The joy of the perfectly-timed ejection or miraculous moving vehicle switch was experienced by CE players long before it was known to the Battlefield fraternity. The physics and damage models are just about sophisticated enough to make speeding across undulating terrain interesting and using heavily damaged rides as impromptu guided missiles possible.
The worst moments in single-player are dismounted encounters with zigzagging wolves and guard dogs the best, frantic armoured car dashes, bruising tank duels, and hairy biplane escapes. Without its stealable AFVs, aerodynes, boats, bikes and trucks Codename: Eagle would have been forgotten faster than the Supermarine's Spitfire's ponderous predecessor or Britain's strangest steam loco. Obtain the key to the compound gate.) and because, at least once every op, there's the opportunity to joyride something wheeled or winged. You persevere with the so-so solo gunplay because the sentry-topping is interspersed with entertaining puzzles (Work out a way to deactivate the electric fence. Rural environments feel too bare, too angular, enemies too bewildered and self-destructive. There are times when maps and objectives bring to mind Hidden & Dangerous and No One Lives Forever, but CE can't do ambience, audio or AI nearly as well as either of those millennium marvels.
If a dam's got to be breached, a defector rescued, a document pinched or a zeppelin deflated, you're the chap with the capacious pockets, talent for commandeering enemy vehicles, and aggravating inability to crouch or lean that 'Shadow Command' invariably send for. Even then, dark historical associations are kept at bay by the accompanying environments (checkpoints, factories, airfields, moving trains.) and the absurd Biggles-with-bells-on feel of most of the missions. The closest Refraction's artificers and level designers come to courting controversy is dotting levels with knapsack flamethrowers and poison gas grenade launchers. In fact trench warfare is entirely absent from the twelve story missions. At no point does the game award me bonus points or new toys for gleefully bludgeoning an enemy to death with an entrenching tool or a nail-studded club. I like the fact that I can play CE without wondering whether my great-grandfather - one of the hundreds of thousands lost without trace on the Western Front - would think less of me for playing it. Those discordant Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen load-screen quotes – that dutiful All Quiet on the Western Front-referencing cutscene with the barbed wire and the butterfly - all unnecessary thanks to a tasteful sidestep into alternate history.
#CODENAME EAGLE GAME PLAY FREE#
The smudged setting left the Swedish devs free to fool about with interesting early 20th Century tech such as airships, biplanes, machine guns, and tanks, confident that thoughtful commentators wouldn't spend half their previews or reviews pillorying them for trivialising tragedy or distorting popular perceptions. Just about the only useful thing potential purchasers could learn from the staggeringly unhelpful print ads that accompanied the low-key release was that the game was set in a parallel universe where European peace was threatened by a warmongering Russian Tsar rather than a warmongering German Kaiser. I also understand why the blood-spattered Battlefield 1 trailer isn't aquiline enough for some.Ĭodename: Eagle dodged insensitivity accusations by treating WWI as a flea market rather than a theme park. After a weekend of biplane trashing, airship hijacking, and wolf stabbing I now understand why Zone described CE as “a game of missed opportunities”. Spooked by that score, it's taken me sixteen years to get around to trying Refraction's conveyance-crammed FPS.
If it hadn't been for Puzzle Bobble 2 and Mr Brooker's merciless demolition of it ( “Pay money for this abysmal conversion and you may as well phone up the publishers and ask them to come round and piss in your eyes.”) the game that inadvertently spawned the Battlefield franchise would have received the issue's lowest rating - 45%.
#CODENAME EAGLE GAME PLAY PC#
Charlie Brooker and an atrocious Bust-a-Move port was all that stood between Codename: Eagle and dubious distinction in the bumper Christmas 1999 edition of PC Zone.
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