Global Ops: Commando Libya

Global Ops: Commando Libya is a third-person shooter video game developed by Spectral Games and published by BitComposer Games in October 2011 only for mh:awesomegames:Microsoft Windows. This was the first game by Spectral Games, which, according to their official pages, is a company whose exployees have previously worked on several games, like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Men of Valor: Vietnam and Necrovision.

Plot
The plot of the game consists of an uchronia set after the 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash, in 2011, a notorious Russian mafia boss called Yebievdenko retrieves the weapons from the crashed airplane and wants to sell them to the ruthless Libyan ruler. After that, a squad consisting of two members: West and Pope, is sent by the CIA with the mission of stopping the weapon deal.

Gameplay
Global Ops: Commando Libya is a third-person shooter that also has many gameplay mechanics taken from the Gears of War games, like a cover system, the ability of rolling to the sides and the gunplay that also tries to imitate the one from the aforementioned saga.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The menu interface is really simplistic and lazily made, as it only consists of a steel plate for the background with a spinning ball on the center of it (which can probably be a a cannon ball), the logo of the game at the top and the options available in the left side of the screen. Besides that, the logo of the game is also very generic, consisting in some letters with the name of the game placed on an illustration of the five continents. The worst part of this is that the developers didn't even bother in creating an original font for the logo, instead, they just used the Stencil font for it (a font that is included by default in most of the Windows operating systems) and added a couple of visual effects on Adobe Photoshop to make it look a bit different.
 * 2) The game is presented with one of the most stupid plot ideas created for a video game that have ever existed. In 1968, a B-52G bomber plane that carried several weapons of massive destruction crashes crashes into the arctic ocean (something that happened in real-life, as stated before), but it's not until 43 years later (2011), a Russian mafia leader named Yebievdenko along with his allies take those weapons and want to sell them to the governor of Libya. Besides making barely any kind of sense, the plot also have an abysmal amount of plot holes, some of them include but are not limited to:
 * 3) * If the B-52G was carrying several weapons of massive destruction, why didn't they explode when the crash happened?
 * 4) * Why nobody paid attention to what happened with the weapons during that 43 years period if they were so dangerous and confidential?
 * 5) * How did a Russian mafia leader got the necessary equipment to travel to the arctic ocean and how did he know about those weapons?
 * 6) * Why does he wants to sell those weapons to the Libyan governor?
 * 7) As said before, the entire game is a cheap Gears of War imitation, not only because the gameplay and almost all of the mechanics (to not say all of them) are ripped from these games, but also the game even takes the same control inputs, being the A button the worst offender, as this button is the responsible for many actions like running, taking cover and rolling to the sides in both games.
 * 8) * Not satisfied with copying the entire gameplay concept of another game to get some easy sales and attention, the developers of the game didn't even bother in making those copied mechanics comfortable and easy to use for the player:
 * 9) ** If you keep the A button pressed while walking, your character will start to run, but the speed of your sprint is exaggerately slow, you can even feel that the character is barely moving a little faster just because of the animation of the character and the positioning of the camera.
 * 10) ** The cover system is activated by walking or running near a wall and pressing A again, but this cover system barely works, as most of the times when you press A, the character will roll instead, and when you finally get to cover, your character will magnetize to the wall in a literal way, thus, getting out of cover can be very hard at times because the character will just refuse to get out of cover, and sometimes the character will get to cover again when you can finally get out of it.
 * 11) *** The rolling mechanic is also very faulty because the complete opposite of what happens with the cover mechanic will happen at times.
 * 12) * Due to the terrible walking speed, problems with the gunplay and the broken cover system, the general gameplay and pacing can feel exaggeratedly slow, and this is not helped by the fact that the firefights are dragged on and on in all of the levels.
 * 13) * The control inputs cannot be changed at any moment for the mouse and keyboard and the controller in case that you're using one and you can't even see what are the default input buttons, instead, the game will tell you brefly about some of the inputs while you're playing, but again, if you're using a controller, the game will not show up the buttons that correspond to each action, it'll only show up the inputs that correspond for the keyboard.
