Pros: Cheap and fun game that tends to grow on you, look for the better servers
Cons: Game hard to find in the shops, better try your luck in the on-line stores.
The Bottom Line: TacticalOps is a game that tends to grow on you, especially if you manage to find the servers with fun ambiance and well administrated. Also fun game for LANparties.
isvikthere's Full Review: Tactical Ops for Windows
Introduction
TacticalOps or 'Tactical Operations - Assault on Terror' for full, is a spin-off of the famous and very successful 1999 game called UnrealTournament or UT for short. UT drew its success from the brilliant on-line gaming experience it offered. With the game UT came an editor programme which allowed you to create your own gamemaps, playerskins, weapons, etc.
So a group of skilled people not really pleased with the way the UT-world looked and worked developed their own more realistic gaming environment using the game editor and the game engine. These people found each other under the banner of 'Kamehan Studios' which is thus the official author of the game and that was how TacticalOps came to be.
History
Initially it was called SWAT Operations or something like that but as there already was a game published by Sierra with a similar name they had to change it to Tactical Operations - Assault on Terror (TO-AoT). It is sometimes also referred to as TacOps or simply TO. Also because it was at first just a mutator to the UT-game like others (e.g. Infiltration), the game was freely downloadable and you just installed it with your UT-game.
Some claim TO to be a Counterstrike clone, I'm not sure about this, I think both Counterstrike and TO were independent developments where the first used the Halflife game engine and TO the one from UT. However as with TO there is still the possibility to create your own maps some map designers used the map editor program to recreate in TO the Counterstrike maps they liked and maybe this is where the confusion stems from.
Thus over the years the game went through different updates until at one point, with the ironing out of bugs and improvements to graphics and maps, refining of the weapons characteristics and balance, at its version 3.1.5 the game became a fullblown standalone First Person Shooter-game to be purchased and that no longer required the game UT to be installed also. However people still playing with the UT-add on could still download patch 3.1.5 to upgrade their version to play on-line against people with the retail version.
Finally from patch 3.4.0 on all access to the game for people using the UT-add in was cut off, with from then on
only the retail version allowing you to play the game on-line on servers running version 3.4.0. The servers still running the 'free' version 3.1.5 are diminishing by the day.
The Game
TO is a policemen versus terrorists game scenario, with two teams fighting each other and each team having a specific mission to accomplish for them to win the map. Policemen have either to defend positions and dismantle bombs, free hostages, or simply eliminate all terrorists in the map. Terrorists do exactly the opposite, they plant bombs and guard them until they explode, they guard hossies and keep the police from freeing them, they make their escape from the map, or they simply murder all policemen they bump into.
Hardware requirements
As this game is based on the rapidly aging UT game engine the requirements aren't too steep :
Operating system : 95/98/2000/NT 4.0/XP
(the 'free' version was known to be made to work under Linux)
Processor (CPU): Minimum: Pentium 200 MHz but recommended: PII 450 MHz or more
Memory (RAM)Minimum: 64 MB Recommended: 128 MB or more
Hard disk space : 120 MB (650 MB for full install)
CD-ROM drive :4x or higher
Audio system : DirectX 8.0a compatible sound card
Video system: Minimum: 8 MB 3D video card - Recommended: 16 MB or more (DirectX 8.0a & OpenGL included)
Network & internet play via TCP/IP (56k minimum speed)
Realism
A map is played over different rounds and each round has a fixed duration, if you get killed in a round you are not respawned but have to sit out the round as a spectator where you can jump from teammate to teammate and see through their eyes what they are doing or (if the server has the option) either hover over the maps to see the ongoing action.
As this is a first person shooter game (FPS) you see the world though the eyes of the shooter and besides your teammates and the ennemy you only see the tip of your own gun. Each team has some six skin types you can choose from.
Each team also has its own range of weapons to choose from and at the beginning of a map you have a basic amount of cash to purchase a weapon, these range from a knife to a sophisticated sniper rifle or a machinegun/grenade launcher combination for the policemen and combatknife to M60 machine gun for the terrorists.
The more money you earn in each round the better the weapons you can buy. You earn money by killing off opponents, picking up money or drugs you find throughout the map. Your team is rewarded or punished at the end of the round according to the successrate of the mission.
For each weapon you can only buy a limited amount of ammo at the start of the map and you can only combine the use of weapons of different calibres. So after a few rounds your typical equipment would be:
- body armor
- a smoke-, flash-, splinter- or handgrenade
- combatknife
- handgun
- light machinegun
- heavy machinegun or snipergun
- nightvision or binoculars (if you struck it rich)
If you run out of ammo you can only replenish by returning to your starting point or picking up clips from the dead.
