a good number of situational puzzles in a wide variety of interior and exterior locations that take actual thought to solve. And it's hard to get bored with the scenery because it's always changing. Good thing too, because even on the highest settings the graphics of the game are not spectacular. They're competently done but everything has the simplest of textures and effects.
Maybe we should be happy about the game's simple approach at graphics because at max spec the game would likely be unplayable. Upon install, the settings are at ultra-high which causes serious slow-down for machines significantly better than min spec, especially in areas with smoke, water or steam. Many PC gamers will probably have to crank the settings down to medium to avoid the deadly slide-show/twitch gaming combo. On the other hand, yeah, it's not the prettiest game out there but hey--when a crowd of goons are shooting at you, do you have time to watch the water sparkle?
So I've discussed how the overused storyline and the cut-rate graphics affect the game's quality but I've left the worst for last. The game was originally released in Russian and the localization is possibly the worst I have ever seen. Seriously, it's as if the dev team didn't have money for a translator and decided to have their receptionist put all the game's text through a Babelfish translator. This not only makes the uncompelling story totally unintelligible at times, it makes objectives confusing as well.
On the other hand, the awful localization may be the biggest element of inadvertent entertainment value in the game. I found myself laughing out loud at the totally weird loading screen text. For your enjoyment, an excerpt: "To get me out from my vacation and tell about the end of the world - that's all about my boss. I last time saved the world one and a half year ago, and as far as I remember, I didn't do it quite well. The cheap microchip saved the world! And now this Crizby, the A.X., and the sun which is eager to burn us."
The only thing funnier than reading this kind of dialog is hearing it. The characters are fairly well acted (aside from some weird long pauses between lines) but are prone to the same absurd dialect. If nothing else pulls you through the game, wanting to know what kind of crazy dialog you'll hear next probably will.
©2008-10-27, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
While exhibiting many of the traits of a well-designed FPS, Exodus from the Earth also shows symptoms of a terrible disease most often found in tiresome elderly relatives--monotonitis. Not only that, the game is so uneven that while playing it, my analysis inevitably became a game of "On one hand, on the other hand."
You play a tough guy named Frank Rixon. (Actually it's Francis, but how tough is that? It makes me think of that bike-stealing fat guy on PeeWee's Big Adventure.) You're an operative for the generically-named Intelligence Agency and your mission is to infiltrate the gargantuan A.X. Corporation and find out what slimy chief officer Jack Crizby is doing. See what I mean? The story is lazy, even resistant to narrative innovation, and that lack of creativity hamstrings what could've been a pretty solid shooter.
Worse yet, during the first third of the game I was convinced that the apathy of the writers had bled over to the art team and level designers. Weapons, environments and characters were all standard FPS fare. You have your pistol, shotgun, railgun, grenades; your henchmen, commandoes, jumpsuited workers cowering in fear; your corporate offices, air shafts, warehouses and utility tunnels; your dead enemies dropping health packs and ammo, and leaving important access cards lying randomly on storage room shelves.
On the other hand, in spite of the unambitious narrative and ho-hum starting gameplay, it's not all bad news. The game hits its stride after about the first third; in fact, I was surprised at the latter part's length and variety. Boss battles reflect the progression of the larger game; the first being a typically contrived and annoying multi-stage fight, the later ones being more complex confrontations that require cunning as well as fast reflexes. By game's end, you'll use equal parts wits and weaponry to fight your way to the extremely challenging final phase.
The difficulty of Exodus from the Earth ramps up logically; the first levels give you a feel for your weapons and the enemy AI, and on medium difficulty are just challenging enough. As you go along and environments become bigger and more complex, the game gets markedly harder and that could be a problem for some players. What's great is the development team knew that being shot from all sides panics some of us, so they made it possible for us to swap difficulty settings at any time. Jittery types be mindful; difficulty settings in this shooter consist mainly in the number of available health packs and ammo as opposed to fewer enemies or easier AI.
Although the developers seem mostly to like gamers, they must have been having a bad week when they threw in one of the worst possible FPS mechanics--jumping. No, I don't mean jumping to avoid being shot. I mean jumping on crates or boxes or ledges or rocks, when your entire body is represented by nothing more than a gun-toting hand on the screen. Trying to position and time a jump when you have no legs isn't fun and in this game there was an extensive collection, dare I say a veritable smorgasbord, of situations where this was necessary. Not only was it frustrating for the pace to be dragged down by a sudden jump-demanding obstacle, it was ridiculous. Imagine plowing through enemies like a character from a John Woo movie only to be stymied by a stack of boxes.
The unrealistically interactive environments are a headache in this game. In recent years, gamers want increasingly realistic worlds where everything's destructible and they can work through scenarios in a variety of ways. For performance reasons, games can't be like the real world but it helps when designers find believable ways to disguise the game's limitations. For instance, it makes sense if a bridge is blown out and you can't jump the gap. It doesn't make sense if a stack of cardboard boxes is impervious to a handful of grenades.
Not only is the environment unrealistically interactive, it's inconsistently so. Control panels look the same wherever you go, but sometimes you use them by targeting them and hitting the E key; sometimes you mouse click on the panels' interface. Sometimes barrels and boxes are destructible, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes objects can be picked up and moved, and sometimes they're glued to the floor. It's annoying when you find your path blocked by something you know in real life you could just crush or kick aside.
In spite of its many flaws, Exodus from the Earth has real entertainment value. It's unapologetically a linear first-person shooter, unembellished by RPG elements or half-baked, open-world gameplay. If you love to run-and-gun and think stealth isn't even a option, this game has your name written all over it. (Actually since crouch isn't a toggle and you have to hold the C key down while using the WASD keys to navigate, stealth really isn't an option.)
In addition to the chaotic, gun-centric parts of the game, you'll enjoy a good number of situational puzzles in a wide variety of interior and exterior locations that take actual thought to solve. And it's hard to get bored with the scenery because it's always changing. Good thing too, because even on the highest settings the graphics of the game are not spectacular. They're competently done but everything has the simplest of textures and effects.
Maybe we should be happy about the game's simple approach at graphics because at max spec the game would likely be unplayable. Upon install, the settings are at ultra-high which causes serious slow-down for machines significantly better than min spec, especially in areas with smoke, water or steam. Many PC gamers will probably have to crank the settings down to medium to avoid the deadly slide-show/twitch gaming combo. On the other hand, yeah, it's not the prettiest game out there but hey--when a crowd of goons are shooting at you, do you have time to watch the water sparkle?
So I've discussed how the overused storyline and the cut-rate graphics affect the game's quality but I've left the worst for last. The game was originally released in Russian and the localization is possibly the worst I have ever seen. Seriously, it's as if the dev team didn't have money for a translator and decided to have their receptionist put all the game's text through a Babelfish translator. This not only makes the uncompelling story totally unintelligible at times, it makes objectives confusing as well.
On the other hand, the awful localization may be the biggest element of inadvertent entertainment value in the game. I found myself laughing out loud at the totally weird loading screen text. For your enjoyment, an excerpt: "To get me out from my vacation and tell about the end of the world - that's all about my boss. I last time saved the world one and a half year ago, and as far as I remember, I didn't do it quite well. The cheap microchip saved the world! And now this Crizby, the A.X., and the sun which is eager to burn us."
The only thing funnier than reading this kind of dialog is hearing it. The characters are fairly well acted (aside from some weird long pauses between lines) but are prone to the same absurd dialect. If nothing else pulls you through the game, wanting to know what kind of crazy dialog you'll hear next probably will.
©2008-10-27, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved