Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror
Score: 13% ESRB: Mature Publisher: Encore Developer: Black Ops Entertainment Media: CD/1 Players: 1 Genre: First Person Shooter
Graphics & Sound: At first look, Fugitive Hunter will look like it's a joke. You'll say to yourself that this game couldn't possibly have been made by serious people. Not that it looks all that bad, but the fact that you're torching terrorists in Afghanistan and blowing afro toting gangsters away in Miami won't let you take this game seriously for a second. Though the graphics are riding the edge of a knife here, the sounds, unfortunately, have plummeted straight off the side. Weapon sound effects are a joke, and the voices are downright appalling. Again, you'll wonder how people could actually put this game out on the market expecting it to be taken seriously. Think of every B-rate action movie you've seen starring Michael Dudikoff or Dolph Lundgren and you'll be able to compare Fugitive Hunter to something, although it's still worse than all of their movies put together.
Gameplay: In Fugitive Hunter, you are, surprisingly enough, a fugitive hunter. You take the roll of a Special Forces commando who travels from Miami to Utah to Paris and then to Afghanistan in search of fugitives, with no reason whatsoever as to why you're doing it. A freelance mercenary I could see taking on this type of role, but not a member of America's Special Forces. Given that, you can forget about any semblance of a story whatsoever. Your main goal in this mission-based game is to fight your way through a poorly laid out level full of thugs and terrorists so you can, get this, fist fight the guy you're after while you both use karate techniques to beat the crap out of each other. Each level is set up so you have to solve certain tasks in order before you can go any further. These tasks include going up to a box and shooting it, which will then allow you to travel through a door that wouldn't let you open it a minute before, and hoped to deter you by displaying the words 'can't go there yet' on the screen. Your ultimate quarry in this game is Osama Bin Laden, and you actually get to box him in the last level to the tune of some of the worst rap lyrics ever. I'll spare you the pain of reciting them here. It's a good thing that games like this don't make it into the caves of Afghanistan, because the mere sight of them would only inspire an enemy to take over the whole country.
Difficulty: The most difficult part of Fugitive Hunter: not busting out laughing the minute you turn it on and then coming to grips with the fact that everything you see isn't all a big joke. If you manage to get into the game, you'll find that the hardest part is navigating through the unnecessarily boring labyrinth of the levels. You'll be fighting frustration after frustration instead of battling the poorly laid out A.I. like you should be.
Game Mechanics: Though there are a ton of weapons that you can use, you'll quickly realize that they are all pretty much useless due to some of the worst controls ever to be introduced on the video game scene. Even at point blank range, trying to hit someone with a shotgun round is nigh impossible. And, since you have limited continues, once you use them all up it's game over. No saving your game to go back to later, you have to do it all over again. If you manage to make it through a level and come face to face with your quarry, you get to tackle a wonderfully sloppy fighting system that boils down to how fast you can mash the buttons. This is all there is to the game, aside from unlocking some cheats that will make it easier for you to play more of this ridiculously boring game. Fugitive Hunter gets points only because the box art didn't suck as bad as the actual game itself. Avoid this one like the plague.
-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications AKA Andrew Horwitz
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