Headhunter: Redemption review

Right, a question to start off with: is the introduction of a new token female character to the original Headhunter’s solo roster of Jack Wade as much of an outcry of concern as replacing Solid Snake with the fey Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2? Not really, owing to the series’ small-scale following and to the fact that they both play exactly the same, their marginally different weapons not fooling anyone, their personalities only making their presence known in drawn out cut scenes. Not when they’ve taken the moulds for the characters straight from the drawers that the industry like to label as Type ‘S’ (Leeza X: Sexy, Sassy, Standard) and Type ‘G’ (Jack: Grouchy, Gritty, Goatee, Generic).

Wade In Too Deep

That it isn’t long before you’re palmed off with a mission to shut down a reactor (shortly after investigating a weapons facility) gives some indication of the lack of new ideas introduced here. It’s a roughly fifty-fifty split between male and female. Leeza is in the driving seat for the first half, in which you’re tasked in shooting your way down through a futuristic colony into the slums below in search of sinister goings-on by a rebellious underground army. This all shows promise, sure, backed up by such in later levels where the story takes on a few obligatory twists to reveal something a bit more interesting, in the cut scenes at least.

Sadly, in aesthetic terms, it never quite reaches the atmosphere attributed to the steadily changing locations that a similar game, the underrated Project Eden, conveys; certainly, a game whose graphical level-by-level descent into grime and decay is not quite matched in Redemption. Corridors are similar affairs wherever you go and rooms don’t inspire much awe. Puzzles (of the enter-correct-sequence kind) are prevalent yet mostly in the computer screens dotting the level. Actual environmental interaction is less prevalent, reduced mostly to blowing up walls and activating switches around a linear maze-like route.

Most of this is aided by a Metroid Prime like scanner which handily detects weak walls and push-able buttons, this is later aided by picking up an enhanced sight for your personal computer (embedded in a pair of sunglasses! Man, how cool did the designers think their characters would be if they wore shades all the time!). So, stuck in a dead end? Use those. It’s these features that enhance play while at the same time make you painfully aware that they’re small interactive rewards for yet another futuristic corridor-room-corridor adventure.

Aim To Please

A game with a control system that wants to be overly friendly can’t afford to have too many faults. Headhunter’s inevitable downfall lies in its shooting; the core element of the game. Targeting via a wobbly, slowly auto-aiming reticule seems fine, but only when forward-facing. It’s trickier when trying to aim at something behind: the lock-on system only faces front, making turning around a fumbling business. Combine this with the problem of never deciding whether you should punch or shoot at close quarters and death is often cheap. A shame because this too has its moments. Being able to target around corners then leap out to dispense metallic death does have a good feel to it, even though the system’s less refined than kill.switch, the game that based its entire structure on a similar idea.

Then again, this is countered by the fact that sneaking around brings you the potential of unintentionally sticking to a wall if you get too close. Or of climbing on top of a box when all you want to do is pick up ammo. Always a perennial bugbear: the control system that tries too hard to please and leaves you feeling vulnerable. Never minor annoyances to be certain, but something to consider, particularly in boss battles where the use of special weak points and quick moves means you can’t afford to mess up.

Heads Will Roll

There’s the option to sneak, though it’s never really needed as rolling and shooting proves both effective and faster. That checkpoints are generously placed is more a benefit to this than anything else. And let’s top it off with, ooh, it’s possible to use your original pistol all the way through without effort. Which isn’t actually that much of a bad thing, really, as it’s quite satisfying.

It’s always a shame when a game arrives perfectly playable and pleasant enough to glide through without too much in the way of frustration, while at the same time being devoid of actual thrills or jaw-dropping moments. All of which makes it hard to recommend for those who don’t favour the commitment of settling on the mainstream action adventure highway. Take a game like this and sand down the edges so you don’t feel trapped in a déjà vu world of standard video game mechanics and there could have been something better.