I choose normal or officer difficulty.
Prologue
A boat comes into a dock at night. The hero gets off gracelessly, he seems injured.
Some thugs come to kill him, they laugh and jest about him not having his dog to protect him. Then the dog appears and rips out one of the thugs throats in a spray of gore.
We are in control of the dog now, Jack the hero walks on injured and tells us to stay close. I follow him up the dock steps onto the streets.
The dog has the usual camera and movement controls using the analogue sticks.
Sprints with right trigger and sneaks with left.
We get to a point and some more triads appear, we are told to defend Jack.
We can attack a triad with A or just sprint at them to knock them down.
Some attack with melee weapons and some have guns. We get to kill about ten of them on the street and the walkways above it.
After that the prologue is done.
Mission 1
A woman comes into a bar and finds jack drinking. She seems concerned about him, she asks him to reach out to the department. Jack is cynical. He tells her that he will tell her the truth.
The view switches to a news report and the female talks of the temple tower terror. jack nearly knocks over the news girl.
There is a hostage situation in the tower, Jack arrives and finds the police chief dithering. To prove his point a hostage is hurled from the top of the tower. Jack goes to go in alone and the chief threatens to have his badge. Jack is very rude and give him the badge.
We are told to rescue the hostages.
I get control of Jack, third person view.
I go into the building and after a bit of wandering find the bad guys.
Y is fast attack.
B+Y guard break.
B is strong attack.
We get three thugs to beat up.
x is block
X + LS is dash.
A is sprint.
three more thugs to fight.
Then we come to a larger area and get a bigger thug. We have to beat him up using chained attacks to gain a takedown. Pressing A when prompted starts a takedown which breaks bones and kills the thug in gratuitous fashion.
We get a cut scene where Jack asks a security guard he finds cowering what is going on.
The triads are on the highest floor at a penthouse of the owner, a Mr. Temple. To illustrate that they are not nice men we see a bad guy blow up an elevator with civilians inside that drops down to the floor where Jack is.
We get to ride up in the lift, where we get a gun at last.
Cover is explained. A goes into cover.
There is also clinch which grabs enemies A + X.
We can also disarm them.
From a clinch we can press X to take them hostage, Press A and LS to throw them. or do an attack with Y or B.
it's reasonable fun to grab hold of them, press X to hostage which allows us to move with them, then take them to the balcony and hurl them off by pressing A and the LS towards the edge.
We can press LB to put us into focus mode.
I come through the office blocks taking out loads of enemies.
I then come to a larger enemy with a rocket launcher.
Once done we are told to escort a civilian to the studio elevator so that she can let us up to the penthouse.
I fight my way through some more office.
We come to the hostages and are tasked to save Temple and the remaining civilians.
I try to save them but the triads execute them all before I can take them down.
I kill the triads and then go into the next area where in cut scene we see the bad guy leader named Riggs escape out of the window into a helicopter.
We are told to pursue Riggs.
We do this on the outside of the building up stairs and landings.
At the top a helicopter appears and picks up Riggs taking him to Safety.
Mission 3
Jack is getting a dressing down from his chief, a SWAT team captain named Red comes in and saves him.
Outside Jacks boss comes and takes him down to a boxing ring??
We have a sparring tutorial for some advanced combo moves.
The bad guys named the union are being used as pieces in a bigger game. Jack is sent to investigate.
We walk through some of the police station it seems for no reason at all.
Then we arrive at the docks.
The dog and the boss are with us following along.
We get to a locked gate and are asked to use Shadow the dog to retrieve them.
Shadow can sneak, this allows him to sense heartbeats and to do silent kills.
We hold left trigger in to sneak.
When sneaking Shadow hugs the ground and the enemies glow with a blue glow. It turns amber or red if they see you.
I sneak around ripping apart the guards trying not to alerts them.
Eventually I find the keys and have to return to Frank, this must be the boss's name.
We now have to search union territory to find evidence leading to Riggs.
We are back to fighting enemies, only this time there are shadow and Frank to help.
I find some evidence.
Then some more evidence in the next room.
We have electricity traps in the next room which we can hurl the foes into.
In the next room we find an item of equipment that Jack recognizes as something that Riggs was wearing. This gives Shadow his scent.
We come upon two enemies in cut scene and Frank tries to get them to talk about what is going on. Suddenly Red and his SWAT team arrive. This stirs up the hornets nest and we have to defend ourselves against the Union soliders.
After about five minutes of frantic and fairly fun gunplay we get to see a cut scene. Frank and Red argue about policing methods. We then are back to looking for clues.
right bumper is reload. Left trigger is zoom.
