Kill.Switch

We take a closer look at Kill.Switch, an action game that truly tests hand-eye coordination with fast-paced shooting action.

	Version All Platforms	Developer Namco	Publisher Namco	Genre Action

By Joseph Jackson

As if Namco didn't have enough top quality titles in the pipeline this year, Kill.Switch serves another quality offering freshly cooked in their labs. We recently fresh hands-on with the game, and certainly came away feeling positive about this action-packed blast-a-thon.

Despite complaints from some about Kill.Switch's straightforward arcade styled gameplay, it is this that has us excited. Many gamers long for the pure feel and excitement of arcade styled games, and Namco's Kill.Switch fits the bill quite nicely.

Back at E3, Kill.Switch practically floored me, and I personally felt it was the best game at Namco's booth. The gameplay mechanics were highly addictive and the action was great, as you assumed the role of a character sent to the front lines of battle to make war, not love or peace in a world treading on the fine line of global conflict.

The gameplay consists of third-person view action taking place in six missions spanning across 18 war-torn levels ranging from middle-eastern deserts to an underground submarine base and more. The compelling storyline will help drive the diverse mission objectives that'll span the globe.

What makes the gaming environments of Kill.Switch all the more unique are that they're all littered with various objects scattered about, including broken down cars, tires, crates, columns, and more. All of which can be used as cover during your shoot outs against the enemies throughout the game.

Namco refers to this feature as the "Offensive cover system" and it allows you to dynamically use the objects and terrains throughout the environments to offensively engage the enemies.

In a way you can say that this system doesn't seem to be that much different from the play mechanics of Namco's Time Crisis series which has players ducking and hiding behind cover during shoot outs as well. The only immediately apparent difference being that the gameplay of Time Crisis takes place in a first person view, whereas Kill.Switch is third-person.

Along with the Offensive Cover System is the Blindfire combat system that allows players to launch a frontal assault like no other against the enemy without being exposed to counter fire. Not only can your characters peek around corners to blast away at the enemies while exposing their own bodies as open targets, but you can also lay down suppressing fire without even looking by firing away with only your arm exposed, which is less risky.

The play mechanics are that of a military styled shooting game, where you make use of modern warfare tactics with a great emphasis on awesome firepower and realistic cover tactics in order to survive the enemy onslaught throughout the game.

Utilizing sophisticated AI routines, the enemies throughout the game will use the same tactics available to you, including both cover and blindfire, as well as having the advantage of teamwork, coordinating a team effort to help take you down.

The graphics are pretty solid, sporting some detailed looking characters and environments. Everything from the character models, background graphics, lighting effects and animations throughout the game looked quite polished. There were also some weathering effects such as light sandstorms coming from the Middle Eastern deserts, causing the visibility of the levels to lessen.

The character designs and animations seemed to stand out the most. Each character animated quite well, running, hiding, ducking convincingly. The enemies reacted quite well to being shot, eventually falling into some great death animations.

Of course nothing is perfect and there's bound to be a flaw somewhere. Despite the solid looking graphics and animations, Kill.Switch's visual flaw comes in the form of the inconsistent quality of its textures. Whereas some textures look nice and sharp, a few others look quite blurry when you approach the textured objects, i.e. some of the wrecked vehicles you use as cover from enemy fire.

The audio portion of Kill.Switch was sounding quite sharp with music fitting the action in each level quite well. The sound effects were crisp, with high fidelity sounds of machine gun discharges, small and large explosions, reloading of ammo, and more. Namco's sound team has this area covered so no worries.

Overall, from our brief but very fun exposure to Kill.Switch we definitely see tons of potential in Namco's newest blast-a-thon. The arcade style gameplay may turn some people off but as major arcade fans we certainly dug it and look forward to more when Kill.Switch releases later this year for the Playstation 2 and X-box consoles. A PC version was recently announced and will be developed and distributed by Hip Interactive at an undisclosed released date. Stay Tuned as more becomes available on Kill.Switch.