Bargain Bin Laden is my favorite feature on the site, so this my attempt at emulating those reviews. I love buying bargain bin games, and FBBL is where I'll share the ones I like the best. - SPJglitches



Short in length but big on gameplay. That's kill.switch at its core, a game lost like so many others during the holiday season of 2003.

Often cited as the inspiration to similarly cover-focused games like Gears of War, kill.switch is one of those games that many know of but few have played. While the mechanics of kill.switch are not as well refined as those of Gears, they serve their purpose well and still provide an excellent gameplay experience today.

The game's main flaws are its short length and a lack of reasons to keep playing after reaching the end, which did not provide a good value for its initial price of $50. For the low sum you can snag it for today, however, it is absolutely worth playing—if only to discover why and how it became the inspiration that it is.

Read on to find out why kill.switch is totally worth your time and is a game quite worthy of your next bargain bin purchase.



Title: kill.switch (PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC)
Developed by: Namco
Released: October 28th, 2003
Bargain Binned: $9.99/$6.99 (PS2/Xbox) at GameStop, 100 Goozex points (PS2/Xbox/PC)

When you first start the game, the player is left almost entirely in the dark as to what the hell is actually going on. Through the discussion of two shady-sounding voices you learn that some sort of plan is being unfurled through the direct control of your character, but your role in the event and the actual plan itself are left unclear. Meanwhile, some girl with a sexy voice is trying to “get a lock on” your signal, presumably to gain control of you, super-soldier Nick Bishop, instead of the other guys. Over time you'll learn more about what exactly is going on, and soon a tale of vengeance, political intrigue, and espionage is revealed.

The story valiantly attempts cleverness through a number of self-referential videogame comments and the slow unraveling of information leading up to the game's climax, but it ultimately fails when piecing together all the fragments of information the player receives. Through most of the game the narrative is too convoluted for its own good, and if you aren't paying extremely close attention to the dialogue you are sure to miss important details of the plot. It's certainly an interesting premise, but the game does not do a considerably good job of telling its story.

Despite the often incoherent nature of the story, the game's cutscenes are incredible, and are some of the best I've seen to date. It's sad to think that such production values were put into a game that did not perform well at retail, but the results are some well animated and beautiful video sequences that are truly a sight to behold. Unfortunately, there are very few of them in the game, occurring only between levels and at the end of the game, but their visual quality more than makes up for their scarcity.

The same cannot be said for the graphics in general, however. While many aspects of the game's graphics look great, there are some levels and characters that look strikingly better than others. The first level, taking place in a Middle Eastern city, looks like garbage in comparison to the second level, featuring excellent lighting, rain, and fog effects on a rain-soaked ship in a storm. The game's textures are decidedly hit-or-miss as well, with some nice reflective surfaces contrasted by others that lack any graphical flourish. Nick Bishop's character model and attire look far more detailed than those of his enemies', too. All things considered, kill.switch's graphics hold up fairly well, and shouldn't detract too much from the overall experience.

Bargain bin games aren't expected to have incredible graphics, though, and playing shooters for their story is a rare occurrence, so it's a good thing that kill.switch's gameplay has aged as well as it has. The game revolves around taking cover wherever and whenever possible, leaning out to take shots at enemies, and trying to avoid getting taken down while you're at it. Yes, WinBack did it first, but kill.switch does it better.

The game's cover system can be activated and deactivated by a simple button press; just hold down the L1 button or the left trigger on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox controllers, respectively, to snap to the nearest cover. While in cover, you can hold down on the left thumbstick to crouch, and you can also hold up to stand straight or aim over low objects. To shoot at enemies in cover you can either blindfire, resulting in greater protection but significantly reduced accuracy, or lean out, attaining far greater precision but putting yourself at greater risk of injury. During my time with the game I almost never used blindfire; if you're smart you'll know when you should and should not fire, and the technique is far too inaccurate to be of much use. That said, getting in and out of cover, firing from cover, and diving out of cover are all made fairly intuitive and easy to perform.

The guys you're shooting at while doing all this only add to the game's level of entertainment. Your enemies are far from brilliant tacticians, but they do make good use of cover and make praiseworthy attempts at taking you down. Enemies will routinely toss grenades and shift from one place of cover to another, adding to their believability and the game's challenge. Mind you, the game is not incredibly difficult if you play the game how it's meant to be played, but those who decide to run and gun will be mowed down with ease. Health packs are in fairly regular supply in kill.switch, but even a single forgotten enemy can spell death in seconds. Cover is not only a gimmick in this game; it is entirely necessary for your survival.

Luckily, the game's weaponry helps to counteract Bishop's propensity for death and your enemies' means of causing it. While most of the game's weapons are simply different types of assault rifles, you will also see a shotgun and a sniper rifle as part of your arsenal. In most games, this lack of variety would bother me, but in kill.switch your bevy of assault rifles makes sense in context. Most of your combat will occur over medium to long distances—perfect for your assortment of automatic weapons. You also have a few different types of grenades, but they mostly just serve as a way of scattering groups of enemies so you can take them out on the ground. The flash grenade can be useful when there are large clusters of baddies all together, but this situation rarely arises as the enemies tend to spread themselves out pretty well.

Another strong point of kill.switch is the sound design, particularly with its effects and score. Though there isn't anything too extraordinary, all of the guns and explosions sound just as you'd expect them to and complement the action well. No complaints there. The score is also good; some tracks are far more memorable than others, but nothing stands out as being particularly bad or annoying. The voice acting, while great during cutscenes, is not nearly as good from the mouths of your enemies, but this is just a minor annoyance. A lot of their banter is regurgitated throughout the game, and I swear that you'll hear the phrase “Grenade! Take cover!” every time you throw one.

The only thing that significantly detracts from all of this is the linearity of the levels. Nearly all of the game's levels funnel you down a specific path, with the choice of weaponry and places of cover being the only freedoms afforded to the player. The somewhat unpredictable nature of the AI can change things around a bit, but for the most part a second playthrough of a level will yield identical results.

This is the part where I must make something very clear; you will probably not have the desire to play this a second time. The linearity of the levels, coupled with the game's short length, make this a disc that will probably not spin much longer once you've finished the game. Most people playing on the normal difficulty should be able to finish this one off in three to six hours, and there really isn't any reason to play it again. There is a harder difficulty setting that forces you to be more tactical and conservative with your shooting, but this mode will likely provide more frustration than fun.

I can't stress enough that, despite its short length, kill.switch needs to be played. On the surface it looks like just another generic shooter, but the underlying mechanics of the game alone make this a worthy addition to anyone's library. You may only play it once, but for the low price of entry it's an experience worth every penny.