World War II Combat: Iwo Jima (Xbox)

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Despite that the enemies are entirely devoid of intelligence, they'll still end up killing you many, many times, because they'll usually have a numbers and positional advantage over you. This wouldn't be so difficult to manage if there was any way to replenish your health, but there isn't. There are no medikits, and it only takes a few shots to kill you. There is a checkpoint system in the game, so you don't have to start over at the beginning of a level when you die. But if you pass a checkpoint with low health, you can find yourself in an impossible situation because you can't backtrack but you might not have enough health to survive to the next checkpoint. The only way out is to either start the entire level over again or keep playing and dying until you've memorized the exact placement and behavior of each enemy--and hope the game's random hit detection works out in your favor. It's an extremely aggravating design, because the game becomes an extended and exasperating exercise in trial and error, and your success depends more on dumb luck than on any measure of skill.

If you're sick of dealing with the sloppy gameplay in the single-player campaign, you can play a multiplayer game online with up to 16 players. However, unless you can convince some poor sap to purchase another copy of the game, you're going to have a hard time finding anyone online to play against. We were unable to find anyone to play against with the Xbox version, and although there a handful of people playing the PC version there aren't nearly enough to have a full 16-player game. It's safe to assume that if there aren't any players online a few weeks after the game was released, there won't be a sudden explosion of interest in the game later on. You can play against bots, but the multiplayer gameplay is just as watered down and unpleasant as the single-player campaign. There are the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, as well as king-of-the-hill, capture-the-flag, and last-man-standing modes. None of them are the least bit interesting and certainly don't bring any worth to this game.

Visually, World War II Combat: Iwo Jima is a horrid mess of ugly textures, blocky character models, chunky animation, and severe clipping issues. The levels look so drab and full of unsightly hard edges that the short draw distance almost seems merciful. Every area is shrouded in thick fog that blocks out your view of anything more than a hundred yards away. Despite the very jagged, unnatural geometry of the terrain, nothing in the game is truly solid, since enemies often clip through doors and walls and will often clip through the ground or one another. There's very little detail to be found anywhere on Iwo Jima, to the extent that its inhabitants barely even have faces. On the PC, you can crank up the resolution, and on the Xbox you can play the game in 480p if you have a capable TV, but those options don't do anything to improve the look of the game. The sound is no more detailed and is mostly composed of repetitious, tinny gunfire and hollow explosions. There's an occasional, almost inaudible, mumbling from enemies, and the narration that sets up each level is so flat that it sounds synthesized. The music is generic and repetitive, as well, but it's easily the least offensive element of this game.

No matter how broke, desperate, or crazy about World War II you are, there's no reason to play this game. If you're looking for a cheap shooter, go to the store and grab any game off the shelf and you're practically guaranteed to have a better game than this one. Whatever you do, don't play World War II Combat: Iwo Jima.

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