The Plan

Review from Yug and Yug - Sunday, 16 July 2006 @ 12:00am

I absolutely love a game with a good story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that every FPS needs some epic multi-character 40 hour story with multiple sub stories. I just tend to find that plot and characters tend to be the reason a game is worth playing, regardless of how pretty looking the engine is.

'The Plan' certainly puts my theory to the test.

Resembling a cross between an episode of 24 and Oceans 12, the game starts off as a team of stereotypical professional thieves are stealing a pair of Rembrandt paintings, when a series of double crosses leaves one of them in jail. Cut to five years later and the thieves who were betrayed meet up again in order to get payback for what happened, while completing the job for themselves. Alan 'Poker' Siegel, Robert 'The Mind' Taylor, and Valerie 'Cat' Carrera are your alter egos during the course of the game, a trio of extremely beautiful and uber cool people. It's all very clich'd though, to the point where some of the dialogues actually made me physically wince in pain.

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The cut scenes are done in a 'Max Payne' sort of static storyboard way, which is really something you'll either love or hate. Personally I don't mind it, I thought it was quite stylish, and considering how the in-game graphics actually look it was definitely the better decision.

Which is what really brings me to the point I was trying to make initially; about how important the story of a game is when compared to the graphics. Graphically, this game has two serious problems.

First of all, it's very very obviously a port of a console game. From the fuzzy textures to the instructions telling you to 'press the square button', the mouse controls are an afterthought and the text is so big it takes up half the screen.

Secondly, it's very very obviously a port of a console game that belongs on the Playstation 1. The textures are last last (yes, that's two lasts) generation half the time, there is no advanced lighting or texture features and there is constant clipping problems with characters and objects. Also worth noting was the amount of problems I personally had keeping the game running, every half an hour it would freeze up and my graphics card would crap itself. It's hard to know if it's a problem with my computer or a problem with the game, but it's worth nothing that I only recently finished Half Life 2: Episode 1 and never had any issues.

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Despite the best efforts of the developer though, I found myself strangely drawn into the game. Once you manage to stumble through the first level, you have enough of an idea to avoid most of the initial frustrations and start to play the game without having to try to remember where L1 is on the keyboard.

The second level especially was a turning point for me. Situated on a speeding train, it was similar in execution to the final scene from Mission Impossible. It involved running along the roof, shimmying along the outside while avoiding trains rushing past in the other direction, cutting the power and stealing a coveted 'data disc', etc. Cinematically it reminded me a lot of Fahrenheit, another action-adventure game, with a lot of the same gameplay restrictions. Unlike the 'DDR' style action sequences in that game however, 'The Plan' gives you complete control through most of the levels, and although they are completely linear there is one thing which makes playing through them a lot of fun.

You have the three main characters, and you literally control them all at the same time. Your interface is made up of 3 screens, 1 main and 2 subs, which are always focused on the three main characters. You can switch between them easily at any point. This leads to a lot of well implemented puzzles, such as getting Carrera to distract a guard as you switch to Taylor then walks past behind him. Or letting Siegel get spotted by a guard then switching to Taylor and sneaking up behind the guard and knocking him out as he is arresting Siegel. It's an interesting spin on the game, and I've thought long and hard about it and I can't remember any game with this sort of multiple character interaction since 'Three Vikings' on the Super Nintendo.

The fact that each character has special abilities and items, such as pick pocketing, lock picking, night vision glasses, computer hacking, etc makes the game really feel like you do have to work all the characters together as a team in order to complete the mission. There are even some aspirations to be like other great stealth games as you can hide in lockers, see enemies' fields of vision and pickup weapons that switch you to a first person view.

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There is so much potential for greatness in this game that it makes it even more of a shame that it's so unpolished. Half way through each level, the voices of the characters disappear, and you're left with only text. It's only after a few levels you realise its not some sound glitch, but that they didn't get all the speech done. Even an extra multiplayer mode seems tacked on, as you can't even unlock it unless you complete certain bonus objectives in each level first, and even then it's just not something that is playable with 3 people on a PC (Although I'm sure on the console version it might be a bit of fun).

If you do pick the game up (and it's not exactly expensive either, a valid point), then just consider all the negative aspects to the game and realise that I still played through it all the way to the end and quite enjoyed it, even if the ending was ( not surprisingly ) rather clich'd.

Summary

Some really innovative cinematic gameplay techniques and a classy story are let down by a lack of polish and attention to detail. A poor port of an ok game that had awesome potential.

Pros

Great use of split screen multi-character control, compelling story, clever puzzles, artistic cut scenes, the music is very stylish, it's cheap!

Cons

Average graphics, bad clipping issues, the characters and story are too clich?, is obviously a port from a console and it shows in all the worst ways, voices stopping.