Cold Zero: No Mercy

Cold Zero is an RTS, in that it is a game reliant on strategy that takes place in real time. But you only get to control one guy, John McAffrey, a mercenary available to hire for good causes. You have to guide John through 16 missions taking in rainy docklands, steamy jungles and heavily-guarded industrial facilities. A simple point-and-click interface moves Johnny around the screen, and allows him to open doors, climb obstacles, and hide in suitable nooks and crannies. There's an emphasis on stealth, an even heavier emphasis on combat, with a rudimentary plot tying the missions together. Levels are typically staffed with enough gun-toting goons to form a US Infantry Division. Whether you sneak around cutting throats or wade in with a heavy machine gun is down to you, though the stealth system is not sufficiently honed, resulting in you getting spotted for what would appear to be no good reason.

There's a certain satisfaction in blasting bad guys with a gaggle of automatic weapons, but the third-person isometric viewpoints and real-time system don't allow for a whole lot of precision in the fighting. Can I see through that window? Better just fire and find out. Like this kind of thing or not, it feels like the designers took an RPG like Fallout or Diablo, ripped out the combat system, and this is what's left. Not really enough to justify a standalone game, we reckon.