Game review and tips: Enemy Front, Xbox 360

Enemy Front 2 in action. Picture: Contributed

Enemy Front - Xbox 360 (reviewed) / Playstation 3 / PC

Score: 2.3 / 10

The title, developed by Polish firm, CI Games, is an exercise in nostalgia, harking back to the genre as it stood at the turn of the millennium, complete with its own inexcusably lax game design.

The Nazi enemies confronted by the protagonist, Robert Hawkins, appear to be mere flesh and blood. Yet the sloppy coding on the part of CI Games seems to imbue them with occult-like powers. These are mortals capable of walking through solid brick walls, evading bullets fired at point blank range, levitating in mid air, or defying the laws of physics to disappear below terra firma.

The surrounding environs fare little better. Whereas the Call of Duty series - for all its faults - has been able to capture the devastation of the arena of war, Enemy Front presents an anodyne and glitch-plagued world. Landscapes and buildings disappear and reappear at random while there is scant texture or detail throughout.

Astonishingly, CI Games have developed the game using Crytek’s CryEngine 3 model, but the end result feels severely dated. Indeed, Enemy Front would barely pass muster as a bargain basement Playstation 2 title, so grating are its graphical and AI faults. Every step of the way, you get the sense that this is a game that has been mired in development hell.

Not even the plot can pique the interest. The story of Hawkins, a war correspondent cum all American hero, is hackneyed and trite, made even worse by desultory dialogue. Even if you are stubborn enough to persist with the game, its absurdly unforgiving checkpoints will see you quickly tire of proceedings.

TIPS AND TRICKS

1) A playthrough of Enemy Front will result in repeated, frustrating glitches. Sometimes, these can be solved by pausing and then unpausing the game.

2) One of the title’s many bizarre quirks means that pistols are often more effective at range than rifles. Faced with a far-off enemy, whip out your handgun.

3) The best advice is saved for last: quite simply, don’t buy Enemy Front.