'Special Forces: Team X’ XBLA Review

TreeMunky Tue Feb 19, 2013 7:36 pm

Developed by Zombie Studios

Published by Atari/MicroProse

Price: 1200 MS Points

‘Special Forces: Team X’ is an on-line only third person team centric shooter brought to you by Zombie Studios, the folks behind Blacklight. Customizable warfare against ‘politically acceptable’ enemies has arrived on XBLA.

An interesting take on the genre Special Forces: Team X doesn’t look or play like your average shooter. Born to a genre of overly serious military shooters, the launch video showcases a manic third person shooter that looks like the bastard offspring between GoW and Borderlands. Set in a not too distant future where urban warfare is dealt with by Chuck Norris clones and an endless supply of reckless (albeit stupid) attack dogs.

Chuck Norris or not, you’re a killing machine with a truck load of customization to take on the bad guys. These custom options let you do all manner of good things to your spec-ops persona ranging from new character skins, weapons and attachments and perks. These are tied into a levelling system with experience points given at the end of each match. You have the option to build two loadouts for selection before spawning into a match and when you inevitably die. Nicely laid out in the menus it is not too difficult to kit yourself out, however when you open up new items it was a pain to work out what you had been given.

Special Forces: Team X’ XBLA Review Teamxh10

Explosive finger pointing available at lvl 22

Level design is where Special Forces: Team X takes a different turn to the norm. Technically the game only has one level, what sets it aside is each match environ is made up of three different zones that are voted on prior to each match. This is a great idea with the potential to generate many different match layouts (potential for DLC). However these industrial zones are a little unremarkable, imagine a shipyard that looks like a construction site, a construction site that looks like a warehouse and a warehouse that looks like a shipyard, these just aren’t interesting enough. If it wasn’t for the cell-shading artwork the levels would look a lot more uninteresting than they are.

Looks aside this otherwise smart level builder does compound an issue on gameplay once you make it into a match; the randomness in map generation makes it difficult to exploit one of the core mechanics of the game. Working together in the level environments awards a ‘wolf pack’ perk increasing accuracy and damaged for a team that works together. Regrettably, without players knowing what the generated level is going to look like, it becomes difficult to make use of these combined environments in an enjoyable way. Most of the games I played without GSA comrades inevitably ended up with players disbursing across the map like headless chickens. Whilst the game relies on a multiplayer experience a short tutorial with bots to explain game mechanics would have been a welcome addition. This is only a moot point and is something you inevitably pickup within a few games.

Special Forces: Team X’ XBLA Review Sftx-210

Build it and they will come

Special Forces: Team X comes stocked with five competitive game modes; Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag both golden oldies, Hot Zone a GoW King of the Hill mode, Control Point, similar to CoD headquarters and High Value Target, a leader based affair where you scores more points as the HVT whilst trying to stay alive for as long as possible (by far my favourite game type). For the whole gameplay is similar to Gears of War, with a very basic cover system that was very unpredictable and erratic in behaviour for me, sometimes working sometimes not. I found breaking from one cover to move into another a pain; one button swopping really should be the norm? Matchmaking works well and I had no issues getting into any matches, however I did notice in a couple of matches where people were leaving teams were not being balanced out. Team identification can be difficult in the heat of battle (especially in games with four teams) and I found myself more than once running around with a player from the opposing team before realising my mistake. Whilst amusing it something that could have been avoided with better identification of teams.

Special Forces: Team X’ XBLA Review Teamx10

Who cares about minor grumbles 'Freaking chainsaw kills man'

On the whole I enjoyed playing Special Forces: Team X and have no doubt I will go back and play more of it in the future. Whilst there are some technical problems within the gameplay as a whole the game has a solid core with interesting concepts, new map environments and patches could easily fix the minor issues making for a game with the potential to stick around rather than go the way of the normal XBLA on-line shooter.

Achievements weigh in at 200GS, the majority of these will be accomplished with a couple of good gaming sessions. One of the cheevos is recorded as glitched due to incorrect career tracking.

Is it worth 1200M$P? You'll get as much enjoyment out of this game as you put into it. If you like this kind of game you probably already own it, if you’re on the fence I wouldn’t wait for DOTW as XBLA on-line shooters don’t tend to have long shelf lives I’m hopeful this one does and if you don’t like this genre then I would just move along there is nothing here for you.

Tenlo Tue Feb 19, 2013 7:41 pm

Good review and I agree on many of the points. It is definitely more enjoyable with friends and once you start playing it has that just one more go feel, but the difficulty is choosing to play it when there are so many other games to play. I do hope this maintains a reasonable player base and I've heard the level reset glitch is fixed now or soon to be fixed!

**KENT HAMMER** Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:22 pm

Its nice to see explosive fingering making a comeback, I used to try and do it alot as a teen Wink

Waggly Bean Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:59 pm

Nice review, but only 200G? Surprising that all XBLA games aren't launching with 400G by now.

Think I'll stick to Counter Strike for the time being if I want a multiplayer XBLA fix. Wink

Tenlo Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:08 pm

If it's 200GS it usually means the achievements were designed quite awhile back before the new rules were implemented. It also suggests that Special Forces must have been delayed some time in the past quite severely

Waggly Bean Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:17 pm

Makes sense I suppose. They could've just doubled the gamerscore for each of the achievements to get 400G, which I'm sure some of the recent(ish) 12 achievement games have done. Makes you wonder if they were too far past that point in production to not do that. Perhaps the game has been completely finished for a while, but just the launch itself massively delayed.

TreeMunky Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:52 pm

KENT HAMMER wrote:Its nice to see explosive fingering making a comeback, I used to try and do it alot as a teen

...and this is what you take from the review. You're the best boss.

Guest Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:25 pm

I would also point out some problems I notice with this game. It's one of those game's where the people who have ranked up unlock the better weapons such as the famas in the high 30 somethings can completely dominate games. It also has noticeable host advantage which plagued gears 2. Still a decent game for a tenner though I suppose.

Colne Crusader Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:43 pm

Nice review Mr Tree!!! You deciduous character you!! Very Happy

Guest Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:30 am

Nice one matey

Quality review

look forward to hooking up for a game or 2

Sh00t3rmcgavin2 Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:53 pm

Nice work mate!

GrahamOfTheDead Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:37 pm

This has been permanently reduced to 800MSP.

Guest Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:43 pm

Decent game for that price.

Waggly Bean Wed Mar 13, 2013 7:40 pm

GrahamOfTheDead wrote:This has been permanently reduced to 800MSP.

I'd assume that the online is already less active than they want then. It seems rare for XBLA titles to have a great online community.

Seems to me that all online-only XBLA titles should be given a dirt-cheap price point to encourage sales and therefore keep the community alive.

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