Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror (PS2) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Encore Software's 2003 first-person shooter for the Sony PlayStation 2, Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror.

Played through all missions of the campaign.

Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror, known as America's 10 Most Wanted in PAL territories, has made quite a name for itself over the years - and that's hardly surprising given the nature of the subject.

Please excuse the few bits where the audio has been muted - there are three spots where YouTube's copyright filter objected to a couple of the songs and muted them. Consider yourself lucky. It's just unfortunate that one of those spots is in the first level :/

In Black Ops Entertainment's incisive look at the underbelly of modern-day evil (you can't hear me say them, but I promise that those words are dripping in sarcasm), you play as some dude named Mike - err, Jake - Seaver. Come on, it would be hilarious if this starred a born-again Kirk Cameron and you know it. He is a member of CIFR, a government anti-terrorism organization. The organization's name is something of a misnomer, given the utter lack of Strider's Cypher, though I admit that pointing that out hardly justifies it as relevant.

So, what was the draw of Fugitive Hunter? The bad guys, of course! The final boss is Osama Bin Laden, and you really won't believe how ridiculous the finish is - it involves a sweet Van Damme move and a helicopter - truly surreal. The fight before Bin Laden involves Saddam Hussein (though only in the PAL version - he was "recast" in the American version), alongside 9 other baddies. I have to wonder why they didn't use other real-life figures besides those two - I mean, Timothy McVeigh or David Koresh would've suited the theme well.

The game consists of running around to terrorism activity hot-beds the world over, including Utah, Paris, and Afghanistan. It's an odd assortment of locales, but with the exception of a few confined areas meant to represent city streets, it feels like most of the game takes place in caves and tunnels. And while that probably isn't far from the truth, it hardly makes for an exciting design. There is a confusing jungle level and a few nondescript red/brown outdoor stages, but hey - stage design isn't what lured you to this game if it piqued your interest when it came out.

The FPS sections require you to run through networks of maze-like paths and hallways toward your objective indicated by the white dot on the radar. Make sure that you always use the shotgun - it's by far the easiest way to take out 95% of the enemies in the game.

Sometimes you blow something up, sometimes you find a hostage, and once every stage, you find the fugitive. These encounters... I don't even know what to say about them. When you find the criminal, shoot him once to stun him, run up to him, and then of a sudden you'll find yourself thrust into a one-on-one fighting game that you must complete to "subdue" him. The fighting system reminds me of the one in Demolition Man on the 3DO, but at least it looks a bit smoother with its half-dozen canned animations being repeated again and again. You hit buttons attempting to do something meaningful, but you'll usually flail ineffectively at them for a few minutes and then at random pull them into combos that drain their life. Technically you're controlling it, but it doesn't really feel like it most of the time.

The graphics are ugly and dated, even by 2003 standards, but at least it runs at a smooth framerate. The sound design is a joke, despite it seeming like there was a fair amount of effort put into it. The background songs are awful: they sound like cheap MIDI recordings, and many of them have "lyrics" by "So Solid Crew." The quotation marks aren't there just to be cute, so infer what you will from that.

Especially going by interview videos that were included on the game disc, the people that made this seemed quite invested. There was a lot of money and talent involved, but then, there was also a sense of exploitation and utter tastelessness. Everything here is a badly motion-captured stereotype, and while it's hysterical, it's also a bit embarrassing to play. Remember that terrible Nicholas Cage movie World Trade Center? This game feels a lot like that. You'll find yourself laughing at it throughout and having fun at its expense, and then feel a bit dirty and disgusted by the time its over.

But hey, you get to kung-fu battle Bin Laden, so it's not like everything was entirely for naught. Just shower well afterward.

___
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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