Signal Ops

This game was a real surprise! First of all i cant say much about singleplayer, since we always play this title together. Gameplay is versatile. Sneaking around, solving puzzles, planing the next move or running away, reacting on traps and preventing alarms. Yet its no game for people that just want to rush thru every level to the end. We often compared it to playing "Commandos" about 15 years ago. There are also very hidden places to find and hard puzzles to solve at some points to get to the next stage. The overall story and the mission story is interesting and sometimes funny even though it all is very confusing at first. Graphics are optimal for the game while depending on personal taste. The "comic" style is fitting and allows for pretty funny looking characters. Same with character animation. On the technical side there is nothing i am missing. If you know your way around a pc you can host,save etc every multiplayer session without a problem at any point. Difficulty settings alter gameplay. The "AI" is not perfect but fitting. In any case, it allowed a lot of funny moments. Blocking guards with doors ftw. Overall i recommend this game very much to everyone who takes his time with a game and of course who wants to play cooperatively. Had a lot of fun moments and while it can be challenging at some points its rewarding.

Signal Ops is a game by independent developers Space Bullet Dynamics. Set in a retro-futuristic 1940s, this bureaucratic society is governed by two feuding organisation, the military and the church. You play as an agent of the church, tasked with carrying out missions involving spying and espionage. However your character never actually enters combat but instead issues commands via video and radio links to the operatives in the field. The game is a first person shooter and you control 3 operatives, at the same time, via these links in single player or cooperatively. This concept is very original but is also the games greatest achievement and weakness. The controls can be frustrating and take time to master. They require lots of patience, organisation and multitasking to pull off, even minor mistakes can lead to panic and mission failure. The gameplay mechanics are also very retro and rather basic when compared to more mainstream tactical espionage games. However, once you are accustomed with the basics this charming game, with it's stylized oil painting graphics, simple plot, humorous narrative and nods to cult film classic "Brazil", combine to form a really interesting tactical espionage action sandbox where objectives can be tackled in any number of ways, alone or with friends. 4/5

I really like the idea of this game, and setting is appealing. The humour seems on point and the visuals are entirely unique. However the presentation is an eyesore and I felt myself growing nauseous after only a few hours, if even that. It's not a graphical issue, it's the aesthetic of the game so there's no cure for it. I wanted to give this game a real go, but the fact that you have to manipulate the agents through the little monitors is terribly frustrating. I think this game is going for PS1 era visuals and is entirely successful in that, but it's for that reason that I could not continue. The combination of colour palette, textures and the small FOV made this largely unplayable. Unfortunate.

This is a review of the game shortly after launch. Don't purchase this until the game is heavily patched. The game has great promise for gameplay, and great visuals. I was never able to make it beyond the first mission, and it took several hours to make it beyond the tutorial. The primary issue seems to be inefficient testing, as the game regularly breaks in the area of triggers, AI, and networking. I gave three hours of my time to the game with a friend, in an attempt to play it cooperatively. We connected and played to the third tutorial without issue, after which his connection went out. For the next several hours he tried and failed to reconnect, and we were never able to continue. I gave roughly two hours of my time to the game in single player mode, easily making it past the tutorial, but once I was in the first mission, my agent failed to follow simple orders, such as setting objects down (one of the first of a handful of commands given at the very beginning), meaning I was unable to progress only minutes into mission 1. I have a love for unique, independently-developed games, but it is firmly overshadowed by my distaste for broken games, or for paying to play-test someones alpha, and this firmly falls in the latter category at the moment. Great promise, but falls on it's face. Sorry. :(

First off: this is not realy a first person shooter, it is far more a stealth game with on the feet planning. I also would not want to coapre it to SWAT 4 because it is far less action oriented, this particular game is more like a puzzle with possitioning and tactical abilities of each agent being the focus. But realy parallers are not doing it justice. once deployed into the field your control over the agents is very direct if fragmented across two views (you can swap primary and secondary at your liesure but ... its fine as is). Even first propper mission was rather steep learning curve from tutorial but it did convey how deep can things get alternative paths, strange access alleways, tho no jumping allowed or mantling over things. Music i find rather bland and forgettable and voices could be better but tahts nitpicking the most important thing is that the game itself plays incredibly well and YOU shoudl try it too. - rather steep learning curve even if you do tutorials, some might be offput by graphics but its fine when you get used to it, music and soung in general whislt passable is not that great, + strong identity (thanks to graphics and hummour), incredibly solid gameplay idea executed well, fairly original if not wholy unique strategic infiltration balance that did capture my interest TL;DR: not an action game but more a tactical stealth (particularly sensitive to positioning your unitse so as to cover one another), retro style graphics, decent hummour, forgetable sound and music. Recommanded for those who want to take things slow and think about their actions before they execute them.