Combat: Task Force 121

It should come as no surprise that the FPS genre is huge, seemingly growing on an endless upward trend. Whether that is due to the wide variety of titles constantly being produced each year or because they’re all accessible and relatively easy to play (perhaps both), these games never cease to see large numbers of players upon release. The true test is whether the players continue to come back even a month or so after release because of the unique spin that game has to offer. Combat: Task Force 121 is a game that, when it first released, I was hoping I would constantly be able to come back to. I wouldn’t say that I thought it was going to be the next ‘greatest game’ ever released, but it had a lot going for it from early previews that fell completely flat upon full release. It had the right ideas behind it, but just didn’t have enough steam overall.

A Core Flaw

Combat: Task Force 121 is what happens when you’ve got developers that really only want to get in on a craze because they think that it will be profitable, no matter how barebones the project truly is. In some regards, they were right because there are still plenty of dedicated players that liked the game for as little as a it actually offered. Critics were much harder on it because it just had so little to offer by comparison, even if it was a good experience. Competing with the likes of Halo 2, Call of Duty 2, and Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Combat had a lot to go up against. The true, core flaw of this title was that it was a shooter, plain and simple, that didn’t have a lot to draw people in.

I’ll get to the gameplay in a moment, but the story was lackluster and its design was terrible. Given the limited budget this project had, the aesthetics and audio would be forgivable if a genuinely fun game were created. Instead, it just tried to run with he fact that FPS games were big at the time by creating a game about stopping terrorists without much else going for it. There were a few neat settings, but I honestly found myself wondering why, despite releasing 8 years after the classic Goldeneye, I’d rather be playing Goldeneye instead.

Weak Gameplay

The answer boiled down to Combat having gameplay that was equally underwhelming. Where the other games mentioned had a lot of unique (or revolutionary) FPS mechanics for their time or in 2005, Combat kept things basic. It felt like the developers only viewed a limited budget as a constraint and not a true challenge to create something memorable, something that set Combat apart. Its just a shooter that takes place in different locations, nothing more or less.

Bottom Line

To give credit where its due, the AI can be somewhat smart in certain situations, but ultimately were never a true challenge. On top of that, each level was poorly designed with only some textures to make up for it.

Pros

• AI can be tricky/clever
• Some fun gunplay mechanics

Cons:

• Gunplay is extremely basic, nothing new
• Level design/graphics are mediocre at best
• No real challenge nor unique aspects drive you to play this game