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Infectious Ground

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Review written by Jason Surguine

Infectious Ground, toted as the first FPS (First Person Shooter) game to be specifically developed and tailored to the Pocket PC. Well, it is is exactly that to a tee, but is it any good?

I must mention the initial download, as it is about 10 MB, not too download-friendly for the dial-up user. After downloading the game, if you want it installed fully onto your device, it's still around 10 MB. However, there is an option to install only 4 levels at a time (for those who are frugal about their free memory space) which takes up around 2.5 MB, but that requires loading and unloading levels every time you finish a few, something that I reckon would become a pain. But hey, I've got a large CF card, so I'm OK... ;)

Now we'll start with the story of the game. The story is very generic and very lame, just like every other FPS out there. Its something about alien invasions and destruction and they send Joe 'job done' Kamov (no, really, I'm serious) in to save the day... Whatever. And of course, you have the mandatory general, or someone important, giving you orders and treating you like a piece of doggie-doo because you're in the trenches, saving the world from aliens, and they're giving you orders from a safe place, pretending to have a reason to be mad at you; you'll be briefed before and after every mission. Also, there's the usual stupid lady who tries to help by telling you what you're supposed to be doing during the mission for the second or third time, which invariably doesn't matter because its always the same - kill stuff and then go to point A and kill some more stuff, then go to point B on the map. In other words, nothing incredibly new here.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward. In fact, it's too straightforward. You play through each level blowing away the enemies that get in the way, and go to a check point or two that are highlighted on your map. Every few stages you will acquire a new weapon, or encounter a new breed of enemy. That's about it. All in all, nothing too complicated, but nothing too incredible.

This makes Infectious Ground get repetitive after a while, and the tasks you have to do just get tedious, with no real incentive after you've picked up all the 4 weapons (3 actually, one's not really a weapon), the machine gun, the missiles, the sniper rifle, and the camera. By the tenth stage, you really can't seem to find the motivation to trudge along for 11 more levels blowing away dumb enemies, trying to find your way through a voxellated map to one point and then going to the other checkpoint to get to the next level; it all begins to become a bit bland and routine.

In addition, after the first four enemies, all of the 'new' enemies don't seem particularly new, just a twist on one of the existing aliens. Which gives about the same challenge, but at least the colors change on a few of them to meagrely stimulate the senses so that your eyes don't get too bored.

The next point is to touch on is the graphics in the game. The game uses 3D voxel-popping graphics to create 3D landscapes. These get the job done - you actually feel the 3D environment while you are playing, but the voxel rendering quality is very low. That means two things: one, it runs pretty smoothly, at a decent frame-rate on all devices, unlike the other voxel rendering game for the PPC, Chopper Alley; and two, it looks bad, similar to what it would look like if a 3 year old drew it with markers. However, there are a few cool looking things, like a few of the mars-like landscapes, but everything looks pretty horrendous for the most part, especially the buildings.

It's a shame that they didn't offer a voxel quality slider, like in Chopper Alley for gamers with faster devices like the Pocket PC 2002 devices, or the overclocked MIPS Pocket PC's. It is interesting to note that the game gets smoother and smoother the more enemies you kill - it's very obvious when you have killed all of the enemies since the game runs at an extremely nice frame-rate and zips along nicely. In addition, they could have easily put the option in for a landscape mode, considering the already wonderful play control for using the d-pad and stylus at the same time. I'm surprised they didn't.

The rest of the in-game graphics consist of the actual enemy sprites which are nothing too amazing and they look very much like sprites. The other visuals in the game are the decent looking HUD's/GUI's which are nicely done, but nothing to write home about.

The play control in the game is actually very good. It uses a similar style of playing to Pocket Quake and Pocket Wolf3D, using the d-pad for moving forward and backwards and strafing left to right; while using the stylus on screen to control the mlook and on-screen weapon buttons. What takes this a step further, in the ease-of-control realm, is the auto-firing of the main machine gun weapon. It will begin to fire at an enemy once you are close enough to aim at it. You can imagine how useful this is when trying to do a strafing-circle around your enemy whilst firing, which is nearly impossible in Pocket Quake or Pocket Wolf3D.

