In a
perfectly fitting and completely unplanned sequence of events this week, I played the
director's cut of Deus Ex: Human Revolution the day before playing this...a game from
the same publisher, in the same genre and with many of the same ideas.
Only one game is considered a masterpiece, and the other is Project: Snowblind.
A game I've never even heard of.
Take a guess which one's more fun.
Oh, and here's a hint.
If it was the masterpiece, there wouldn't be much of a point to this intro.
And my intros always have a point.
So I did not expect much from Project: Snowblind.
It's a shooter from the mid-2000s, which means it's probably blurry and awkward and trying
very hard to be the cinematic shooters that would come out ten years later.
And hey, look—Project: Snowblind is all of those things, what are the odds?
But Project: Snowblind has a lot more going for it than the fact that it was apparently
named after a Black Sabbath song.
It's also a really fun shooter.
Fast, straightforward...and fun.
Something bigger and more celebrated shooters could really learn from.
So the first thing you notice about Snowblind is that it doesn't waste your time with stories
or characters that are never as interesting as game developers think.
Instead, this one sticks to its strengths.
It starts you off with an all-out gun battle against soldiers and walking robots before
culminating in an aerial assault you stave off with a goddamn turret.
You've blown up 37 robots and finished an entire level in the same amount of time other
shooters take introducing you to poorly voiced characters with boring, broken stories.
What's your motivation?
You're actually having fun.
Weird, right?
So the thing it borrows from Deus Ex is, obviously, the whole augmentation thing.
They're even called augmentations.
And you play as a soldier who—you guessed it—has augmentations.
His name is Nathan, and he likes to blow sh*t up.
Snowblind is completely focused on action.
It's a game with plenty of style and presentational panache, for its time...but the game is always
highlighting the action.
It doesn't feel like, "Oh, we have to get through this gameplay to get to our next big
cut scene."
It's putting all of its energy into gameplay...and, you know, being a shooter.
In which you shoot things.
That's the thing I love about Snowblind.
It's just so fast and to the point.
The pacing is such a refreshing contrast to a lot of modern games, which drag their feet
over narrative pleasantries.
None of that here.
Just awesome gameplay.
And that's the thing.
This game plays far better than you might expect a nine-year-old shooter to play.
Great controls, tight aiming...really solid shooting mechanics.
Speaking of mechanics...the augmentations are well done, too.
You earn some seriously empowering abilities in Snowblind, and they're actually usable,
you know?
You can see them in action, as opposed to some minor attribute increase.
You get the vision augmentation?
Yeah, now you can see through f*cking walls.
And you can use that to shoot enemies that haven't even seen you.
You can slow time, you can create some electrical field that makes you invincible...these are
the kinda powers I want from a game.
I want badass powers that let me strike my enemies like the fist of an angry god.
Not, freaking...oh, plus one defense.
Now I can take ten bullets, instead of nine.
And you know, I'm impressed with how it looks, too.
A lot of games from this era that went for that gritty, realistic look...they look like
blurry brown messes, from a modern perspective.
This one doesn't.
It actually looks pretty good, especially some of the environments.
It could've used more color, but you can say that about every shooter.
I guess earth tones are the only testosterone-compliant tones.
Look, is this some radical piece of game design?
Hardly.
Does it push the medium to new emotional heights?
F*ck no, that's what I love about it.
It's a shooter that remembers what the shooter is.
The whole game—it's this linear path through big robots, big ambushes and even bigger explosions.
And in 2013, that's a breath of fresh air.
You know, apart from all the smoke.
The explosions.
It's Project: Snowblind for the original Xbox.