In SAS, you're asked to become one of a group of three special ops fighters sent on a mid-1990s mission to uncover a pair of recently reunited master criminals who are most assuredly bent on creating as much mayhem as possible. We won't get too deep into the storyline, though we can say the game is rife with cutscenes and informative verbal narratives. The real shock, considering SAS's foreign origin and low price point, is just how credible that dialogue is. Even when we knew we needn't listen to every last word, we stuck around anyway simply for the drama, the comedy, and the profanity.
Following the introduction, you're transported, along with your two partners, to the scene of a prison riot that surely has connections to the dudes you've been assigned to eliminate. It is here that you'll learn the basics of the game, a process that's substantially simplified through a generous helping of text tips. Though not particularly complicated when compared to some games of this ilk, SAS does require that you become as least moderately familiar with certain generalities and gain some proficiency with a dozen or so frequently accessed keyboard commands. Maneuvers such as crouching and jumping and peering around corners are necessities rather than options, and you'll also need to keep track of a small inventory, use items such as flashlights and night vision goggles, and switch quickly between weapons.
In SAS, you shoot first and ask questions later, and virtually everything and everyone is a target. The game won't allow you to inadvertently blast a hostage or anyone you've been asked to rescue, nor will it let you (or anyone else, for that matter) kill either of your buddies. That's right – your compatriots are invincible.
And perhaps that's why they behave as curiously as they do. Most often they're aggressive and impressively intelligent – moving about with the greatest of stealth and fearlessly taking the lead when entering a new room or area. Yet if they behaved that way all the time – smart, aggressive, and invincible – this wouldn't be much of a game, would it? Your peers would handle everything, while you'd just sit back and relax. So…the developer compensated. Rather than always being the first to enter the fray, they'll sometimes goof off for a bit. Rather than being perfect marksmen, they'll sometimes pound away with their guns, missing the target every time.
Whether that's a serious problem depends on your perspective. Veterans will undoubtedly mock it, and rightly so. Rookies, however, will grow accustomed to the quirks and soon realize where it will compensate and where it won't. It should also be remembered that if the developer had opted for killable teammates, it also would have been compelled to introduce intra-team communication. And all of that would have made SAS far more hardcore and far deeper than it is.
As it is, the game works your reflexes and quick response faculties more than it does your organizational and deep thought processes. Sometimes, you'll walk into a given area and perform wholesale destruction on everyone in it. Other times, you'll be compelled to crouch and take refuge behind an overturned table or oil drum or gun box, raising your head occasionally to take a calculated shot at the enemy. You'll feel the hazy, slo-mo special effects of stun grenades and you'll wince when you take a direct hit and are forced hear the sound of your own heartbeat overriding everything else.
Thankfully, City Interactive didn't opt for the old school "must find key for locked door" routine. Yes, you are required, every so often, to somehow barge your way through doors that don't immediately open, but the process is sensible (locate the electronic switch, for example) and never annoying. Nor are health kits a part of the equation. Instead, you will suffer and slowly recover. Or, if you take one too many hits, you will suffer and die. You'll then restart from your last saved game location or from the most recent checkpoint – of which there are many.
Though not so intelligent that they'll chase you down a hallway and through nooks and crannies until they find you, the game's enemies do exhibit some semblance of human thought. They'll jump off a ledge, for example, in order to get a better shot at you. They'll knowingly move behind a lamp post or some other bit of scenery just to reduce their own chances of being hit, and they will react to gunfire from an unseen source. That said, we have on several occasions strolled right up to a bad guy who happened to have his back turned to us, and popped him from point blank range. Perhaps he was hard of hearing?
In SAS, shooting is a hoot. You'll carry four weapons with you at a time – not including grenades – most of which are of the powerful semi-automatic or fully automatic variety. Switching between weapons is quick and painless, though reloading is, realistically, more time consuming. Indeed, the animations that accompany a reload are way cool in themselves.
Each weapon is unique. Some will kick you back like you're a little girl, while others will remain trained on the target even after they're fired. Some feature long-range scopes that leave no doubt you'll get the kill, while others are obviously intended for short range use. One of the weapons can even be modified, on the fly, to morph from short to long range. One thing is sure – the game encourages the use of the scope on virtually any target more than, say, forty feel away. Every gun features some form of scope or zoom, and they're all fun to use.
The level of gore is quite high. There's no dismemberment, but the vast quantity of blood leaking out of some of these guys is plainly displayed for everyone to see. There is an option to disengage said gore, but who'd want to?
When you take into account the game's budget price, its environments are quite spectacular in both their portrayal and their variety. We began in the recesses of a dank prison, moved to the hoity-toity confines of a prominent business district, then found ourselves traipsing through an Arctic snowstorm. The visual detail is strong throughout – right on down to used soda cans, pencils, binders, and various bric-a-brac – and virtually everything reacts to gunfire. The lighting is great from start to finish.
However, SAS is not a long game by any stretch of the imagination. For starters – and for the reasons outlined earlier – it will be considered by many as simply too easy. Worse still, there simply aren't enough levels. Any shooter veteran will have played his way right through the entire thing within his or her first day at the controls. At that point, said veteran might want to go online for a deathmatch, team deathmatch, or a quick game of capture the flag. And he can – though our experience indicates it may be more difficult finding opponents than actually playing them. At least the online component runs smoothly.