The storyline appears to be a garden-variety zombie caper, with you guiding three Russian commandos on a search-and-destroy mission to a secret facility in North Korea. You start off facing run-of-the-mill soldiers, but immediately run into what looks to be the undead as soon as you enter the base. Or so it seems. The plot continually bounces back and forth in time, with cutscenes filling in the backstory only after youve completed missions. While this style of storytelling might work well in the hands of a competent storyteller, its just confusing here. You start off watching a clip of a drunken Russian soldier taking out a TV a la Elvis and then plunge right into the invasion of some kind of military base. If not for the blurbs on the box cover and in the manual, you wouldnt have a clue whats going on until wrapping up at least three levels.
Another big problem is the developers decision to leave all of the dialogue in the original Russian. While its sweet of Digital Spray to save us from what would no doubt have been mangled English dubbed by family and friends of the development team, not being able to understand anything said by your comrades in the middle of firefights isnt a great alternative. Bringing up a separate journal screen with subtitled dialogue is the only way to figure out what your pals are saying, and this is tantamount to suicide since the action continues in the background while youre trying to read. By the time youve gotten an idea of what youre supposed to be doing, the zombies on your heels will usually have caught up to you and started busily pounding on your skull. Not fun.
But this handicap is one of the few things that makes combat in Instinct remotely challenging. Enemy soldiers are total morons who frequently take cover behind explosive barrels. These barrels can typically be found adjacent to all soldiers, so its a lot easier to just target them whenever spotted and then rely on the ensuing ka-boom to take out any bad guys in the neighborhood. Shooting soldiers directly isnt nearly as effective or as satisfying, as they absorb a ridiculous number of rounds before eating the pavement and show absolutely no signs of being shot even while youre riddling them with bullets. Not surprisingly, the zombies are pretty stupid, too, although at least they have the excuse of being the victims of a mind-destroying experiment gone horribly wrong. Regardless, they pretty much line up to be gunned down. They pose a threat only when they attack in large numbers, and even then you can still blast them to bits without much of a hassle as long as youve got a little room to fall back whenever you need to reload a weapon.
More difficulty is provided by the level design, although thats largely because of the typically terrible layout. Most of the rooms and corridors all look the same, making it easy to get turned around. Getting lost is an impossibility due to the small size of the levels, at least, although youll sure get bored looking at the same grey metal walls, gas tanks, and explosive barrels over and over again. Its also hard to figure out what youre supposed to do in spots. Levers are never highlighted, so you can readily miss a switch that needs to be pulled to open a door. Sometimes zombie attacks are only triggered by entering a certain part of a level. You can wander around for ages looking for a door that doesnt exist only to eventually get attacked out of nowhere by finally walking into the right place.
Visuals are noteworthy solely for what have to be the least scary zombies in gaming history. Many of them are clad in tracksuits, so at times it seems like youre being attacked by packs of old-school rappers. Few details have been incorporated in the zombie models, either. Their bodies are blurry and their faces are pale blobs distinguished by rolled-up eyes and bulging veins only visible in extreme close-ups. Digital Spray has tried to give the game something of a unique look through a comic-book display mode, although all this does is outline everything with thin white lines that obscure much of the scenery. Both the regular and comic-book graphics have serious performance issues, as well. The frame rate tends to plummet when a fair number of enemies are onscreen, particularly in wide-open settings. And little hitches and flat-out long freezes are common when simply turning around during battles.
But at least bits of the audio can be effective, particularly the music. Even though the score lapses into dreary, driving techno typical of yesterdays shooters when in the middle of firefights, the atmospheric music played when creeping around in the dark on zombie levels is truly spine-tingling. Toss in some squelching footfalls when you walk through gore, the satisfying boom of your shotgun, and the efficient rat-a-tat-tat of your automatic weapons and youve got a pretty decent-sounding shooter.
Still, the many flaws in Instinct outweigh a few creepy tunes and shotgun blasts. All of the above details should be more than enough to scare you off, but if you need further evidence, please take note that saves take really long to load, there are no multiplayer modes, and that the game is copy-protected by Starforce.
By Brett Todd, GameSpot
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