Since Microsoft bought Rare several years ago for unheard of piles of cash, we’ve all been waiting for them to come out with the next big game. Unfortunately, during the original Xbox cycle they didn’t produce anything of note unless you count Grabbed by the Ghoulies or the remake of the N64 game Conker: Live and Reloaded. I reserved my Xbox 360 six months before release, solely in anticipation of this huge title.

Graphics: 6 / 10
Compare this game to any older generation games and you’ll be pleased. Compare it to next-gen PC or 360 titles and it’s not exactly innovative. The character models look like plastic toys and when they die they bounce about in impossible ways thanks to the terrible rag doll animations. Unfortunately, with that said, some would argue the graphics are the best part about the game. At least with a pretty presentation you’ll be entertained for a few minutes.

Sound: 7 / 10
The sound track actually isn’t that bad, some would say it’s even catchy. The guns sound like you’d think they would, the voice acting isn’t terrible, and in multiplayer you can even hear the footsteps of your enemies before they get too close. And I’m really
fond of the tracks they play between load times, not to mention the sarcastic animations that give you a hint of what to do on the next stage. All in all, you can’t really complain about the sound much. Hey, if you don’t like the fact that the multiplayer lacks any music, you can just rip your own to the hard drive.

Controls: 2 /10
Downright awful. It would be a difficult task to find ANY next-gen game with controls as sloppy and unresponsive as this game. In fact, the original Nintendo’s games were more responsive. The only game I can think of that had such poor control is Brute Force for the original Xbox.

To test this out for yourselves, just try to shoot anyone playing multiplayer on LAN or on Xbox live. Don’t play with buddies? Then just quickly switch your aim with your thumb left, right, left, right as fast as you can in the single player mode. It’s so absolutely terrible that when you finish pressing your last right, that’s the moment the character starts looking left! It’s just amazing how bad it is. Could you imagine playing Street Fighter or Halo with laggy, sluggish response time?

Of course there are more complaints. For example when you zoom in with any weapon, the sensitivity automatically adjusts to be so slow you can’t reasonably hit anyone in a timely manner. You can go into the options and change your sensitivity around, but even on the highest possible setting, it’s slower than most games at normal speed. Terrible.

Gameplay: 5 / 10
There’s no health. Now this is a bad idea in general, but it was pulled off rather well in Call of Duty 2. In PDZ there is an actual health bar… and this bar goes down when you get shot. But here’s the catch; if you sit there doing nothing while the useless AI doesn’t try to shoot or follow you, suddenly you regain your life! Yes, this holds true for multiplayer as well. Doesn’t that sound great?

Single player
The Good – While playing through the single player you can’t help but be disgusted thinking that this could have been a great game. Picking locks with the analogue sticks, using all the high tech gadgets in the game and the varied locations they set you in almost make the experience fun. Also, you can adjust the difficulty settings for each level independently. This is actually pretty cool because if you want to challenge yourself but just can’t get past one level on a harder difficulty, you can scoot by on easy at any time.

The Ok - There is a story, although you won’t get engrossed in the generic game-rendered cut scenes they provide you. They don’t spend any time developing the characters either, so it’s unlikely you will spend any time wondering about Joanna, her teammates, or her father's health. Yeah, they do throw in a couple ‘twists’ to the story, but who’s going to notice them if they weren’t paying attention in the first place.

The Bad – Pretty much everything else. You often have to start missions all the way over because the save points are very limited and seemingly placed at random. The frame rate suffers, you can’t jump (yeah, there’s actually no jump button) the AI is terrible at spots, and really the game just isn’t fun.

Multiplayer
The Good – there’s a lot to say about what’s good in the multiplayer since it was well designed and thought out. But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea here, so I’ll make it quick. There’s a million options and levels with fantastic environments. It’s all over the board from regular Death Match to Counter-Strike style where you buy your own weapons and armour.

The Bad – with control so ridiculous, who’s going to keep playing? You can’t hit your opponents with any skill or accuracy, the frame rate is a joke, there’s no way this game will ever be in a tournament setting, it lags like hell online, and did I mention how bad the control is?

Replay value, longevity: 3 / 10
If you’ve got the patience to play through the single player, then you’re gonna get a
good dozen hours into the game. You will likely never play the game more than once
though, and if you’re brave enough to try out XBLive you’re going cry.

Overall (personal bias): 2 / 10
There are many factors that can help form a great game such as a good story, game play, multiplayer, sound, replay value, pure entertainment, variety, graphics, random humor, etc. Even if there are several factors missing, we can often still have a very good game on our hands.

Unfortunately, the piece of the puzzle missing in this game is unforgivable. Maybe if they had spent the time to make sure the control was responsive they could have still had a pretty decent game. But the fact of the matter is that this game has absolutely unforgivable laggy controls.

Even if everything else was a 10 out of 10 and it just blew my mind away how advanced it was, this game would still be horrible. With seemingly no thought put into making precise controls, I couldn’t with a good conscious recommend this game to my worst enemy. Terrible.