Soldner: Secret Wars Review

As your character runs across the map, it seems that he is moving in slow motion. While this may accurately model how a man laden with 50 pounds of equipment would move in the real world, it is frustrating and makes moving from one side of the map to another while on foot a choir. There is a sprint command but you cannot use it for long as it tires your merc out and seriously affects your aim. Also, if while you are running you need to jump over an obstacle, your mercenary comes to a complete stop upon landing. Each and every time he jumps. Even if he is running across clear ground! I can only assume this was done to prevent players from using jumping to make themselves harder to hit but again, it is annoying.

Err... Sarge, there's something wrong with the chopper!

Two tanks ganging up on trees.

Control of helicopters is not much better. I found the controls of any of the aircraft to be touchy and difficult to pilot. Most often, I find myself spinning out of control if I tried to fire the rockets on my attack helicopter or crashing into the ground. A few times, I descended too rapidly and bounced off of the trees before rolling over and then exploding. The only cool thing I have found so far with aircraft is the ability to fly high over enemy territory and then bailing out and parachuting down to the ground. I am sure that like in other games, aircraft can lend a huge advantage in taking control of the map; the frustration experienced in piloting leaves with me little desire to invest my mercs' money to buy one.

AI in the single player missions is iffy and really only serves as a training ground for you to hone your skills with many vehicles. However, it is hard to keep your interest in such an environment and soon you find yourself wanting to jump online in order to keep things interesting. Logging online to get a list of servers went smooth enough for me and indeed, there were larger number of servers running, but I found only 25 to 30 at most that had a player population over 5 or more players. Most had no players at all.

Finally, the game suffers from extremely long pauses while it loads or exits. I have a system that should be able to handle just about any game that is available right now, however my P4 3 GHz with Hyper Threading, a gig of high speed Kingston RAM, Serial ATA hard drive with 8 meg cache and ATI 9800 Pro chugged as it labored to load the game. Likewise, when I exited, to the game's cries of "SOLDNER!' I found my system still chugged for a good 30 seconds AFTER I was returned to my desktop.

Everything I saw about Soldner before it was released seemed to indicate a game that had great potential: A large arsenal of real world vehicles and weaponry to be used to counter the assault of a human controlled enemy. However, the final product, even with the most recent patch, is a mixed bag at best. Touchy controls, long load times, few players online and a host of other small game play annoyances all point to a product that may end up relegated to the long list of 'me too' titles and destined to be forgotten. It is possible that through patching and tweaking or perhaps from an extensive Mod from the gaming community, the game may regain some of the luster that was promised before the game shipped. However, the pending (?) releases of Doom 3, Half Life 2 and The Source Engine version of Counter Strike pose serious competition for Soldner to overcome and become a gaming milestone. However, as things stand right now, chances for a comeback look slim. Very, very slim.