Not many good things come out of Russia. Sure, they gave us Vodka and Anna Kournikova, but the only game I’ve heard to come out of Russia involved loads of blocks and had the most annoyingly addictive tune on the face of the earth, ever. I was more than a little curious to see what Russian developers Burut CT could cook up when they did “WWII shooter with a twist” - Ubersoldier…
Let’s get one thing straight first-Burut really need to fire their English translator! As soon as the game loads up you’re slapped in the face with a proverbial wet trout of grammatical errors and downright silly voice acting; the first mission is set in a “psychopathic” hospital, which does seem a little harsh on the patients. The funniest moments have to be hearing Germans shout their scripted lines in pretty much any accent they can think of, from cocker-ney to crumpet Englishmen, as well as a wealth of American dialects. I think one or two might have actually attempted German accents, but that really isn’t what you listen for, not in a game about Nazis!
Now before you laugh too much you must remember that it is a serious game. We know this by the fact that the main character, Karl Stoltz, never shows any kind of emotion in either his face or voice acting. That and he’s a reincarnated Nazi soldier brought back to life by scientists, only to (wait for it) turn on his masters and seek bloody revenge! Oh, and he’s also got special powers too. You might wonder how someone can die, thus suffering irreparable brain damage and then be brought back from the dead, with special powers no less, but don’t worry, if anyone asks, Buddhists did it. Honestly. Here, look at some pretty graphics and forget all about it…
Admittedly, I was quite silenced by the graphics which look very pretty; characters all have lots of little detail and even the Nazi hordes are beautifully animated, dropping items of equipment when they die. Their helmets even satisfyingly pop ten feet into the air when you score a headshot! The environments are very dark and dank and create a very unsafe and foreboding environment, reminiscent of Wolfenstein. Unfortunately as soon as you try and shoot or even move with the detail on the highest setting the game sloooows right down… although it’s not too bad as even the medium settings are pretty nice and hold steady with everything but the craziest of firefights.
The gameplay in Ubersoldier is pretty old-school, with yourself being the veritable one-man army against a whole load of Germans. What keeps the gameplay interesting is the enemies’ unpredictable AI running throughout the levels. Most of the time they’ll either run blindly at you en-masse like an angry version of those crowds you see mobbing Boyzone, or they hide behind a box and throw between one and twenty grenades at you.
Being grenaded is a very frequent occurrence in Ubersoldier and if you don’t die from it, you’ll be thrown so far into the air you’ll be easy pickings for the Nazi sharpshooters. Now don’t mistake my last sentence as describing some kind of soldier variation - they’re all Nazi sharpshooters! Be it with a sniper rifle, MP40 or a humble housebrick every soldier you fight will be able to land shots on you easily while you fumble around with the inaccurate and thoroughly pointless “scope” system.
If you get bored of getting shot all the time you can use the totally random “special” power you gained from being ex-dead: The ability to stop bullets! Now some of you cynics might think “that’s just a crappy bullet time!” and some of you cynics might be right. The power only enables you to stop bullets for a short time within a shield and if you don’t have enough power the bullets keep coming at you after the shield goes down anyway! To me, a power isn’t all that special if it really only lets you run away without dying, and only works half the time!
Ubersoldier is a budget title, which would explain the sub-GCSE translation problems, hilariously amateurish voice acting, simple gameplay, completely silly storyline and annoying AI, but I had so much fun randomly blasting away at those pretty British Nazis I’d say it’s definitely worth a look for a few bob. It’s not like most of the full-price WWII FPSs have any originality anyway, and they’re not half as much fun!
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
