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If you told me two years ago that I'd become an FPS fan I would have laughed. Nowadays I'd just agree. I remember a time when if I heard the word FPS I had flashbacks of losing at Goldeneye time and time again. The only FPS games I had were not pure-bred shooters, but rather games like Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Half-Life. I tried team based first person shooters time and again, but was quite dissapointed and was frustrated with the genre in general.

When I started seeing commercials for the game in 1999, I was eager to buy it. Spending all my money on other games and random PC components was a habit in which I was too adept. It wasn't until three months later that I mustered the cash to buy the game, once installed I was greeted by a beautiful intro and clean interface (see left). At this point I was quite excited and fired up a training mission. I was presented with a planning interface which allowed me to change waypoints, recruit teamates and outfit the team with proper equipment. I suited my team up with Heavy armour and Enfield L85A1's. I chose silent pistols because I figured I wouldn't need all that much stealth to kill terrorists.

When loaded I was presented with a nice dialog asking for me to click OK when I wanted to start, I like this as you arn't just thrown into a battle. The map was known as "city street large" and was also, as I would find out, a very common multiplayer map. Oh my, it was tough. I died quite a few times trying to win myself, it was until I learned to work as a team that the terrorists started to get the slapdown. Terrorists are very quick to act and you have to be REALLY careful to cover all views of yourself. You can't run into a room blind, you need to use a heartbeat sensor or bring backup. After I beat the mission (right) I went on to some real missions, Operation Pandora trigger being the first.

The controls in Rogue Spear are easy to learn, hard to master. When running through a mission you have to make sure to conceal yourself using crouch and lean right/left. For each weapon there are different firing modes, the most common are single shot, three round burst, full auto and safety... SAFETY! You must use these effectively because you only have an allocated amount of ammo for the round which leads me to another problem with the game, you cannot pickup ammo from dead terrorists. This is annoying but it does make you think twice about wasting ammo, adding another aspect of gameplay.

Back to the mission, after saving the hostages, they started to follow me around (left). At this point I didn't know how to alert a teamate to take them and it was quite frustrating. It took me three tries to kill all the terrorists without a hostage being shot, and the time I did win I had to backtrack for five minutes to find the last terrorist.

The next mission seemed to be alot cleaner, taking place in the middle of the ocean, after that, a power plant in the desert, and so on and so on until the end. Each mission is different then the previous and there is no 'true' storyline, but that's just how I'd expect the military to treat a low-level soldier, so it doesn't suprise me. This game is definatly one of my favorites and a must have for any tactical fps fan.

Graphics:Compared to today's games, the graphics arn't up-to par, but for 1999, they really shined. The enviorments look real, the weapons are highly detailed, the only thing that makes this game stand out is the character models. The hands are big in proportion to the rest of the body and were obviously rushed. Besides that, the engine is rock solid stable and pretty too boot.

Controls:The controls is Rogue Spear were straightforward and intuitive. The game included many options to customize your experience by remapping keys and supported a wide variety of joystick/control pad options. Today, I still find myself remapping z to reload in other FPS's.

Gameplay:Gameplay... this is where Rogue Spear truly makes it's mark. Rogue Spear isn't the type of game where you just run in and start shooting, instead you must stratigically plan your approach before the mission. You can recruit whoever you want, in any specific fields, but if they get killed, they're out for the rest of the game. As far as weapons go you have four to choose, primary (rifle/machine gun) secondary (pistol) and two equip. Equip can be anything from a heart beat sensor to extra magazines. The only real problem I had involved escorting hostages, sometimes I was too far away from my team and they followed me. I had to lead them back to the team to get them off my back... and I do wish you could pick up ammo.

Sound:The sound is decent, but unlike counterstrike, footsteps do not play a big part in gameplay, I would have liked this since it wasn't a run-n-gun fps. All weapons have a unique sound, and will aid the player in devising a unique stratigy. For instance, if you hear the enemy firing pistol shots off you might want to run in his direction with an assault rifle in hand. If you hear someone using a snipe rifle you may want to use a smoke grenade to distract them and attack while they are looking into the fog. The orchesterial music adds a nice feel to the game, especially while waiting for a match to begin.

Multiplayer:Multiplayer is another bright aspect of Rogue Spear. You have the option to play on Mplayer or The Zone (MSN). I prefer to play on The Zone, more specifically Sniper Strike. Bunks snipe wars are quite fun, and personally my favorite aspect of multiplayer combat. But rest assured, there are many more modes of play then adversarial combat, co-op modes include terrorist hunt and full missions, with fill out teams or player partners. But tread softly soldier, for when you die you don't come back until the match is over. Rogue Spear also includes a robust map editor, and there are plugins for 3d Studio Max floating around on the web so you can export your own 3dsmaxx enviornments.

Overall:It's not perfect, but it's close. Yeah, nowadays it might be considered old, but there is still a vast community supporting this game, and it's a must have if your a tactical fps fan.