Microprose tries to pass off an enhanced mod as a full-blown retail game, and fails.

I’m not one for pithy comments, but in the case of Microprose’s Tactical Ops: Assault On Terror (Tac Ops), I’ll give it a try. Here goes. Tac Ops is the most unnecessary game published this year. Was that pithy enough for you?

I realize I need to explain why I feel the way I do, and I will. And I’ll do it without eating up gobs of white space. I mean, why spend the same amount of time saying things about a game you dislike as you would about one you like. Does it really take a minimum word count to explain that a game is useless? I don’t think so. On that basis, I’m going to let my editor worry about word count and white space. This is going to be brief.

I used the word “unnecessary” deliberately to describe this retail game, because it is a former mod for Unreal Tournament blown up with some new maps and spiffier graphics. Everything about Tac Ops advertises its Unreal Tournament roots, right down to the appearance of the loading screens. At first I thought I was playing Unreal Tournament, but then the game started. Frankly, on my machine the graphics didn’t look very good, but the arcade-like movement of the pseudo-military counter terrorists was just plain funny (as in bad).

Now, I admit that I wasn’t that crazy about Tac Ops as a free downloadable mod (Infiltration, which also offers real world weapons, is better) but the idea of someone spending $30 in hard earned cash on a blown up version is too much to take. You really have to be desperate for any computer action involving counter terrorism to go out and actually buy this thing. Unless, of course, you’re one of the few people on the planet who never played UT or the mod, and a game like Tac Ops is fresh, new and priced attractively. Okay, maybe there are a few people who might want the retail version, but not many.

Tac Ops isn’t the worst game ever made. In all fairness, it’s decent. Nice weapons, sounds and lots of action (none of it realistic), which places it squarely in the category of action-oriented first-person shooters. Second-rate action-oriented first-person shooters.

But the biggest question that I have after installing, playing and uninstalling Tac Ops, is how did Microprose get its name on the box? What happened to the once mighty Maryland game company that we find its name on the retail box of a blown up mod like Tac Ops?

The marketplace is a tough mistress.

Reviewed by Walter Hurdle.