The one unique aspect of Owl's gameplay sequences involve something of a free-fall combat mechanic. Essentially, before every single one of his missions, Owl has to drop from a stealth bomber, free-falling for a few thousand feet and then parachuting the rest of the way. We love this idea, but it's so terribly underdeveloped. Essentially, you're saddled with an arbitrary time limit during every drop, and all you do while you're dropping is occasionally spin around to shoot other parachuting bad guys and periodic missiles, all while holding down the speed-drop button to gain a little extra movement boost. It's never exactly explained why only Owl has to do this--especially when Raptor has no problem just kicking the door down of whatever area he has to clear out--and the fact that it's so devoid of any enjoyable aspects makes us think this concept was some kind of last-minute addition to the game that didn't really have much thinking behind it.
Both the Xbox and PC versions of the game also have their own unique quirks that make them equally problematic for different reasons. The Xbox version generally controls worse than the PC one, mainly because the right thumbstick control of the aiming reticle is painfully slow, making it way too hard to line up a proper shot. And before you even ask, no, you can't change the speed of the reticle movement. It also doesn't help that the auto-lock targeting, which can be toggled, just doesn't seem to work at all. While that might have made the PC version the clear-cut winner in any other situation, the PC version of Nemesis Strike is dragged down for different reasons, not the least of which is the game's relative instability. The game will always crash when you quit out of it, meaning you'll have to deal with the "this program is not responding" message every time you want to leave the game. Nemesis Strike will also occasionally crash in-game for no particularly understandable reason. And this is made more frustrating by the game's lousy save system, which only saves at the very end of a level. None of the restart checkpoints carry over if you quit out of the game.
Meet Stealth Owl. He really, really wishes he was Sam Fisher. But he's not. Not by a long shot.
Neither the Xbox nor the PC version of Nemesis Strike looks good at all. While both versions generally run at a solid 60 frames per second, it would be hard for them not to with how low-res and ugly everything in the game is. The character models are blocky, animate stiffly, and take up way too much of the screen for their own good. All the environments feature the same bland, colorless look, and apart from exploding oil drums, nothing's especially interactive. Camera movement is a huge pain, as you only get limited movement, and what you can actually do is barely useful at all. The game's audio is equally uninspired, with lots of gunshots that sound recycled from other games, overly subdued militarily-themed electronic beats that are more irritating than anything else, and some really ham-fisted voice acting. Most of the side characters are just stiff and uninteresting in their deliveries, while the main characters are way over-the-top. Raptor's the worst, overly enunciating every word he's given while trying to eke out as much toughness as he can. Ultimately, he just kind of comes across as creepy as he yells amazing things like "Full Throttle!" without even a hint of irony.
Nemesis Strike features a reasonably lengthy single-player adventure, but it offers no multiplayer of any kind to bring you back to the game once you're done with it. And, for that matter, length is about the only thing the single-player mode has going for it to begin with, since it certainly isn't much fun. If the developers at Asobo Studio had found a way to massage the wildly different elements that make up this game into something more cohesive, then Nemesis Strike might have been something worthwhile. As it is, it's just a clunky, uneven, ugly mess of an action adventure game that's devoid of any real redeeming qualities. Regardless of its cheap price tag, it isn't worth your time.
