Team Factor
by Joe "Impaler" HighmanArticle Type: Preview
Article Date: June 04, 2002
Product Info
Product Name: Team FactorCategory: Tactical First-Person Shooter
Developed By: 7FX
Published By: Singularity Software
Release Date: Expected May 2002
Minimum Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here
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Another Tactical Shooter
The tactical first-person shooter genre is a marketplace where success almost certainly breeds imitation. Some will tell you that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that well may be true, except when that flattery feels uncompelling, disingenuous, or otherwise falls short of the lofty standards set by the original.
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| He sure is lucky he's on my team! |
Sadly, my first impressions after sampling the demo version of Team Factor are lackluster and unimpressed at best, rankly mediocre to laughable at worst. Somewhere in the middle should lie a happy medium, yet I did not find it, try as I might.
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| Decaffeinated! |
Top System Required
Team Factor certainly does not suffer fools lightly, especially when we fools are not equipped with “bleeding-edge” PC platforms. Using a test system armed with an Intel Pentium III-733 MHz CPU, 512Mb PC133 SDRAM, 32Mb GeForce2 AGP-2x graphics adapter, and Windows 2000 Professional Edition with a 2,048Mb swap file, one would hope that a system so clearly above the minimum and nearly at the recommended specifications might fare acceptably. This system, however, bogged on even the lowest of resolutions and color depths, and the more action contained on the screen, the slower and jerkier the control inputs became. In fact, any more than two players on the screen at the same time, in addition to the player-controlled character, and shooting with any degree of accuracy, even from a prone set position, went right out the window.
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| A kill made through the gimmicky and hindering Iron Sights |
But it's the visuals, which let's face it, that tend to win over most people even in the face of less-than-stellar gameplay. Does anyone remember Dragon’s Lair, or did I just date myself there? The Team Factor developers earn some kudos in this department. Like its brethren in the infantry combat category, players are given a sumptuous array for destructive hardware, including such fan favorites as small machine guns, assault rifles, heavy machine guns, sniper rifles, pistols, and assorted flavors of stun, explosive, smoke, and fragmentation grenades. Success with, and lo, even the ability to wield certain weaponry is dependent upon the character class selected by the player at the onset of the mission.
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| Proof that a Spawn Camper has been working here. |
Class System
The player classes are familiar to anyone with any time spent in the first-person tactical shooter camp. Each class, the Soldier, Sniper, Scout, and Specialist (Don’t you just love alliteration?) have their duties on the battlefield and the player or team can choose from a variety of skins. Each class has a male and a female model, and the female presumably is benefited with a smaller footprint, thus making for a smaller target. This feature harkens back to Sierra’s Starsiege Tribes where many of the best players opted for the slimmer outline offered in the female armor. In addition to the two sexes, each class may adorn in one of five different skin types. Include an interesting concept of a third team of skirmishers, and with some arithmetic, one finds that players have up to 120 different skin types to choose from.
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| Dude! Time out! I lost a contact! |
However, all the skins and guns in the world do not qualify as a true “combat simulation” on their own merit. The landscapes and environments must have substance and weight and strive to inspire true tactical behavior and operations. This is one department in which Team Factor succeeds brilliantly and yet fails miserably at the same time.
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| Welcome to the Jungle! |
Terrain
The single "Jungle" map contained in the playable demo version features lush, dense vegetation in which to conceal oneself, yet any careless movement through this brush creates distinctive telltale environmental sounds that may alert any nearby attentive opponents. The jungle is also populated by a variety of trees, from saplings to the mightiest oak, and as in its more deadly real-world counterpart, combat conditions of incoming small arms fire compel one to seek the shelter afforded by the thickest tree handy!
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| Now THAT's a Tree! |
In fact, it is the ample supply of cover and concealment that proves most damaging to the enjoyment of the contest. The human eye is especially sensitive to movement, particularly at night, and in this title, as in combat, any movement may betray your position and your actions. Thus, player survivability and life expectancy increase proportionally with the degree of cover and concealment and with lower activity. Translation? This game is a camper’s paradise.
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| You see how unfair spawn campers can make the play? |
A well-placed, well-camouflaged, and well-defensed soldier who controls his rate of fire can completely decimate and dominate a large section of the battlefield. Yet even this shortcoming can be countered with effective squad-level tactics for laying suppressive covering fire, advancing on the position, and closing with, engaging, and destroying that enemy position. Finding that skilled and disciplined a team of multiplayer infantryman is a topic for another section.
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| I see him out there. Can you? |
Aural Environment
Too few people can properly appreciate how important sound and aural conditions are in establishing the proper mood for a game or for establishing the legitimate credibility of that title. Would the movie Jaws have had the same power without John Williams’ ominous score? Would Psycho remain indelibly fixed in our lexicon without the high-pitched chaotic scree-scree sound during the shower seen? Where might Star Wars be without the innovative sound effects to accompany the cutting edge visuals of its day?
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| Moving out! |
Other recently successful titles on the market have either reinvented their sound effects or simply resampled anew. The result is a highly immersive and compelling aural experience. Team Factor does not rate so highly in this area. Despite the important tactical weight of ambient noises while moving through the brush, everything else seems canned and warmed-over. The machine guns pop innocuously, the grenades burst softly, and even incoming small arms fire rattles seemingly harmlessly. The feeling is as if the game was designed and coded and then one of the engineers remembered that sounds weren’t added, and so ran out to the local 24-hour convenience store and asked for a pack of cigarettes, some beef jerky, a lottery ticket, and a library of discount stock gunfire, explosions, and radio chatter. Oh, and don’t forget the Yoo-Hoo.
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| He who approaches the bridge of death must answer me these questions three... |
Pros and Cons
Yet, Team Factor, despite its failure in the sound engineering department, does have other plusses to its credit. With its nearly unique decision of pitting up to three separate competing forces on the field, each with its own objectives and aims, Team Factor breeds a new level of strategic consideration. Sure, “Us versus Them” is still intact, but now players may face “Us and They versus Them,” or “Us versus They and Them” or even “Us versus They versus Them versus Us!” What a tangled web! Certainly, this should do much to discourage random long-range engagements of machine gun fire directed at the first moving object in the distance, as it might well be an “ally.” Oddly, this might be one of the more interesting aspects of the multiplayer gameplay. Couple it with the inclusion of AI bots and furious action ensues. However, while a single-player model will likely be included in the release, this game clearly is designed for the participation of coordinated teammates.
Overall, I found the steep performance hits on a mid-level PC quite frustrating, even at reduced settings. The visuals have no real power and the sound quality equally disappoints. The complex environment, in the proper hands could have great promise, but for the run-of-the-mill vigilante lone wolf gamer, this only invites cheap and easy duels between spawn campers. However, in the hands of veteran skilled teams of players on both (or yet, all three) sides who approach the battlefield seriously, fairly, and with respect and who intend to treat it as such, this game will offer a wonderful tactical simulation.
Resources
Articles:- 2002/06/04: Team Factor Playable Demo (Preview)
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