With the selection of realworld weapons, the damage they can do, and the limited amount of ammo TO provides
a great deal of realism, increased by the fact that if you get injured there is no way of healing ; once you've sustained 100% damage you're dead. There aren't any exotic powerups either, but at the start of each round you can buy body armor to protect your head, chest and legs. The armor's protection also diminishes with the amount of hits you take until its protection is completely depleted. If you manage to get back to your starting point and have the time and the cash you can however buy new body armor. Less realistic is the fact that with only 1% health left you are still as lively as with 100%, but the game should remain fun, and too much realism kills that.
Through the in-game menu you can define shortcuts or attribute functions to all your mouse- and keyboard buttons.
The online server administrators have a wealth of options they can use to define the game :
-is friendly fire harmful and to what degree ?
-how many players can join the game ?
-how long does a round last ?
-how many rounds for each map ?
-what maps can be played ?
etc.
Standalone gameplay
As a standalone game TacticalOps is useless except for training purposes and for familiarizing yourself with the game. This because artificial intelligence in the game is non-existent, the bots are as dumb as they come, which unfortunately even has its effect on the on-line game where, if you are working in a hostage scenario, the hostages are more annoying than helpful if ever you are a policeman trying to free them. Hossies can pick up arms when you are escorting them but they are dangerous too none but the most unaware terrorist. Both terrorists and policemen are punished for wounding or killing the hostages as a considerable amount of cash is drawn from your credit if you shoot them or blow them up.
Personal experience with the game
As I've played the game since its version 2.2 up to the retail version 3.4.0 I've seen some changes to the game but those were mostly cosmetical and didn't affect the overall experience much. The were focused on ironing out bugs, balancing the weapons and improving the graphics.
However just like the infamous Counterstrike on-line gaming is plagued by cheaters that through hacking the program get access to unlimited ammo or unlimited cash or even artificial aid in their aiming with what is called 'aimbots' : tools allowing you to automatically zoom in on the heads of the opponents and to kill them with one shot. Other cheats are skinhacks, allowing one to look through objects or radars, permitting one to see where the opponents are on the map.
As a countermeasure to these cheats tools have been developped to detect the cheaters that use them and to kick them out off the game. The latest tools against cheating are grouped under what is called TOST = TO Server Tools, whereby TOST checks the games files installed on your PC and checks if these haven't been hacked and altered.
An additional tool called TOprotect has been created this year, whereby a small executable installed on your PC verifies and identifies you as an unique TO client. Cheating and anticheating is an ongoing battle where new versions of TOST have to be developed as soon as cheaters find new ways around TOST's protection. Suspected cheaters can be kicked by the players because players have the possibility to vote them out. If ever a majority of votes against the player in each team (half + 1) is reached, the player is kicked from the server.
Just like UT, UT2003, Counterstrike and other similar teamgames TO is kept alive by clans: people playing the game and grouping themselves in teams that challenge other teams. It's these clans that often run their own servers on-line allowing outsiders to play on-line as long as the clan doesn't reserve the server for their own use (wars against other clans, trainings). If they reserve their server you'll see that access to it is blocked with a password. Clans actively recruit members amongst regular on-line players that manage to impress them with their skill.
Finding on-line servers is quite easy through the in-game menu, similar to the one used by UT, where you have to click just a few buttons to get the list with all the active servers throughout the world. You'd better select a server near home as it will guarantee you a more fluid game through lower ping (server response time).
The game allows for teamspeak, whereby through a console you can type comments, either to all other players or to teammembers only, but once you're killed you can communicate only with the other dead. For obvious reasons the dead can't communicate with the players still alive in the game.
Add-ons that allow for direct voice input like Roger Wilco and such can be integrated in TO.
Conclusion
Tactical Ops is an Unrealtournament spin-off that evolved over the years in a pleasant first person shooter teamgame that is primiraly destined for network play (local or over the internet). It can become very addictive although the dozen or so standard gamemaps can get boring in the long run. The solution for this is to go to servers that run new maps, which however involves a tedious download before you can play them.
However if, by chance, and by pure coincidence you find yourself in a team of people you do not know but that somehow do manage to work as one entity the game experience can be magic resulting in your team crushing the opposition. The reward is even greater when your team composed of random players manages to exterminate opponents belonging to the same clan. I must admit however that this is very rare as mostly people play like the individuals they are and thus will be picked off one by one if the adversaries are playing like one team that follows common tactics, which is how the game was intended to be played in the first place.
The game was initially published by Infogrames, now Atari.
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