 * 14) * As it was mentioned earlier, the controls of the game are terribly broken because the A button is assigned to three actions at the same time, and since the developers didn't polish the control inputs adequately, moving in the game is very tedious due to the broken nature of the actions assigned to the A button, but the control issues are not only restricted to the A button, almost all of the inputs have a very noticeable input delay to the point that sometimes they won't even respond at all, and if you're using a controller and you run with the character, the camera will not be able to move and you'll be restricted to move entirely with the left analog, and if that wasn't enough, the turning sensibility is exaggerately slow, meaning that taking sharp curves will ve a very tedious task, as you have to stop entirely, move the camera to the desired position and then run again.
 * 15) For being such a late 2011 release, the graphics of the game look very outdated, especially if you compare it to games that came out that same year, like Battlefield 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Crysis 2, some of the objects and terrains look terribly blurry and there isn't a lot of detail in most of the game assets, only a few things have them, which make the game look even more strange due to the mix of well detailed textures with blurry and muddy objects. The most painful fact is that it is powered by Unreal Engine 3, making very little use of the engine's power.
 * 16) While you're walking and shooting, the camera takes an adequate angle, but when you start to run, the camera will get in such an angle that the character will block an 80% of the screen because it focuses too close on the character's torso, limiting the field of view considerably, and if you're wondering, to change the FOV of the game you have to modify the game's files, as in the options menu there is no possible way to modify that by default.
 * 17) When you're getting damaged by the enemy fire, the screen will get more red and a white skull will appear in the middle of your screen, the problem with this skull is that it's very opaque in comparision to the red screen and it can obstruct your field of view considerably because of its location.
 * 18) The animations are so terrible that somehow they can even remind of games like Soldner: Secret Wars. To begin with, the animations of your main character while holding a weapon are very inconsistent, sometimes they look fluent when you aim and shoot, but most of the times they look very stiff, and this is more noticeable when you shoot without aiming while taking cover, probably because of the poor programming of the game, however, not only these kind of animations are badly designed, the walking animations of all of the characters remind more of a walking baby that just pooped on his diapers, the dying animations look more like a duck target in a carnival game that has been shot and all of the reloading animations look exactly the same, even the shotgun, the missile launcher and the machine gun have the same reloading animations as the other weapons of the game.
 * 19) The variety of available weapons in the game is very limited, as there are only eight weapons in total, and what's worse is that only two of them are explosive weapons, the rest of the weapons are consisted majorly of rifles and there isn't even a single pistol or another variant of the only submachine gun and shotgun of the game.
 * 20) In a very similar way to what happens with games like Damnation or Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, all of the weapons (except for the Dragunov sniper rifle and the M136 AT4) have a terrible accuracy that ends up generating a fake difficulty sensation, and even with that, the crosshair never changes in each weapon, instead, they all have the same size and crosshair design, unlike other games that have different crosshairs for each weapon type and sizes based on their accuracy levels, for instance, even the shotgun with its wide spread has the default crosshair of the M16 rifle.
 * 21) * Aiming with the Dragunov can be very imprecise because your character will not even stay firm while aiming, and it's not part of a breath mechanic like what happens with games like Call of Duty, instead, the imprecise aiming is caused by the poor programming of the game, as when you move the mouse while aiming, your character will also move its articulations like if he was actually moving instead of staying firm, and since the movement is broken by default, this ends up affecting the aiming with the reticle too.
 * 22) * The grenades are terribly ineffective because the range of the explosion is abysmally small, if you want to kill an enemy with a grenade, the grenade has to be exactly in the dead center under the enemy position to make a sure kill, most of the times this can be achieved due to the poor enemy AI, but when the enemies are moving, it can be almost impossible to kill them with grenades, and even with that, there are times where the explosion range can suddenly change for better or worse with no previous advice, which means that the explosion range can be incredibly big or not exist at all.
