kill.switch
Namco's duck-and-cover-heavy shooter manages some innovation and a decent story, but can the house that Dead to Rights built learn from their rookie mistakes?
Published: November 18, 2003
Enhanced soldiers are all the rage these days. It seems it's not enough anymore for a grunt's five o'clock shadow and harsh language to be their biggest weapons, no, it takes nanomachines and neural implants to get the job done in times like these. Granted, this makes for a more entertaining game, but every once in a while I wish for the good ol' days when a crew cut and biceps on a lead character were the universal sign for International Badass.
Nothing about kill.switch will fulfill those wishes, but the replacement seems to fill the role admirably, especially when there's so much fun to be had unloading a couple tons of lead over the course of a few hours. You play the role of Bishop, a unimonikered operative with the unfortunate ability to have anyone with the right equipment jack directly into your brain and control you like a puppet. Bishop, aside from having a great name (hey, I couldn't resist), boasts a Halo-esque heath meter that takes damage, but has limited repair abilities. You can take a series of shots, find cover and have a good portion of the depleted heath come back with a little time. You'll still take damage, of course, but the full brunt of the attack is lessened if you can keep from inhaling an entire clip and just catch the occasional stray shot. Thanks to this, you're often dropped right into the thick of intense firefights at the whim of whomever happens to be controlling you at the time.
This of course means while you the player have control over Bishop, your objectives are entirely set by unseen puppet masters. Through the course of 15 or so levels across five different worldwide locales, more and more of Bishop's back story is revealed and slowly he begins to regain control. There are certain elements of characters that never really get told, unfortunately, so motivation in some ways is a bit limited and the overall storyline never really builds into anything that sticks with you. It's unfortunate, really because a game like this that tries harder than most to insert a meaningful storyline into the events never really finds legs, and thus feels quite a bit shallower than it could have been..
At the heart of kill.switch's gameplay, however is action, and lots of it. A dynamic cover system has been implemented on nearly every surface, and you'll need it, since things play out much like a 3rd person Time Crisis, meaning that if you don't plan your shots ahead of time you'll quickly find yourself with a whole lot more lead in your diet. What's interesting is how well done the whole cover system is; if even a bit of your body is exposed, it's fair game for well-placed shots, and as I found out early in the game, even an exposed toe can be hit by a sharp enough enemy shooter. Blindfiring (read: sticking your gun out an pulling the trigger without exposing yourself), while costly when it comes to ammo (though another clip is almost always just a few feet away), is a fantastic way to keep advancing soldiers at bay.
Those same soldiers are kill.switch's greatest asset, however, since the AI driving them is one of the main reasons why the game is so fun. Enemy units will work in squads, laying down suppressive fire while teammates constantly try to outflank you, tossing grenades to flush you out, and generally using the same techniques as the ones you have at your disposal to do you in. It's quite impressive to see a soldier dive away from a grenade and take cover, then fire off a couple blasts blindly, then wait for a teammate to lay down some covering fire and slowly work their way towards you. While the routines are simplistic, it's easily some of the best cooperative enemy AI seen in a video game.
Both the AI and cover system were obvious focal points during the development process, because with a few exceptions, the layout of each level and the way enemies use the terrain is near flawless. The only real downside to the core gameplay is the fact that it's so limited. kill.switch is an incredibly short game, and can be easily beaten in a single sitting if you have a few hours to spare. It's a bit tougher on the harder difficulty level, but even then the overall experience is woefully underwhelming once you've beaten the game once.
Namco, like so many developers these days, opted to use RenderWare as the base for the engine, and as such there's plenty to ooh and ahh over, though the occasional glitch keeps things from looking completely polished. Real-time soft shadows and nifty lighting effects keep things interesting and dynamic enough (knowing a soldier was coming by seeing his elongated shadow creep across the floor is quite cool), and the overall texture detail – particularly in the temple ruins later in the game – all help give the game plenty of visual flair. While they're sparse, the CG sequences – particularly the one where Bishop goes buck wild in a simulation – are quite nice.
That's not to say things are flawless; quite the contrary, in fact. Though the occurrences are rare, the game can sometimes drop quite a few frames, and usually during a heated firefight. The animations overall are nicely detailed (including location-specific body damage and animations that reflect that, so hitting an enemy in the foot will have them hopping on the other while holding the injured part), but Bishop's running animation is laughably stiff and unnatural. A bit more tweaking could have gone a long way towards making things feel more polished. A few instances of enemies popping from one animation to the next also brought down the overall feel of things though never to the point where it adversely affecting the experience. It's just those smaller things that really help pull the finished product together.
Aurally, things show nearly the same level of polish as the graphics. While the voice acting is decent, the dialogue is painfully bad, culling far too many clichés and canned lines for its own good. Enemy responses are usually limited to screams of pain and the occasional comment if you eavesdrop, but more often than not the endless cries of "flush him out!" get tiring quickly. Luckily, both the music -- an uptempo mix of driving breakbeat-inspired percussive licks and overlaying simplistic loops the move things along nicely – and the sound effects – replete with thick, heavy-sounding gunfire and explosions – are fantastic to listen to. The sounds of ricocheting bullets or near misses add quite a bit of tension to the heavier firefights, and had the game been lacking on the audio front, the overall experience wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.
kill.switch is a good game that suffers from being just a bit too rough around the edges and too short overall to be a must-buy. It is however a definite rental and for anyone looking for a nice, short but visceral experience, there's enough here to keep you from suffering from buyer's remorse for any extended amount of time. By all means, though, give kill.switch a try. The wafer-thin storyline and occasional lame dialogue bits aside, there's plenty here to love and hopefully the follow-up will have a little more substance.
