	Gorky Zero: Beyond Honor
	Developer: Metropolis Publisher: JoWood Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
“Move like a butterfly/sting like a bee” it says here on the box for Gorky Zero: Beyond Honor. Didn’t Muhammed Ali say that? Wasn’t he arguably the greatest boxer of all time? Gorky Zero certainly ain’t the best game of all time. Hell, it isn’t even the best stealth-em-up of all time – nowhere near, in fact. I think it’s fair to say that most gamers get jaded with bandwagon-jumping and “of the moment” stuff in games very quickly. That being the case, we must all be as jaded as a lump of very large Jade (the mineral, not the minger from Big Brother) when it comes to stealth. Metal Gear Solid kicked it off all those years back, and Splinter Cell has taken it to the next level. A special mention must also go to the Thief games that have also been doing the whole stealth thang for an age. The Metal Gears and Splinter Cells lead the field in this area by quite some distance, but that doesn’t stop efforts like Gorky Zero and Mission: Impossible – Operation Surma trying (in vain) to ride on the coattails of their success. There is nothing, and I mean nothing original or inspiring about Gorky Zero; the big deal made about switching from 3rd person isometric to 1st person was done with Metal Gear Solid ages ago, and countless games ever since. Maybe I’m being too hard on this game, though. Judging from the back of the box, and its very basic list of features: “3 difficulty levels….unique and extremely user-friendly interface….”, and its Ł19.99 price point, it’s not even TRYING to be a Splinter Cell beater. Whether it likes it or not, Gorky Zero IS going to be compared with same-genre games that are quite simply in a different league – It’s unavoidable. The game has a predictably disposable story involving ex-Russian majors, brainwashing technologies, secret research bases….and zombies, all set up by quite a nice mission briefing scene at the beginning (featuring dust-motes in the projector’s beam). After some “virtual training” (hello again, Metal Gear Solid) involving a woman with the most stilted voice I’ve ever heard (was she supposed to be a robot? A talking computer? I just don’t know) talking you through it over your codec (hello again….), you’re dumped, via heli, into the outskirts of said base. It’s customary in most games to have a period of adjustment involving the controls, but I just never seemed to be able to map out the controls (and there aren’t many) in a way that enabled effortless stealth and subterfuge; instead of crouching I’d suddenly go into 1st person mode, or, instead of going into 1st person mode I’d start running – maybe this wasn’t the game’s fault, rather my ham-fisted attempts at button remapping, but there’s a sneaking (ho-ho) suspicion in my mind that this game was designed with a control pad in mind rather than a keyboard and mouse combo – or maybe this type of game is just better suited to consoles? Onto the gameplay and graphics. In a word, adequate, in another word, shite. They are a mixture of these two wonderful adjectives….I mean adverbs….whatever, they’re not too hot. The default third-person/isometric view is painfully restrictive; so much so that you have to constantly keep switching between 1st and 3rd person views in order to even have a clue what might be waiting for you around the next corner. Attacking your enemies in either view is a completely haphazard affair that usually involves you taking more lead in your body than giving it out. The fact that your enemies’ skins all seem to be made of Kevlar also doesn’t help matters – these guys take loads of bullets before they succumb to an awful pre-scripted death animation (Ragdoll? What’s that?) Another trait of the enemy is that weird and wonderful “sixth sense” to spot you in the most unlikely of circumstances – hiding in shadows will make precisely zero difference as to whether or not you’re spotted and subsequently pummelled with bullets. The environments (bar the obligatory exploding barrels) are almost 100% non-interactive. In an age of Havok™ physics, and games like Max Payne 2, Far Cry, Hell, even Metal Gear Solid 2, to have an environment that is there purely to steer you through a path with absolutely no interactivity on the way suddenly feels just soooo last century, darling. BAH! I could go on slating this game for another couple of hundred words, but it’s simply not worth it. I could tell you about how, when I changed the resolution all of the text on the menus just disappeared, leaving me randomly clicking the mouse all over the screen (and out of the screen area) in order to get something, ANYTHING to happen. I could tell you about a painful moment involving a guy who rescued you, but, for some unknown reason, decided to hide all of your stuff elsewhere so that you had to go looking for it, all stealthy like. But I won’t. Ł19.99 or not, there is just no place in 2004 for a game with so many ancient sensibilities and flaws. Awful. Boring. Unfair. Stilted. Cheap. Avoid.