UberSoldier

Someone has to be in love with Nazis.  It seems they are the natural selection for casting a villain nowadays.  They appear in about one out of three of every action game in some form.  Whether they are the ultimate evil or just being used by a higher power, Nazis always get the short end of the stick.  UberSoldier is everything I didn’t want to appear in my beloved genre, the first-person shooter.  How can someone take Nazis and make them even worse?  By giving them voices that make me think twice about shoving needles in my ears, that’s how!

UberSoldier takes place in a world where all those bizarre Nazi experiments have become a reality.  This universe is over the top to a certain extent - the main character has died and is about to be revived as a killing machine.  Dead and lifeless, the Nazis insert this inner urge to rampage on through the streets of Germany for their side.  What better of a time for the rebels to burst into the laboratories to save the character from becoming the ultimate tool of destruction for the Nazis.  Like I didn’t see this coming, the plot is hardly anything contrived from a high concept.  Like every B-rated film, UberSoldier tends to borrow storylines left and right from other successful first-person shooters.  Throw in a little of Half-Life, add in some Wolfenstein for spicing, and for bad taste, let it soak in every other WW2 themed FPS currently released.

Okay, maybe I am being a little too harsh.  UberSoldier begins with the escape from the hospital where you join up with the rebels.  Taking control of Karl Stoltz, UberSoldier is a path that not many would want to walk down.  Through several tutorials, you’ll discover all the powers you have been implanted with.  Since you are an ‘uber’ soldier, the powers must be incredible right?  The first power you’ll inherit is the time shield.  It’s a shield that is more of a net than anything.  It will catch the bullets the enemy fires your way and fire them back in their general direction.  That’s ‘neat’ I guess, but, why in the world does this shield have to be blue?  The power I felt didn’t mesh well with the rest of the game.  It would be like placing a sword in the hand of a marine as the rest of his squad mates are firing away at the opposition.  Out of place, awkward, and flat out weird, the powers aren’t anything special I’d be bragging about if I was in a war, especially if they came with a blue hue surrounding me.

The actual gameplay of UberSoldier is its strong point.  The enemy AI puts up a good fight, more so than I originally imagined when I booted up the game.  They’ll do the standard run and hide tactics to get one up on you.  Many of them have scripted entrances in the game where they’ll make their first appearance to surprise you from behind or better yet - overwhelm you with numbers.  The controls are defined enough to get a grasp of how to play within the first fifteen minutes.  If you don’t like the guns controls, why not pull out a knife.  The benefit of using a knife is the ability to heal yourself.  In some awkward vampirism fashion, you’ll earn some health back when using the knife.

Voice-acting is the exact opposite of the gameplay.  It’s downright despicable and I feel as if this was a cheesy reenactment of WW2 with unpaid actors.  It’s as if the developers were trying to spoof the FPS genre with bad voice-acting.  If I wasn’t impressed by the voice-acting, the dialogue even took a step up to make UberSoldier become even cheesier.  The dialogue barely has relevance in the context of the conversations.  The characters will ramble off words and then head into a whole direction with the dialogue midway through.  I could see Sci-Fi picking this up for a WW2/Nazi comedy.

The level design of UberSoldier is up on par with what I would expect.  The environment is detailed excellently for that Nazi vibe to come off right.  The 1940’s come off decently well, but, all in all, you can’t take a breather to check out the environment for your own curiosity.  The reason for that is the gameplay always held me back from exploring due to the unbelievable clichéd story.  The game does look beautiful in individual places with well designed levels.  The characters have enough textures to get by - I could easily see them as an Xbox game or PS2 game.

I was crossing my fingers that this was another diamond in the rough like Painkiller was for me.  Unfortunately, this is nowhere near that type of entertainment.  I came out disappointed with the end result of what UberSoldier ultimately provided. 
 

Minimum Requirements:
Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
512 MB RAM
2.5 GB HD Disk Space
3D Graphics Card with 128 MB
Direct X 9.0
CD-ROM 4x
 

Gameplay: 7.0

Burut, UberSoldier’s developer, put enough time to create an easy to play FPS.  The enemy AI is well done, the level design is great and there’s material here that should attract some FPS fanatics to give this a quick play through.

Graphics: 7.0

You’ll be happy if you upgraded your PC graphics card.  This isn’t the top of the line shooter with graphics… though it does fall in the middle of the pack.

Sound: 5.5

If the sound didn’t keep me laughing like it did, I would have given it an even lower score.  The voice-acting is shoddy and dialogue is even worse if that’s imaginable.

Difficulty: Easy

Some say if you played on FPS, you’ve played them all.  UberSoldier is no different; you should be able to pick this up and jump right into it.

Concept: 5.7
I didn’t think someone had the guts to do such a generic shooter. 

Overall: 6.1

UberSoldier would have benefited from any form of multiplayer.  To no avail, there is none and you can clearly see it needed some form of replay value.