Developer Serellan has released a new take on the realistic, tactical squad based shooter named Takedown: Red Sabre. Serellan’s focus was to create a game where the player had to think rather than react. In a game where one shot can end everything, looking around corners and planning your routes makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, the actual execution in Takedown: Red Sabre is less than spectacular. In its current state, Takedown: Red Sabre is a complete mess with so many issues that absolutely ruins the feel of the game.
Story
Mission previews is pretty much the only story you get in Takedown: Red Sabre. Before each mission, you are briefed as to where you are going, what the objectives are and you get to choose an insertion point. You then enter the hot spot with a squad of three and try to fulfill the objectives of the job. That is the entirety of the story line here; mission profile, execution, rinse, repeat. There is no communication during the actual missions between you and headquarters, or even between you and your squad mates for that matter. Games without a story line can usually survive by having fantastic game play elements that really allows the player to look past that omission. The problem here is that Takedown: Red Sabre has some of the worst game play that I’ve seen in a long time.
Game Play
First, Takedown: Red Sabre feels unfinished from the start. The menus do not feel complete, and in many cases don’t even let you know that the choices you are making for the load outs are even being saved. Another aspect of the game that feels unfinished is the artificial intelligence of the other characters. A game that calls itself a realistic, tactical squad shooter had better put into place some AI that can act the part. The enemies switch between being completely useless with a weapon, or being a crack shot from hundreds of feet away. Your squad mates don’t fare any better, as they seem to be incapable at times from even seeing an enemy as they come up from behind. Realism doesn’t just mean that one shot can kill you, it means that the environments and individuals in the game world act as they would in real life, and that just isn’t happening in Takedown: Red Sabre.
Another aspect of the game play that really bothered me was the actual game play. Since the ai of your squad mates is so bad, the only tools left for you to complete your mission was to walk very slowly throughout the entire level, and lean to look around corners. You can’t breach closed doors, nor issue commands to your team to help clear rooms or check the corners as you enter. You literally have no command over anything. There is also no HUD to speak of, except for a countdown mission timer, and your weapon with its ammunition in the lower right corner. You will have no markers on the screen to tell you where objectives are, nor any caller available to help you find said objectives. Your only choice is to search the entire map, room by room, killing enemies as you go. The good news is that there are quite a few different maps and missions available in the single player campaign, but they ultimately end up just being corridors with doors at the end of them.
Takedown: Red Sabre also has a co-op option and multiplayer to go with the single player campaign. Unfortunately, I could not connect to any games online to check out how the multiplayer actually worked. That is very disappointing to me, because the multiplayer had a chance to be very interesting, and might have been actually fun. However, I may never actually see that since there is something that prevents me from connecting to the online games. At the end of the day, that really says everything about my experience with Takedown: Red Sabre, it’s a nice try but the bugs are just too numerous to ignore.
Aesthetics
Takedown: Red Sabre looks dated, and I mean very dated. My first thought when I loaded up Takedown: Red Sabre was how much it looked like Counterstrike Source, and that’s not a good comparison. Counterstrike Source came out in 2004, and this is a 2013 game. While I am one that says graphics does not make the game, the game needs to at least look good. Video games are a visual medium, and when the first impression of a game is that it looks like something that is nine years old, you’ve missed the mark. Corridors all look the same, the rag doll physics are absolutely laughable, and the textures looks like they are only slightly more defined then Counterstrike Source. If the game had a unique aesthetic, that can be at least interesting to look at despite the dated graphics, but this game tried so hard to be realistic, these graphics just don’t do Takedown: Red Sabre any favors.
Voice acting in Takedown: Red Sabre is minimal at best. You have someone reading the mission briefing to you, then you get the occasional chatter during game play, and that is it. It is done minimally and serves the job at hand. Considering how bad the ai and graphics are, I really didn’t pay any attention to the music nor the voice overs that much. Sir Laurence Olivier couldn’t save this production from itself.
Final Thoughts
Takedown: Red Sabre had high hopes and ambitions, but ultimately fails horribly due to the developers execution of the plan. Developing a realistic, tactical shooter is a great idea for today’s market, but the developer has to make sure that there is more realism then just having guns kill you with one shot. The artificial intelligence has to react realistically to the situations in game, and you absolutely have to be able to give your squad orders to complete your objectives. Both of these features are completely missing in Takedown: Red Sabre. The menus are clunky and don’t give you any indication on whether or not your choices have been saved, and I hear there is a multiplayer aspect to this game, but I couldn’t play it. The graphics remind me of a nine year old game, and the game play is just not exciting to keep me coming back. Do yourself a favor, if you absolutely need to play a squad based tactical shooter, find yourself a Rainbow Six game, you will have much more fun.
[easyreview title=”Product Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”1″ ]
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