Right trigger is fire.
We come to a meeting of bad guys and we hear them planning something with a new group of triads. We are spotted and the bad guys bolt. We are tasked with chasing the Triad Leader as he runs. This is a fun little chase until we meet groups of enemies and have a shoot out.
Eventually we come to a cut scene and Jack finds Frank shot. This is where we learn that Frank is actually Jack's father as well as boss. Jack goes to pieces and is hysterical, with no clue how to save his father as he dies in his arms. An ambulance turns up and we meet the woman from the start of the game, her name is Faith and she is a paramedic. She seems to know both Jack and Frank.
She works on him with her partner, despite the hopelessness of his case. A cliche of every medical emergency scene ever done, but at least they don't get anything too wrong with the CPR.
Jack starts beating on the triad, Faith stops him killing him.
Jack goes off to find answers.
Mission 4
We are to find a triad named Tseng, who Jack thinks knows something.
We descend from a subway station and enter some alleys.
There are new commands for Shadow here, we can send him to attack or collect with up on the d-pad. Or bring him back to us with down on the dpad.
Now we are into the game proper it seems.
We are fighting through heavily occupied streets, there are cops assisting, however, in the time honoured tradition of a.i. helpers they don't do much good.
There are rocket launcher guys appearing now.
We come through a train yard and eventually find Tseng. He is a very bad man, we know this because he takes drugs, shoots people in cold blood and has his own followers executed for being bad at being henchmen.
We go into the room and mop up the henchmen then the door opens for us.
We see in cut scene Jack getting onto a train after Tseng.
We are told that there are bombs on the train and we must defuse them to buy more time.
We must run through the train killing enemies and defusing the bombs. When I reach the end of the train jack finds an awful lot of bombs and realises that all he can do is jump for his life. The train blows.
Mission 5
We are now controlling Shadow who was following the train, Jack is injured and we must get Shadow to him to save him.
This is another sneak mission, quite a short one, though the penalty for being seen is a fairly quick death.
We now have to stop Tseng from blowing up Grant central station.
We progress along the railway tracks with heavy resistance. Lots of snipers with the usual red laser sight beams.
Then we get into the station itself. You have to watch out for civilians as shooting one sends you back to the last checkpoint.
Progressing through the station we come to a central square area. There are three bombs which need to be defused in a three minute time limit. Each is guarded by thugs.
Then we come to Tseng and have to fight him. We have to wear down his health. No guns allowed.
Then throw him onto the track and electrocute him, he then gets run over by a train for good measure.
We see jack and Faith talking in the bar again. He tells her that Riggs seems to have been paying the triads and the union to cause havoc in the city, but for what purpose?
Mission 6
We are back at the dock following Rigg's trail.
Another Shadow mission to get the keys to go into a building.
Again stealthy hunting of the guards. Barking allows you to lure guards in a direction by pressing Y.
Now we get to go in with Jack as well. Jack finds some of Rigg's gear and it links the conspiracy in with Temple and Red, the head of the SWAT team.
We go through the docks further and end up finding a stash of military grade hardware and lots of it. It seems to belong to something called GAC. Which Jack tells us is Grant City Anti Crime unit.
We now have to fight our way through the GAC. They have much better weapons.
There is also a helicopter that makes life hard.
At one point we have to wait for a lift to descend and fend of waves of enemies.
now we end up in some sewers. There are GAC snipers here, we also get the GAC Sniper rifle which is a really good one shot kill device.
We fight through the sewers and are now going after Riggs at a stadium.
Mission 7
The GAC are using the failed Grant city Stadium project as a base. We have to infiltrate it and find out what they are up to.
This a fairly standard shooter level where we run through corridors and fight boxes with lots of enemies. Not bad, but nothing we haven't seen in other third person shooters.
A new electricity gun appears.
Then we meet a boss like GAC tank soldier.
After that there is more shooting and eventually a cut scene.
We see Temple on TV announcing that the gangs are out of control and they need the newly formed GAC to take back the city. This is basically Temple grabbing for more power and someone thought the plot of the Star Wars prequels immensely clever.
We now have to use Shadow to sneak into the inner sanctum and turn off the electric fence which is preventing Jack from progressing.
This is a short sneak mission to turn off two generators. Then Jack gets inside for some more shooting, now inside the actual GAC base.
Jack now wants to disable their transport. We have to blow up three gunships.
I find the bombs, then have to get to the gunships.
There are three gunships, each has to have a bridge extended to reach it.
The areas are copied and pasted, only the enemies vary.