This also allows ample time for you to manually aim at your target in order to shoot them with a missile whilst, all the while, the enemy is still taking a beating from your machine gun, so no time is really wasted. The one minor complaint I had with the play control was the auto-centering of the mlook, which was a real pain in the neck, especially when trying to fight two enemies at once, one on the ground, and one in the air. Luckily you can turn the auto-centering off and not be bothered by it.

The camera mode (only available once you acquire the camera), which allows you to virtually scan over the entire map using a remote controlled camera, is kind of cool, except that it is completely useless. It is supposed to help you find your way around the map if you don't know how to get somewhere but, in the time that you find out how to do it with the camera, you could have done it on your own; not to mention that the camera is able to get to places that you can't normally get to (because you can't fly over things, go figure) which can confuse you on how to get there anyway. All in all, its a neat gimmick, but completely useless as far as the gameplay goes.

It should be noted that the AI and hit detection (against the enemy) is horrible. The enemy will only attack you if you are within shooting range, yet, if you back up a few feet, they will not continue to shoot you, and will not even chase after you. In addition, your player can easily kill an enemy that your weapon has locked onto, even if it is behind a wall - in other words, you can kill it, but it can't hit you. Sure, that is in your favor, but it is still cheesy and a real cheap way to play through the game.

Infectious Ground is long. Some missions actually took me 30 minutes or more to complete, and that's not including the number of times I failed to complete the mission (through dying). It should be mentioned that the game comes with 21 initial campaign missions, which is a lot. On top of that you can also download and play the free extra missions available from the Infectious Ground website, 3 Xtra missions at the moment (around 1.2 MB more). Unfortunately, the Xtra levels are nothing incredibly special - they are very reminiscent of the regular campaign missions, therefore containing nothing incredibly new.

The sound in the game is actually pretty decent. You'll be treated to an ambient track with wind blowing and strange alien sounds, and a techno tune that gets you bobbin' your head while blasting away your dumb enemies. There's another tune that you don't get to hear until you finish the game which is a really funny and cheesy tune that doesn't fit the rest of the game's mood at all.

The sound effects are pretty standard artillery sounds and odd-sounding aliens, but also include some rather nice female voices for such computer messages like 'please wait', 'low ammo', 'health critical', etc. The sounds are all pretty crisp and clear and are mixed together pretty well so there aren't those annoying times when you cant hear a noise because the music is too loud or you cant hear that cool part in the tune because an alien is breathing down your neck. And for you anti-sound people, there is even an option to adjust the volume or turn off the sounds, or music. How nice.

One point to note is that the game has a $19 price tag which seems a bit high, but not so when compared to some other games which are ridiculously priced at $25 and $29. So $19 isn't too bad, but still a bit pricey for some.

Overall, this is a neat game. I enjoyed it for many hours until it became repetitive and boring, which happens to almost all games of this genre; but every now and then, I still pick it up to keep me occupied, when I feel like fraggin' some aliens at a smooth frame-rate. The graphics are decent and smooth, the music and sound effects are decent, the gameplay is decent, and the play control is phenomenal, and the quantity of stages plus the Xtra missions (and supposedly a level editor down the line) could make the replay value pretty high, especially if some really nice custom levels were to be released. So while the game isn't the greatest thing since popcorn was invented, it is still a fun little game with some nice attributes; just nothing especially outstanding.

Pros:

  • Smooth frame-rate, 3D voxel-popping goodness.

  • Decent sound effects and music.

  • Nice voices.

  • Tons of playing time, and large levels.

  • Large amount of levels.

  • Free, downloadable Xtra missions.

  • Outstanding D-pad + stylus play control.

Cons:

  • Story is generic and lame.

  • Levels get tedious and repetitive after all the weapons are acquired halfway through the game.

  • Large memory requirement for the whole game.

  • $19 price tag is a bit high for some.

  • Voxels are at a very low quality, with no slider to improve the rendering quality.

  • No landscape mode.

  • Xtra missions are few in number and not very innovative.

  • AI is more like AUI (Artificial Un-Intelligence).

  • Hit detection against the enemies is pretty bad.

 

Overall Score: 7/10

Many thanks to Unknown for providing us with our review copy.

You may wish to search for more reviews of games from Unknown. Alternatively, you can view all the reviews written by Jason Surguine.