Navy SEALs: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Genre: Action
Publisher: ValueSoft
Developer: JarHead Games
Release Date: July 18, 2003

Navy Seals: Weapons of Mass Destruction is the latest title from the Navy Seals series, produced by Valuesoft and developed by Jarhead Games. This series has been noted to one of, if not the, worst series in the history of computer gamming. This title does not disappoint in this respect.

The title is extremely buggy. I have played some stinkers games in the past, but this takes the cake. I cannot stress this enough and there are no two ways about saying this, this title is bad.

The graphics are on par with Half-Life in quality, which by now is 5+ years old. Usually there are two, maybe three different skins per level. The graphics are the best part of the game. It looks like the developer spent more time with the graphics then the engine of the game. I had no real issues with the graphics.

The level design was nice in comparison to the rest of the game. The inability to run over sand dunes annoyed me. The buildings were nicely laid out and I never got stuck, and believe me, I tried.

The sounds were unoriginal. The death animation of the opponents finish then the opponent makes its death scream. The music was non-existent. I am not sure if that was purposeful or that it was just that buggy.

The weapon choices were not bad. They consisted of a main weapon that differed across the missions, a .45 caliber pistol, and a knife. The pistol was capable of having a silencer attached. Unfortunately, the silenced weapons served no practical purpose. The opponents in the game seem to have a near mystical quality to know if the player is walking up on them. This is not much of a problem because the opponents tend to get confused and run all around after a few seconds of taking a shot at the player. In addition, fences do not stop bullets. They did not even to seem to lower the accuracy of the fire.

The player's partner is an idiot. I found it easier to keep him alive by sticking him and telling him to stay. He gets lost, but usually catches up. He runs right into the middle of a firefight. I really appreciated this since he would gladly act as a human shield to my fire. I know our forces have to build repor with the People of Iraq, but come on.

I had a habit of breaking the scripting of the title. I would find myself at some spot in the title not able to continue. A good example of this is when I created the screen shots. The game stopped spawning. I could not complete the level. The only solution I could find was to restart from the beginning. This, of course, is annoying.

The physics engine is pathetic. I managed to shoot opponents with the .45 caliber pistol from approximately 300 yards. Meanwhile, I find I was having problems hitting opponents with the submachine gun at 5 feet. I felt very embarrassed by my close-in gun work and my Master Sergeant would have been embarrassed.

The cutest surprise was when I would manage to clip, to reside in, a model of one of the opponents. Of course, the opponent would have no problems shooting me. I would go into a corner of a room to clear that room. I kept being shot repeatedly after I shot everyone I could see. I would move to another corner. That is when I realized someone was standing where I was crouching and shooting at me.

The title lacks features. There is no music, network support, or joystick support. It is no frills. With other very cheap games out there, like Half-Life or America's Army, with a least a decent chance at not ticking the player off, there should have been more work put into the title. The config file for the game shows options for joystick and music. I conjecture that it was planned to add these features and the project ran out of time and/or money.

To sum it up, Navy Seals: Weapons of Mass Destruction is the worst title I have every played. I have not had a worse game play experience in my life. How can I say this, do not buy this title. Valuesoft made their money by making low budget puzzle and table games. There is no shame in this. Making the Navy Seals series is a mistake though. It needed a lot of further development and better features.

Score : 1.0/10