 * 23) * Apparently, the M16 rifle has an M203 grenade launcher attached to it, but it's just there to tease the player, as you can't shoot with it, not even if you press the grenade button, because the character will just throw a grenade instead. Another thing that is worth to mention is that it also has an ACOG sight for the iron sights, but it makes no difference in reality, the weapon doesn't has a reticle for it and the zoom level is exactly the same as the other weapons with iron sights.
 * 24) The artificial intelligence of the game is so terribly programmed to the point that sometimes the enemies will not shoot you or hit you even if you're next to them, instead, they will just stare at you, like if they were waiting to die as soon as possible. The worst part of all is that most of the times when the enemies are in combat, they can be too dumb or too unfair, as they don't try to put up resistance, but are able to kill you in less than three shots. In the escape part of the first mission is where this aspect gets much worse, as they have perfect accuracy and their weapons are terribly overpowered, despite the fact that you and them are riding on boats.
 * 25) All of the levels have a very linear design that almost tells the player where to go, and even with that, some sections can be terribly confusing because of how poorly-designed are and enemies can appear from a point that you previously beaten before, which only makes anything worse.
 * 26) The game has several boss battles in most of the levels, but the problem is that they're not real boss battles, these battles consist of a specific vehicle that makes things harder for the player (whether a tank, an APC or a helicopter) in a great part of the missions, and to destroy them, you have to find a specific weapon (usually an M136 AT4) and then shooting at them until they get destroyed, something that can get quite repetitive because it never changes from the core.
 * 27) * Speaking of the boss battles, the battles against the APC'S and the thanks are quite unfair because sometimes they can shoot their main cannon at you, and dodging these attacks is almost impossible due to the slow movement of your character and the fact that you can barely take cover in most of these sections, however, some others don't make any kind of sense at all, for example, in the battles against the helicopters (Even against the Yebievdenko's helicopter), they will just fire the automatic cannon instead of the missiles.
 * 28) Something that makes no sense if you're a military enthusiast is that the Libyan insurgents and Russian mercenaries use the Apache AH-64 as their main attack helicopter, while in reality the AH-64 is not used by any of both countries, and even if they captured many of them, is not that common that real life insurgents could use them without any kind of training and guidance.
 * 29) You can drive certain vehicles in some of the levels, like a T-72 tank or a BRDM-2 APC, something that in paper sounds great, but in practice, it's totally horrible because the physics of the vehicles are completely screwed up, as the handling is very slippery and sometimes the collision detection can throw your vehicle away with a lot of strength, and besides that, the BRDM-2 is not portrayed adequately, as in the game it only has a tank cannon as the main weapon, but the real life APC has a KPV automatic cannon as main weapon and a PKT machine fun as a secondary weapon. Another thing to mention is that due to the narrow streets of the levels, using the vehicles will be even more harder to control.
 * 30) The voice acting is so horrible and laughable that you may think that it's an April Fools joke. To begin with, the voices of the main characters sound are excessively hoarse, to the point that sometimes it can be quite hard to understand what are they saying if you're not using or reading the subtitles, and this doesn't get much better with the voices of the enemies, instead, they sound even worse because of their exaggerated accent and voice tone that end up being annoying rather than menacing, but the worst part of the voice acting resides on the death sounds, when you kill an enemy or the main character gets killed, he will scream in a very high volume, and besides being entirely impossible to scream after getting shot in the head, the screams sound more like if the characters had diarrhea or if they got kicked in the balls.
 * 31) Not only the voice acting is laughable and ridiculous, the dialogue of the entire game is also very cheesy and the amount of obscene language is so abusive that it sounds more like the insults that an angry kid on Xbox Live or PlayStation Network would use to insult you for beating him on a match, starting from the main characters that always try to sound badass and rude, almost to the level of Rogue Warrior, however, the bosses are even more cringe-worthy, specially Yebievdenko, who will insult you with a lot of cheesy and generic quotes like "Beat me if you can, asshole!", "Try harder, motherfucker!" and "Eat my ass, you moron", the fact that his voice acting is terribly exaggerated and out of tone just makes the game sound much worse. Listen for yourself.
