CT Special Forces Review

I know what you’re thinking, how can a Special Forces game work properly on the GBA? It isn’t exactly a tactical game per se; it’s more along the lines of NES shooters, such as Contra.

First, the weapon selection: single shot weapons (pistols), assault weapons, grenades, sniper rifles, flame throwers, rocket launchers, shotguns, and grenade launchers. Your enemies use and plant items such as: guns, mortars, mines, and explosive barrels.

The controls are intuitive for a GBA game. Throw grenades with R, fire weapons with B, swap weapons with L, and jump with A. Crouching is used with the down button on the directional pad. Crates block progress in levels and sandbags cover you from fire.

The parts of CT that help it stand apart from other games in the genre for GBA titles is, well, number one it doesn’t completely suck. In fact, it is reasonably good. Second, it has many different gameplay elements, a nice supply of weapons, and quite a few locations.

Parachuting from cliffs is required and is somewhat difficult. You must move left and right to get an arrow centralized on two meters, one of which is a latitude meter and must be released before you come too close to the ground. Pressing B releases the parachute, but if you do it too early or late, you’l have to restart from the top of the cliff.

Another gameplay diversion is the helicopter level, which is the ‘Arid Desert’. You shoot other helicopters with B and drop bombs on tanks and SAM sites with A. The helicopter level actually kind of feels like the Zodiac’s FireHammer.

A third diversion from the main side-scrolling shoot gallery is a sniping mission. Sniping will throw you off at first, but basic, as in a single button shot. The one problem is that the view is small, so you will have to scan the entire screen for the terrorists hiding in the buildings, without killing hostages, at least hopefully not.

CT only offers three stages in each of the game’s four levels. Levels include the Forbidden City, Hostile Jungle, Snow Covered Mountains, and Arid Desert. This game might only take two to three hours for most gamers, but beating some of the levels with a limited amount of lives proves to be a true challenge, especially when there aren’t any save points, but instead a password system; if it wasn’t for the fun gameplay, I might have actually penalized Hip for not including a level select feature. I don’t want to play the entire game in order to get to a level that I want to play.

Why in the world Hip has not marketed this title is unknown. Heck, they forgot to send us a review copy when it launched; you’d think that the game would be horrible. Lucky for us, I was wrong; this game is a masterpiece and will hopefully be improved in the second game, which will be released this year. The single player and multi-player modes are convincingly fun and are why Hip has a hit on its hands, but only if it had a level selection, it would have been a must-have. Nonetheless, don’t be a stinker, go purchase this now.