Game Title: Without Warning
Publisher: CAPCOM
Platform: Xbox, PS2
Genre: Third Person Action
ESRB Rating: Mature (Language, Graphic Violence)
Grade: A-

The story line is that the US is under terrorist threat- especially large scale chemical plants. Most facilities are secure, but a terrorist group has taken control of the Peterson-Daniels chemical plant 4 miles from the center of a city. They are threatening to blow up the plant and cause an ecological disaster. They also have taken many plant workers hostage, and set up a ton of traps and a sophisticated security perimeter. The government can’t risk a direct assault, so they’ve left it up to the six members of a Special Ops squad to go in, eliminate the threat and save the hostages.

In this game, you get to play all 6 of the special characters, but you don’t get to choose the order of the missions. Sometimes you’re playing missions that stall because of some other task that has to be completed, and it switches to another member of the party. It’s a cool twist that allows you to see situations from different perspectives.

The controls were easy to learn, the only place that I got a little confused was from moving from one character to another – remembering which buttons to use with which character’s weapons and skills. By a third of the way through the game, it was all good though.

The Cast:

• Captain Kyle Rivers. His special skills are automatic rifle (burst fire and sniper scope) and thrown grenades.
• Sergeant Jack Hooper. He wields a fully automatic rifle, and thrown grenades.
• Sergeant Ed Reagan kicks some serious terrorist ass with a combat shotgun with a mounted grenade launcher.
• Tanya Shaw is a civilian typist that works at the plant (not bad looking either), and has the security password to open lots of the secured doors. She’s mean with her pepper spray and fire extinguisher.
• Dave Wilson is a semi-automatic pistol toting security guard with a baldhead and cool sunglasses. He’s pretty accurate at picking off terrorists with his pistol.
• Ben Harrison is a news cameraman, and his primary tools are a pistol and video camera.

The different characters vary in the way they respond, and the tools that they have. This isn’t a mindless first-person shooter game; you actually have to think about who you’re playing with, the weapons (and range) that they have, and their special skills.

I thoroughly enjoyed Capcom’s Without Warning. The story line is solid and game kept my attention nicely. My only problem is that there are some cinematic scenes that can’t be advanced through. I’m a little ADD, so it was frustrating for me not to be able to skip some of it… especially stuff I’d already seen/read. The puzzles are very cool, but they aren’t frustrating – the game moves along at a good pace.

This game is worth playing, and provides a cool alternative to the wide array of FPS games on the market today.