Tanks, snipers and soldiers make life hard.
The last of the three gunships is a fairly hard ambush scenario.
Then we get a boss battle with Riggs. He is on gantries above a square area. We get to run about in the square while he gets two emplaced guns to use on us.
Occasionally soldiers spawn in with us on the ground and Riggs Deploys mines.
The tactics I used were to stay in the middle and Riggs will try and flank you, Basically you get to the otherside of the central cover crates and line him up for a headshot from cover, pop out and let him have it then rinse and repeat. It takes too long but it is fairly easy. When the soldiers spawn in rush into the little nooks to hide and use Shadow to pick them off.
After Riggs is downed we have another gunship to blow up. Getting old here.
Oh this is only a set up we get to the gunship without much incident. In cut scene as Jack is placing the C4 Red appears behind him and breaks his arm. In the gunship Red is defending his apparent sell out. Jack lets him hear the evidence that Temple intended to have him killed after they had completed the plan. Red kills Riggs and Jack jumps from the gunship.
The C4 goes off and rocks the gunship but does not bring it down.
Mission 8
We are back to the start of the game, the flashbacks have caught up.
We have to stop the triads from finishing Jack off.
Basically we kill approaching Triads as Jack hobbles to the bar.
In cut scene in the bar Faith and Jack talk. Faith wants to use a hospital chopper to get Jack up to The top of Temples tower the quick way. She calls in a fake emergency, which quickly becomes a real emergency as a sniper shoots her in the abdomen.
We have to get Faith to the Medevac before she bleeds out.
This is essentially the same as normal except we have to carry Faith with us. We can pick her up and put her down. We can also heal her when hear health is low. Enemies will shoot at and kick her if they get near her. It's best to leave her back a bit and take out the enemies then go back for her. When we get to the roof The GAC won't let the chopper land. We now have to take out spotlights so they can't see it??
There are three heavily guarded spotlights. Teams of enemies and emplaced guns guard them.
Once they are all put out you have to go back through the empty level to Faith where you see the chopper land and everyone get in.
Mission 9
We land the chopper on the roof of Temple's tower and storm in to get to him. Lots of shooting and eventually we find Temple behind a secret door in his penthouse.
Temple is scared Witless of Jack and tells him that Red was the one who ordered his father killed. Jack now has to take Temple out of the tower.
This is similar to the faith scenario. However We can use Temple as an ammo station, which makes him much more useful. We make our way through a new part of the tower then back through familiar parts of it.
Eventually the VTOL gunship comes inside the building for a boss battle.
Shoot out it's light, then six sensors, then the pilot. And it's down.
Down in the Foyer one of the heavy cannon guys comes from the wrecked gunship and after he is down that is the end of the mission.
Mission 10
We now have to take back the precinct from GAC.
We start at the subway station. We still have temple to drag around with us.
Then across a bridge and into the police building. We have to take Temple with us.
Eventually we get to a cell and find Innes.
Now we have to defend the precinct against GAC attack.
Three wings are attacked and we have to go and clear them all out.
Then we have to make our way to the roof.
Where Innes makes a distress call informing all the police out on the streets that GAC are the bad guys.
We have to Defend Innes while he does this.
Handy sniper rifle boxes make this easy.
Now GAC are coming back to the building, we can now snipe them from the roof.
Mission 11
GAC are falling back to an Island owned by Temple.
Jack goes in alone.
He steals a GAC uniform and gets onto one of their VTOLS.
When we land we have to stay with the GAC and not break cover.
We do this for a while inside the building, through a speech by Red and then on into the command center. Which handily has a huge pile of explosives for us to shoot. We then go out onto a landing and snipe all the men that run out of the gates to meet the police as they attack.
After this back inside.
To take the control center. Red makes a run for it.
We fight a little GAC then come to an empty heavy suit. We get to use it for a while, it's fun having endless chaingun fire and rockets.
Then we come to a drop the suit can't make. After some fighting with GAC a door is locked. We have to use Shadow to get the key.
In the next area is a lighthouse. The lighthouse is obviously the location for the dramatic conclusion. We chase Red up to the lighthouse where he hurts Shadow. Alone we pursue him up the stairs.
The final boss fight with Red is a knife fight, he has a vicious blade.
The lighthouse can be used to blind the pair of you.
Shadow limps up to Jack after Red is downed.
The final cut scene shows Franks funeral.
Faith comes to Jack and gives him solace.
The priest tries to but is given the brush off.
Jack and shadow head back to the city and the credits roll.
12 hours of Gameplay. 575 Achievement points.
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