 * 32) The game has some of the most stupid and absurd achievements of all time. To unlock one of the achievements, which is named "Fearless!", you need to watch the introduction of the game in the hardest difficulty, but the thing doesn't end up there, the "Customizer!" achievement can be unlocked by just opening the options menu, and there is a secret achievement named "Dumbass!", which requieres the player to kill himself with a grenade.
 * 33) While the game has a multiplayer mode that could possibly add some hours of play to the game, it adds completely nothing to the genre and it has no original game modes or game mechanics that could attract players, instead, it only has three game modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Domination. Due to this and the low amount of copies sold, the multiplayer mode was practically dead on arrival.
 * 34) * Not satisfied with adding a multiplayer mode that is not different from other games, the game also wastes the opportunity of being a cooperative third-person shooter, even if the game was completely broken from the inside, it could've been great to add a cooperative mode to play with a friend, but for some strange reason, the developers didn't add it, probably because of the low-budget of the game or time factors, just like what happened with Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
 * 35) At the time it was released, the game had a terrible optimization in most of the computers, even in a high-end PC the game would run at less than 25 FPS at times (nowadays the game would run perfectly on any gaming PC except for too low-end ones). Another major issue with the game is the fact that it has a lot of inconsistent technical, which include random crashings and compatibility issues, and as it was stated before, this is not a problem that happens in all of the computers, meaning that there isn't a common denominator that could help to see what is going on with the game.
 * 36) The cover of the game can be considered misleading at certain point, because in the cover there is an US soldier holding an M16 rifle while in the background a Black Hawk helicopter is about to crash to the ground, but in the real game, there aren't any U.S soldiers apart from the two main protagonists (which are not regular soldiers) and the only helicopter that makes an appearance is the Apache AH-64, the Black Hawk just appears as a prop in one of the levels.
 * 37) Despite all of the game flaws, it can still be completed in less than five hours, and if you take the dead mutliplayer mode away, there are no incentives to replay the game, there are no collectibles, no alternative endings and no cooperative mode, the achievements may be the only things that could increment the replay value, but all of them can be completed in just one run of the game, and since all of them are very easy to get, the game ends up having no replay value.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) If you ignore the terrible mechanics that make the game frustrating, playing it can be a quite unintentionally funny experience due to its terrible voice acting, cheesy dialogue, god-awful death screams, the amount of bugs, and the overall cheap quality of the animations.
 * 2) Even if the level design is completely linear and sometimes confusing, the backgrounds and the decoration of them are quite fitting and detailed, especially for the levels set in Libya, as the developers added a great amount of details that can make the player feel like if he actually was in Libya.
 * 3) The soundtrack is actually great, fitting well with the pacing of the game and the ambiance of each respective level.

Reception
Global Ops: Commando Libya was heavily panned by the critics, to the point that it currently holds a score of 37/100 on Metacritic.

The Czech magazine LEVEL rated the game with a score of 1/10, shortly describing: "Extremely below-average product in all aspects sets an example of how a low-budget game can go wrong."

The Russian website Absolute Games (ag.ru) gave the game 35%, criticizing the unnecesary amount of obscene language used for the dialogues, the low amount of weapons available, the terrible artificial intelligence of the enemies, the repetitiveness of some of the enemy lines, the limited multiplayer mode, the annoying and repetitive helicopter boss battles, the absence of a cooperative mode and how shameless were the developers after trying to copy everything that Gears of War did previously. In their final verdict, they said the following: "Global Ops cannot be taken seriously. At first, it laughs with dashing swears and the stupidity of what is happening, but somewhere in the middle, the routine shooting of boobies leads to an acute attack of blues."

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