Elite Forces: Unit 77

Rating Teen Genre first-person-shooter Publisher Deep Silver External Links

Great teams seem to live in the minds and memories of people, sometimes even beyond the individuals that made up those teams. The Jordan-era Bulls, the Breakfast Club, or Team Rocket, each has their own charms and remain with people long after the reasons to remember them have faded away. The team that makes up Elite Force: Unit 77 will not join the hallowed ranks of the aforementioned greats despite having several strong points. 

The premise is simple, terrorists have kidnapped high-profile people around the world and are revealing a dastardly plot to end millions of lives and only your small, elite group can stop them. Dropped in to each new hot zone to get in, rescue the hostages, and get out, there are some big expectations of a four person group which can be difficult and frustrating to deliver. 

There are some great elements and lots of potential locked into the game. You control four highly trained soldiers, each a specialist in their respective field with unique abilities. There's Dag Hammer, the guy with with big guns. He has a bazooka and machine gun to mow through enemies. T.K Richter can drive vehicles, throw grenades, place explosives, and his assault rifle isn't bad either. Kendra Chase is the female protagonist of the group and the resident sniper. Bill Matic is the equipment guy; he can use his rifle or grenades, but also can use or dismantle any electronic device. 

Elite Forces struggles due to a lack of identity. Although the game has both shooter moments and third-person combat strategy, the game doesn't sit firmly in either camp. This doesn't offer some hybrid benefit to the title. Rather, there is a rushed feeling that some of the development ideas didn't translate well. The game doesn't have the strategy elements of a franchise like Eidos Interactive's Commandos series or the Rainbow Six light 'em up elements. Choosing one of these camps could have greatly altered the ideas and game play of the title and helped set it apart from similar generic looking games; instead it falls dangerously close to the pile of indiscriminate titles piling up in used bins everywhere.   

Take the mixed bag of characters in Elite Forces for example. In Commandos, the entire focus is on figuring out what specialized character's should be doing what and how to effectively use each characters abilities to successful. There isn't a one size fits all answer to the problems. Elite Forces only presents one solution for each problem and pretends to offer variety. If the only weapon that will do the trick is the sniper rifle or bazooka or the guy that can deactivate mines, there's zero thought and no choices. It's all round block into the round hole. 

Game controls were also a concern, but there were some good things as well as frustrating elements. The game splits the screens with the map on the top screen and the touch screen having all the action. The map updates with enemies, checkpoints, save points (not enough of these), and anything else needed to complete the mission. This is a very nice feature and plays well into the good sized maps and complex landscapes. 

Moving the characters, firing there weapons, grouping them, and changing their weapons is all controlled by the touch screen. This means that your hand is constantly blocking your view of the swarms of enemies that are constantly harassing you throughout each level. It seems that the bad guys just have henchmen on retainer and don't mind throwing ludicrous amounts of them at you. A consistent trickle of soldiers is the problem rather than overwhelming numbers. Some people might say this makes you sleep with one eye open, but it seemed more like my soldiers getting hit with pot-shots every time one of these goons slipped passed me or I missed them on the radar. 

Visually, the game is average. There are some good cut scenes, but the in-game graphics are nothing special. The character's don't have a style or presence to them; I was constantly selecting the wrong person simply because it was hard to tell who was who. The top-down angle of the camera fed into this, but also stock character designs and little importance on the specialist abilities of each person gave little incentive to actually learn who does what. Mostly you'll just end up running around and firing your pistol, machine gun, and rifles. 

There are probably several good hours of fun held within. What stops it from being a success are the little things and a lack of imagination. Even though the touch screen is used for the entire game, where are the challenging mini-games to turn off electric fences or disable mines? Where are the strategy elements that require thinking rather than rewarding lazy Rambo tactics? For such a macho game about guns, explosions, and terrorists, where's the beef?