Nothing about kill.switch will fulfill those wishes, but the replacement seems to fill the role admirably, especially when there's so much fun to be had unloading a couple tons of lead over the course of a few hours. You play the role of Bishop, a unimonikered operative with the unfortunate ability to have anyone with the right equipment jack directly into your brain and control you like a puppet. Bishop, aside from having a great name (hey, I couldn't resist), boasts a Halo-esque heath meter that takes damage, but has limited repair abilities. You can take a series of shots, find cover and have a good portion of the depleted heath come back with a little time. You'll still take damage, of course, but the full brunt of the attack is lessened if you can keep from inhaling an entire clip and just catch the occasional stray shot. Thanks to this, you're often dropped right into the thick of intense firefights at the whim of whomever happens to be controlling you at the time.
This of course means while you the player have control over Bishop, your objectives are entirely set by unseen puppet masters. Through the course of 15 or so levels across five different worldwide locales, more and more of Bishop's back story is revealed and slowly he begins to regain control. There are certain elements of characters that never really get told, unfortunately, so motivation in some ways is a bit limited and the overall storyline never really builds into anything that sticks with you. It's unfortunate, really because a game like this that tries harder than most to insert a meaningful storyline into the events never really finds legs, and thus feels quite a bit shallower than it could have been..
At the heart of kill.switch's gameplay, however is action, and lots of it. A dynamic cover system has been implemented on nearly every surface, and you'll need it, since things play out much like a 3rd person Time Crisis, meaning that if you don't plan your shots ahead of time you'll quickly find yourself with a whole lot more lead in your diet. What's interesting is how well done the whole cover system is; if even a bit of your body is exposed, it's fair game for well-placed shots, and as I found out early in the game, even an exposed toe can be hit by a sharp enough enemy shooter. Blindfiring (read: sticking your gun out an pulling the trigger without exposing yourself), while costly when it comes to ammo (though another clip is almost always just a few feet away), is a fantastic way to keep advancing soldiers at bay.
Those same soldiers are kill.switch's greatest asset, however, since the AI driving them is one of the main reasons why the game is so fun. Enemy units will work in squads, laying down suppressive fire while teammates constantly try to outflank you, tossing grenades to flush you out, and generally using the same techniques as the ones you have at your disposal to do you in. It's quite impressive to see a soldier dive away from a grenade and take cover, then fire off a couple blasts blindly, then wait for a teammate to lay down some covering fire and slowly work their way towards you. While the routines are simplistic, it's easily some of the best cooperative enemy AI seen in a video game.
Both the AI and cover system were obvious focal points during the development process, because with a few exceptions, the layout of each level and the way enemies use the terrain is near flawless. The only real downside to the core gameplay is the fact that it's so limited. kill.switch is an incredibly short game, and can be easily beaten in a single sitting if you have a few hours to spare. It's a bit tougher on the harder difficulty level, but even then the overall experience is woefully underwhelming once you've beaten the game once.
Namco, like so many developers these days, opted to use RenderWare as the base for the engine, and as such there's plenty to ooh and ahh over, though the occasional glitch keeps things from looking completely polished. Real-time soft shadows and nifty lighting effects keep things interesting and dynamic enough (knowing a soldier was coming by seeing his elongated shadow creep across the floor is quite cool), and the overall texture detail – particularly in the temple ruins later in the game – all help give the game plenty of visual flair. While they're sparse, the CG sequences – particularly the one where Bishop goes buck wild in a simulation – are quite nice.
That's not to say things are flawless; quite the contrary, in fact. Though the occurrences are rare, the game can sometimes drop quite a few frames, and usually during a heated firefight. The animations overall are nicely detailed (including location-specific body damage and animations that reflect that, so hitting an enemy in the foot will have them hopping on the other while holding the injured part), but Bishop's running animation is laughably stiff and unnatural. A bit more tweaking could have gone a long way towards making things feel more polished. A few instances of enemies popping from one animation to the next also brought down the overall feel of things though never to the point where it adversely affecting the experience. It's just those smaller things that really help pull the finished product together.
Aurally, things show nearly the same level of polish as the graphics. While the voice acting is decent, the dialogue is painfully bad, culling far too many clichés and canned lines for its own good. Enemy responses are usually limited to screams of pain and the occasional comment if you eavesdrop, but more often than not the endless cries of "flush him out!" get tiring quickly. Luckily, both the music -- an uptempo mix of driving breakbeat-inspired percussive licks and overlaying simplistic loops the move things along nicely – and the sound effects – replete with thick, heavy-sounding gunfire and explosions – are fantastic to listen to. The sounds of ricocheting bullets or near misses add quite a bit of tension to the heavier firefights, and had the game been lacking on the audio front, the overall experience wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.
kill.switch is a good game that suffers from being just a bit too rough around the edges and too short overall to be a must-buy. It is however a definite rental and for anyone looking for a nice, short but visceral experience, there's enough here to keep you from suffering from buyer's remorse for any extended amount of time. By all means, though, give kill.switch a try. The wafer-thin storyline and occasional lame dialogue bits aside, there's plenty here to love and hopefully the follow-up will have a little more substance.
