Introduction

So far 2006 has been quite dreary for the PC gaming community with only a few meager titles available for the avid gamer. This is especially true for the tactical FPS genre which so far has only gotten two new games under its belt: Rainbow Six Lockdown and The Regiment. Out of these two, everyone will obviously buy the more famous and well renowned franchise from Tom Clancy but I decided to see what the Japanese can create within this genre so let’s see what The Regiment is all about.

Who the?

The first thing you’ll most probably be wondering is who made this game and you will be quite surprised to find out that it’s Konami and Kuju, companies normally associated with the console world. The Regiment doesn’t focus on the soldiers from the USA but concentrates on one of the most famous tactical groups, the Special Air Service, more commonly known as the SAS who are British. So, not only is Kuju less experienced than Ubisoft in this difficult genre but in addition, they have opted to try and faithfully represent a rare military force in the gaming world, not an easy task. Honestly, I was quite skeptical of this game…

Unpolished

The Regiment uses the ailing Unreal Engine to power itself and thus, the minimal requirements are within the grasp of most people. I tested the game with my current system:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.0C GHz
• ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
• 4 x 512 PC3200 RAM in Dual Channel
• 200 GB IDE Western Digital
• Antec 480 TrueBlue PSU
• HIS X850 XT PE
• 17” Dell TFT
• 5.1 Altec Lansing Sound System
• Windows XP Professional 2 (SP2)

I agree, my system is beginning to show it’s age but I still consider it more than enough to game with and was let down to see that The Regiment really didn’t let it shine. Stutter, sudden framerate drops and other problems plagued my playing experience and I can only hope that several patches quickly fix these. Not only that but the game’s well-known engine had barely any options (unlike other games utilizing the Unreal engine) and thus, you won’t be able to customize it to suit your machine’s capabilities. All in all, it feels to me to be a hurried console port (and I can only blame it on Kuju and Konami’s laziness). The same can be said about the menu which is cumbersome, slow and plain boring (in other words, typically console-like). Sure, these are not the worst problems imaginable but still, it does ruin the initial feel and I can’t help but think that this game could have benefited substantially from a few extra months of extra development for the PC.

Visually… Painful?

Okay, I’ll quickly get past the worst aspect of this game, that being the quality of the graphics. To succeed in the hugely competitive FPS genre you really need to be bringing something fresh and exciting to the table, and the least gamers expect is a relatively new engine with some hint of graphical prowess, sadly the way this title looks it could have been released 2 years ago. The models are blocky and unnaturally animated, the physics are simply horrid, the levels are monotonous and uninspiring and last but not least, the textures are dull and without any depth at all. This has got to be one of the worst first person shooters I have seen in a long time. To compound the sad state of affairs the running animations of your teammates which is just hilariously awful. Ironically, even though the game is hideous, it requires the strongest of machines to get a respectable framerate. With my system at 1280x960 without any anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering, I barely achieve an average of 50 frames which is unacceptable to say the least. No matter how much I think about this, I really don’t see anything positive about the graphics department. Shall we blame the console roots or the laziness of the port? I would say a mixture of both.

Yes Sir!

Let’s first start off with the good shall we? The Regiment uses some nifty technology for its sound rendering (Creative X-Fi and EAX) and thus, you can always easily tell where sound is coming from which is actually very helpful in this game. Also, the voices echo if you’re in a large open space and change tonality depending on your surrounding which is very cool. The music in the menu system is more than adequate but expanding further, there really isn’t much else to say. The voice acting is acceptable but somehow, I never really felt the voices were being spoken by real people. It all sounded so muddled and dull and really didn’t help the feel of the game at all. The same can be said about the sound effects which are all missing that wonderful “oomph” and just end up sounding generic and boring. There is barely any other sound (except chirping birds). So not only are the sounds sparse but they are really dreadful and the regiment fails miserably not only in regards to graphics but in the sonic department.

Uneventful

This game tries to be very realistic in many ways and really wants to show that the SAS are the daddies of tactical squads but somehow, Kuju just ended up with a very frustrating arcadish game on their hands. The game first starts off with training levels which teach you how to shoot, run, target and manage your squad. Being a tactical squad veteran, I quickly decided to make it through this and start playing the real game but surprisingly, I got stuck on the first level for a good amount of time. Why? Not because I’m rubbish at PC games but because the objectives are difficult to understand and they don’t even tell you how to do some of the crucial things in the game. For example, in the first training level you must run in, identify all the enemies and clear the room… except that they didn’t tell me how to do any of that. Thanks to some luck, I finally understood what I had to do and completed the mission but I dread to think the frustration this will bring to a first timer.

Anyways, once I had that completed, I decided to do my first real mission. There are only four campaigns (yes it’s very short!) in the game and each one is divided into three different missions. The first one available to you is the Iranian Embassy level (which actually happened for those of you old enough to remember it). This made it seem like a more interesting prospect and thus, I decided to jump in and see what the real game was like. But everything didn’t really go to plan… After dying a few dozen times and finally understanding where I had to go, I found out that at the end of the level you get a rating and you can only do the next mission if you get a C or better. Hmmm, I think you guessed that I didn’t get that “C” on my first try and was forced to try the level several times again before I could continue. After that I decided to try another level and again, the same old routine of learning the level by heart and then being very good and flawless to try and get a sufficient grade to try the next level. Not the most interesting or fun method to advance in a game, that’s for sure.

So perhaps the AI makes up for the horrible levels and impossibly difficult gameplay? Ummm, nope not really… The enemy AI is a coding farce and it wasn’t rare that I saw a terrorist run past me and not even care to shoot, perhaps like me he was trying to find the exit so he could perhaps escape into a better game.

All the enemies act very basically and usually camp in some hidden retreat and the moment they can see you, they tend to shoot, unless the AI breaks and then they stand and stare right through you, like some vacant zombies. Do they try and strafe? Run behind you or duck behind cover? I wish, in fact you will be lucky if at times they act with the intelligence approaching that of a gopher. So what about your teammates? The SAS must be better than the terrorists and yes, I must admit that there are rare moments when you are glad you have them with you when the enemy AI kicks in… but most of the time, you will use them as body shields. You would expect the SAS to cover your back while you disarm bombs or handcuff suspects but lets be honest they don’t need to, the enemy AI is so poor they all attack face on, so tactical positioning is a moot point. Not only that but the very basic orders you give them are rarely followed, and you end up finding half the team in mid stance behind a door, stuck. It is safe to say this game will certainly not have you engrossed in the atmosphere. Hoping for some saving grace and an online experience with real people I was saddened to find not a single server online. Could this be any worse?

Mission failed

I can only say that you mustn’t get this game on PC because we have much better games at our disposition. This game is bugged, boring, frustrating, and most of all, no fun at all which is the whole point of any game. It’s neither realistic, nor fun in an arcade manner and falls into a zone of abysmally poor titles reserved for the bin. The only reason anyone will buy this game is because of the catchy name and good box art. I do wish Kuju and Konami would have put some more effort into this because on paper, the game really did look amazing since they were helped by the SAS to make it as realistic as possible. Yet, they still were able to mess that up and thus, destroy what could have been a great tactical FPS. So if you must get a game, avoid “The Regiment” at all costs. This game could have been a nice breath of fresh air but in this difficult and demanding genre, it only exudes a rank odor.

What do these awards mean?