The Specialists

Sometimes I break down and play a game I know I'm gonna like and hate simulteneously. This is one of them.

The Specialists is yet another Half Life mod which pits you in the shoes of a psuedo matrix ripoff. Essentially, the game plays online with slo-mo, many weapons, and other miscellaeous trademarks of the hit Wachowski brothers film and puts it into the Half Life engine.

This could be considered wierd, and it is. The Half Life 1 engine definately does not have the Source engine robustness or physics, so you have to automatically assume that this game has many bugs. Getting stuck in walls, flipping around, laying on the floor and getting stuck, and not being able to break breakable glass are many of the problems you find in this game. Of course, along with all the weapons and different player models, this game feels more like one big buggy beta than a real game, which basically goes for any Half Life mod.

There are two aspects to this game: The fight mode and the RP mode. The fight mode is essentially a mode that mimicks any action scene from any of the matrix movies, except less fun looking. Flipping around, slow motion bullets, and all the fun stuff is there, but the problem is it just doesnt feel right. The game runs fast, so deaths happen fast, and I rarely if ever see a "Good" TS player with better than a 1:1 kill:death ratio.

The RP mode is a little bit more detailed and deserves some more kudos. The game basically puts you in a virtual city with guns, shops, et al and lets you run around, collect money by working, buy guns, and basically kill people with said guns. Realistically, it becomes a problem, because typical Role Players won't like the running around action bit, and FPS lovers won't like the quietness. Really, it only serves a niche group, and it has no actual gaming value beyond being a "wow" factor for the Half Life engine.

The game's weapons deserve to be mentioned, even if slightly. The close range weapons like the katana and the knife are very well done, and the array of actual GUNS is amazing. From your basic stuff from Counter Strike to fun guns like the .454 Raging Bull, the game has it all. Naturally, to make it more fair for the katana users (And to make slow mo more valuable,) the guns kick like a bull given adrenaline. There really is no way to fix this, so everyone basically has the same "Oh s*** this is a pain" problem.

Overall, the game runs nicely. The ability to have an easily accessable third person view, the ability to do all sorts of cool tricks from the matrix, and all of the different RP servers definately make this game worth about an hour.

But only an hour.

1 star(s) out of 5

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