SAS: Secure Tomorrow review

For those not familiar with the SAS, it’s the Brits’ equivalent of the U.S. Marine Corps. Or, if you believe SAS: Secure Tomorrow’s interpretation, it’s an army of unkillable yet dim-witted super-soldiers that mow down international terrorists by the dozen.

You personally are a counter-terrorist of flesh and blood, but having a team of unstoppable Terminators makes that largely irrelevant. As soon as you take the first step into a room, your two partners will charge in, easily absorbing their weight in lead, and clumsily shoot everything that moves. You’d be able to run through the entire game without firing a shot if your partners weren’t prone to getting caught on level geometry or obliviously running right through an enemy camp. Unintentional as they may be, these bugs are the only “features” that make SAS even remotely challenging.

Your squad utilizes a well-worn but still-enjoyable mechanic of stacking up on a door and throwing in a flashbang, or rather a flash-slow-down-time-bang that lets you shred those freedom-haters in slow-mo. The shotgun and sniper rifle provide worthwhile alternatives to the standard-issue assault rifle; pistols, submachine guns, and dropped enemy weapons are unnecessary. The same drab office facility environments are repeated across most missions, and even the snowy mountain setting quickly grows tiresome as paths are arbitrarily blocked to force you along a tightly linear route.

The SAS’s god-like force feels wasted on the lackluster antagonists in the game, whose entire diabolical scheme is foiled in a few measly hours of gameplay. Enemies knock over objects for cover, but otherwise, the AI is rudimentary. This combination of powerful allies and weak foes makes the player feel completely superfluous, so why not play a game that needs us instead?

PC Gamer scores games on a percentage scale, which is rounded to the closest whole number to determine the GamesRadar score.

PCG Final Verdict: 37% (don’t bother)

Dec 16, 2008