Review
Release Date: 10.21.2002
Platform:
PC - WindowsDeveloper:
4x StudioPublisher:
DreamCatcher Interactive, Inc.Reviewed by
Ryan Keough on 6.11.2003
The year is 1964, and World War I rages on.
No armistice was signed November 11, 1918, and Germany remains a horrific battlefield. The fighting occurs between the Allies, but not against Germany. The Bolshevik Revolution was suppressed by a one Baron Nikolai Aleksandrovitch Ugenberg, and a new Russo-Mongolian empire looms over all of Eurasia. In order to finance the continuous fighting, the global economy has been turned upside down and inside out. As a result, all non-military investments were frozen. War itself is the only investment, and technology the only stock. With growing fears that the empire is nearing completion of an atom bomb, the Allies desperately search for a means to a favorable ceasefire.
After that sinks in, you understand the basic, yet undeniably cool, premise behind the First Person Shooter, Iron Storm. You assume the role of Lieutenant James Anderson, elite soldier of the Allied forces. Your mission is to sneak behind enemy lines, find Baron Ugenberg, and ‘arrange’ for a more favorable treaty… As a veritable one man army, you have to trek across Central Germany on a secret mission that will determine the fate of the war. Succeed, and you become a living hero and savior of Western civilization. Fail, and well, let’s hope that Russian lessons aren’t too expensive.
Even before I installed the game, I was blown away by everything included in the packaging. DreamCatcher really went above and beyond the call of duty here, folks. Aside from the instruction manual, both a four page newspaper insert and a secret military communiqué fell out of the box onto my lap. The newspaper comes from the time that the game takes place, and reading it really gives you a rich feel for the setting of Iron Storm. Ranging from news, to sports and even advertisements, I spent a good hour simply reading everything offered. The other tidbit was a message from command to Lt. Anderson relaying the orders for his mission. These were incredibly cool, and really set a precedent that other publishers should consider following.
After a relatively uneventful installation, I setup my controls and jumped into level 1…and died. More than once. I need to emphasize that Iron Storm is not a game for the inexperienced; even on its lower difficulties this game is very difficult. That said, I really enjoy games that don’t pamper you for levels and levels until the point where you’ve finally learned to play on your own and the game is over. You are thrown into the bombardment of your base and you have to run out to the trenches and stop the advance. Snipers pepper the area and unlike your average villains, they shoot just as well as you do, if not better. Shock troops have a tendency to run from you, only to bring back five or six more of their comrades. And grenade dogs…I swear I’ve lost sleep over them. They give me nightmares, and yes they are exactly what they sound like: packs of Dobermans strapped with high explosives. They’re fast, they’re mean, and they’re hard as hell to shoot. Enjoy.
Even though it is still WWI, invention never stops, so your weaponry evolves much like the progression through WWII, Korea and Vietnam. No space age laser guns can be found, and thankfully, since this adventure in historical fiction is pretty realistic. You can carry around anything from your basic pistols, to machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and many differing types of grenades. Something I didn’t notice until after I switched to third person view is that you can actually see every gun that Anderson carries logistically attached to his body in some way. The weapon models add a lot to the visual aspect of Iron Storm; they look real both on the ground and when attached to your person. That being said, in areas where stealth is an issue and enemies are more likely to see you from afar with a giant rifle attached to your back than if you’re carrying a couple pistols and a knife. You can only carry one big weapon at a time for that reason; unlike some other games, your character doesn’t have a magic invisible inventory.
Character and weapon models are pretty well done, although a bit blocky. Their textures, however, really fell short in a game where so much exceeded the norm. Faces and uniforms had no thought put into them. All the enemies are pretty much cut and pastes of each other, as are the incredibly rare Allied soldiers. At least the levels were textured very well, even though the playable parts were pretty linear throughout the game. Especially in the third level, which I enjoyed the most, you fight in an old German town that really looks like it has suffered through a half century of war. Lighting also plays a major effect whenever you use a scope, because aiming in the direction of the sun will nearly blind you. That adds another element of realism and strategy to combat that makes you think just that much more before engage the enemy. The Phoenix 3D Engine does a good job with the game; I did not experience any slowdowns throughout playing. I did experience one crash to desktop for graphical card issues, which is interesting because the box specifically lists all GeForce cards as compatible. For those interested, I currently use a 128MB GeForce4 Ti card.
For the most part, the sound in Iron Storm is great. I only had any issues with gunfire sometimes sounding a lot closer or a bit out of place than it should. Sometimes this would mean life or death as I’m frantically running around a trench trying to find the soldier that is picking me off, only to realize that he is above me firing downwards. On the plus side, this is war and war isn’t exactly a quiet conversation over tea. From the opening moments of the first level you have to scramble to turn down your speakers because the battles are appropriately very loud. I felt that everything was very chaotic in that assault, as it should be. If you can get around some of the small issues here and focus on the major successes, then I think that most people can enjoy a fun and impressive aural experience.
With such a detailed single player mode, I eagerly tried out the multiplayer options available. Reluctantly I downloaded GameSpy, since I couldn’t find any games through the in-game multiplayer option. After attempting several Capture the Flag and Death match games, I never found one that had low latency. I have a pretty good connection and I never found a game that I didn’t have many instances of lag death. This mode was probably more of an afterthought by the developers, and there isn’t any real redeeming value to playing it online. That should not take away by any means that Iron Storm is an excellent and challenging single player game. It boasts an excellent and intriguing story, something that this genre usually ignores. (Bring on the aliens/nazis/dinosaurs…because…blooooood!) Not that there is anything wrong with that; many times story gets in the way of the point to a game. Not in this case, because the game –is- a story. And despite the difficulty getting there, I’m sure you’ll want to see it through to the end.
