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Silent Scope |
PS2 |
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Review by Matt Paprocki |
Konami |
Shooter |
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Graphics: 6 |
Sound: 7 |
Gameplay: 4 |
Overall: 5 |
| Nothing beats the thrill of a good light gun game. If you've never
experienced Virtua Cop using both guns by yourself spouting off Dirty Harry quotes, then
maybe you won't fully understand the concept. Silent Scope was unique in that it took away
the two gun capability ad plopped you into the role of a sniper, stopping all sorts of
terrorist types just looking for trouble. Shame it just doesn't work on the PS2 like it
did in the arcades. This is a flawless port of the arcade game, a bona fide classic in many players minds. Great huh? Not really. The entire gimmick of the game was that massive sniper rifle permanently attached to the front of the cabinet. Not only do you lose the cabinet, but the gun as well. Using the D-pad here is excruciatingly difficult. The buttons are mapped well, but it's simply not effective enough rendering an already difficult game impossible. Do I even need to mention the length? This one will last a half hour at the most. As one of the launch games for Sony second generation hardware, Silent Scope sacrifices nothing, whether it be graphically or in the sound department. That doesn't mean it looks great. Sure it's blast trying to pick off that terrorist kidnapping the girl....running directly through a football field. Unfortunately, the field lacks detail even when close up, the seams of the polygons are painfully obvious, and the minimal texturing does little to enhance the presentation. It's better than a PS1 game, but it's not the technological leap. The sound of the bullets flying are impressive as are the screams of the innocent people you just shot down....err, uh.....just got captured, yeah. The sound of your rifle going off is great and the sound varies greatly depending on how far a person is from you. Shame this one doesn't sound as good as it looks. There is little reason to own this. The Dreamcast also received a port which is along the same lines as this one. The only way to go is on the X-Box which has a simulated sniper rifle peripheral which allows this game to be played very close to it's arcade counterpart. That disc also has all 3 games of the series included. This is a game better off skipped, even for die-hard fans of gun games. |