izigame.me

I loathe this game so much. One of the worst keyboard setup I have ever seen in a game. Several actions bind to one button is frustrating when playing and creates a clumsy experience. Also one of the worst achievements I had the displeasure to get is MFWIC. The story is like a fight club psychological war movie. It is a very effective story and entertaining. Why am I recommending it? The story is actually good and some parts of the game play are very good at times.
-Cover system: It's both the worst and best feature of the game. Basically cover is your worst enemy if you have the wrong weapon and it will make enemies throw grenades at you, forcing you to run to another cover and in the process probably killing you. Also shooting + aiming from cover is usually instant death. The best part of cover is shooting without revealing yourself, basically you are unkillable and no repercussions at all except lack of accuracy. Getting yourself X1014 or any shotgun allows you to shoot from cover and kill almost anything close by. This is how you beat FUBAR difficulty as you need to abuse this mechanic to be able to kill heavy's without them killing you. Most of the game, I was out of cover and crouched. Why? The AI can't shoot you in certain angles but you can shoot them. Hugging a wall while they are peaking is free kills and safer than cover. Also abusing certain holes through cover or debris works as well.
-Story: It carries the entire game. It is very intriguing and extremely effective but ultimately the story makes a classic twist which detracts completely from the intensity of your actions and in my opinion, ruins somewhat parts of the game. My problem with the story is that it is a gruesome inception-like war movie in which you are forced to make gruesome decisions and pay/experience the consequences. Sounds exactly what you want in a war game, right? If you are sensitive, emotional or never experienced a story like this, it will hit you like a truck but, if you are like me, you see a cheap gimmick that you have seen before several times in movies. I knew how the game was going to end from a mile away because it was hitting all the basic tropes. Obviously the Meta story in the game is very good and one of the best narratives I have ever experienced, but it could have been a movie instead of a game with clunky game play mechanics which detracts from the story.
-Soundtrack: Pleasantly rocking and it knew exactly when to enter to make an emotional toll and effectively adding to the story/game play. You will get goose bumps at times.
-Controls: Mediocre at best, mostly buggy and clunky. 2 hotkeys that have each 3 different actions bind to them which really makes no sense and halts game play quite a bit. Several times I wanted to get out of cover and was unable to because the game does not register well the actions you want to do and once you do, it is probably too late. Getting in and out of cover is a mess, trying to run away but there is cover nearby is also a mess. Shooting feels great in general but sometimes it seems the hit boxes are off even though you are on point with the targeting which usually happens with rifles and pistols. Could be because of debris, cover or other doodads but I do not know.
-FUBAR: This is very hard not because the difficulty is quite high but, It is very hard and extremely tedious because the controls are baffling awful at times. From forced scripted montages in the campaign to being one shot-ed, you require the game to respond to your commands with ease so that it is an enjoyable experience, not infuriating and have the ability to beat the game. The game does a piss poor job of giving you a smooth experience and is probably the only reason why I dislike this game so much. The difficulty itself is fantastic and more realistic, even though you have regenerative health and the AI is very trash. The biggest negative of FUBAR has to be scripted montages. I probably wasted 30 minutes on just running away from the helicopter fire which only last about 5 seconds. At one point I thought I would not be able to beat this trivial yet incomprehensible part of the game which kept killing me. I beat it accidentally by running into a crate and the helicopter miraculously disappeared. How stupid is that? Also the best weapons in the game are M1014 which kills heavy's in two reloads, M-99 that one shots regardless where it hits, AA-12 as it does insane damage, M249 SAW which has hilariously almost pin point accuracy, Everything else is lacklustre, including AK and M4A1.
-AI: Absolute garbage. The game is obviously old and I am playing it until now but, the AI would reload in the open in front of me on FUBAR difficulty. Sometimes it would take cover where it was not covering itself from incoming fire. Heavy's will stop right outside your cover continuously shooting and missing you, giving you the chance to shoot at them freely every 15 seconds when they have to reload. Hell, I was shooting without aiming and killing heavy's without repercussions. Like I said before, the game is not hard at all because the AI is so easily abused. If you are in cover the AI is scripted to throw grenades ever so often so how do you mitigate that? DO NOT GET INTO COVER. Crouch and get out of line of sight of the enemy, usually behind a wall or higher cover and slowly but surely start sniping away at them one by one. FUBAR was a cake walk yet extremely tedious because AI was not challenging at all except for the fact that they can one-shot you and have very good aim.