Raven Squad - Windows PC Game Review

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When playing in FPS mode, you can forget about exploration or tactics. You have to walk down single paths and you can’t jump over anything or even walk through bushes. Shrubberies stop your forward progress. You can’t climb anything or search higher ground for cover, so you just walk down predetermined paths and shoot at the bad guys who are inevitably found around each corner. You are so limited to what you can do in the game that it winds up being a shooting gallery.

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The graphics in Raven Squad aren’t all that bad, at least not by 2005 standards. Compared to the Call of Duty games or Crysis, this one looks horrible. The colors appear to be very washed out, and even with the lackluster amount of detail, it still runs choppy. I’m using an Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 video card, and I can max out all the settings on Crysis and it still runs smooth, but this game is choppy. The Xbox 360 can’t produce the same quality graphics that a PC with a good video card can, and I felt like I was looking at graphics made for an Xbox 360, and not the kind that take full advantage of that console.

Sound effects are pretty decent with the machine gun fire and explosions, but that’s not hard to get right. A lot of comments have been made about the voice acting in this game, namely with the phonetic pronunciation of some words. I found it all a bit comical, really. The main narrator in the game sounds a lot like Michael Pare, who is a B-movie actor. Given that this is just a goofy military action video game, I don’t expect too much from the voice acting.

The worst thing about Raven Squad is that it never lives up to its potential. It’s a really short and easy game that a casual gamer might jump into and enjoy, but most PC gamers are going to run through this one in a weekend and not look back. Expect it to hit the bargain bin real soon. I give it a very average three stars.