I choose Hardened difficulty
Controls
Usual movement and aiming with analogue sticks.
B is crouch or go prone.
Y is change weapon.
X is reload.
A is jump.
Left trigger is iron sights
Right trigger is fire.
Left bumper
Right bumper is lethal grenade.
Left bumper is smoke or other type grenade.
Dpad swaps weapon attachments.
The game start with a cut scene, a man named Alex Mason who is strapped in a chair and being tortured with electricity by a man in the next room. His voice is muffled to protect his identity. The torturer asks about numbers and a Russian.
Mission 1
He is asked about Cuba in 1961, the bay of Pigs. A man named Dragovich who it seems was involved with Mason to kill Castro.
We flashback and are into the game engine seeing four men discuss the plot, which involves an attack on an airfield as a distraction to get the two men inside the location where Castro is. They are in a bar and soldiers come in, we kill them and get a gun.
We now have to fight our way down the street. What seems new here is that vehicles will explode if shot enough.
I get to a car and get in with the others.
There is a shot semi on rails cut scene like sequence where we drive over a few cops and then drive over some more. The scene fades and we are back in the torture chamber. The interrogators mutter a bit and the scene shifts again.
We are high on a hill over the compound and planes attack. We now use the chaos to sneak in on zip lines.
We have to garrotte a guard and sneak around.
We then move from room to room fighting soldiers until we come to the room with Castro, we have a slow time sequence where we shoot him in the head.
Now we have to escape.
The mansion gates are heavily guarded and we are aided by someone named Carlos and his men.
we then run into a sugar field.
Then Rappel down a hillside to an airfield
Here we simply run to the plane and have an emplaced gun section from the door as we taxi to the runway. The runway is blocked and Mason jumps out and uses a large canon to clear it. He is left behind, sacrificing himself so the rest of the team can get away.
He is captured and taken before Castro, seems it was a double they killed.
Castro gives Mason to Dragovich, who is in league with Castro.
Mission 2
Dragovich takes Mason to Russia and sends him to the Vorkuta labor camp which he spends a year in before teaming up with a man named Reznov to escape.
We see Reznov and Mason takes keys from a guard and start a riot.
We then join in the escape attempt with a knife as our only weapon.
We make our way to a lift knifing a few guards on the way.
We get a gun from a dead guard that Sergei, a giant of a man impales on a pickaxe.
We then have to advance up a hill that has an emplaced gun which is tearing anyone in the open to pieces.
We have to hide behind a mine cart as it is pushed up the hill and shoot any guards trying to flank it.
At the top the gun is blown up.
We then move through some more of the prison, Sergei is tasked with breaking into the arms locker while we use a slingshot and Molotov cocktails to take out some more emplaced guns.
We go back down and get a shotgun and are into more usual territory storming around the prison with guns while armed guards try and stop the riot with deadly force.
We come to a roof and a helicopter is making life hard. We use a harpoon gun which is handy to harpoon the helicopter to the railings and bring it down.
We then storm the next building. New here are large metal shield plates that are moved along the floor and guards hide behind shooting from this movable cover.
We are trying to get into the heavy arms locker. Reznov gets some welding gear to cut the doors open and we have to protect him. There are heavily armored guards here who need almost a whole clip emptied at their heads to bring them down.
We have to hold out against assault until the doors are open. we then get a mini gun with which to blast hell out of the place.
We advance along the alley between buildings towards the gates and then tear gas stops us in our tracks. We cut back to Mason in the torture chair who tells us that Reznov never left him behind, he saved him. We are back to the game and Reznov and Mason are getting onto motorbikes.
We have a short motorbike riding sequence where we can shoot enemy bikes and jeeps. We then jump onto a truck with an emplaced gun. Reznov drives and we shoot. This goes on for a while then we have to jump for a train. Reznov does not make it and is captured. Mason escapes.
Mission 3
Mason is sent back to America and the Pentagon.
He is led through the corridors of power to meet the President. He sees a woman who it seems works for the torture chamber man. On meeting President Kennedy he is given the mission to kill Dragovich.
It seems that a group of scientists, poached from Nazi Germany called the ascension group are building advanced nuclear rockets. The Americans are trying to sabotage the project.
Mason is sent to infiltrate the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
We start with a man named woods on the outer edge of the base.
A man named Weaver is already inside the base, it seems he has been captured and is now being tortured by Dragovich's second in command named Kravchenko.
We move up and knife two guards and take their uniforms.
We then move into the base walking slowly and blending in with the other soldiers.
Things start going crazy and it seems that the bodies have been found. We make our way to the comms building and start shooting to clear it out.
On the roof we are to protect the other two team members using Crossbow bolts that have explosives in them.
We shoot at the enemies that are pinning down the other two and then fire a zip line into the building roof that Weaver is inside. Using the zip line Mason goes down and in through the window. We have a slow time sequence where we shoot three guards in the room as we burst in through the window.
With Weaver rescued we now have to fight our way to a secondary control area to stop the missile launch. We have to do this against the clock.
When we get there we plant c4 to blow a hole in the wall, we then go in and Weaver Finds that he can't stop the missile.
It launches and we then use a rocket which we can guide to shoot the missile down in flight.
We then go inside the complex on a hunt for the ascension group scientists.
This is a long corridor based run like FPS of old. The endless respawning seems to be back as well.
WE get to the end of the corridor and Mason wigs out again. We see flashes of what happened next and it appears that Dragovich might have been killed in an explosion.
Mission 4
Back in the torture chamber the interrogator asks about Vietnam and a man named Hudson.
This triggers another flashback.
We are in Vietnam with Woods and Hudson, who is from the CIA. The camp we are in is bombed and Hudson is injured.
We have to carry him to a relatively safe place then start defending the base from huge enemy attack.
We progress through trenches, there are flamethrowers, napalm strikes and all hell is letting loose.
We come to a large sandbox area and have to fight waves of soldiers then shoot up three tanks.
We then follow Woods into a tunnel.
We come out onto a hill where the Vietnamese are trying to ascend. We have to hold them back.
It is not explained well but you have three barrels that you must set on fire and knock down the hill. Otherwise you can't progress.
A marker directs you to a spot in the middle of the barrels but does not tell you what to do. A little frustrating.
You then have to ascend a hill, which is hard work. At the top a cut scene shows you Woods being nearly killed and you have to save him.
Then inside a building and out through the other side. Now we have to get into a jeep. We use guided missiles to take out six tanks, driving around the base to each set of tanks. We must fend off small arms fire from Vietnamese as we go around.
Mission 5
We are now in Hue city where a soviet defector has an important dossier on Russian involvement in the war. We are to find him and extract him.
In grand style the chopper we are rappelling down from is shot down and we crash through the side of the building through the windows.
We progress through the building fighting soldiers. Then into the sealed area which has been compromised and is swarming with Vietnamese soldiers. We go on deep into the bunker and eventually find Reznov who it seems managed to escape from Vorkuta. Reznov tells us that Dragovich is planning an attack on the West, even the Kremlin does not know his true plans or have a leash on him.
We move out onto the streets looking for extraction. We have to get to a distant Landing zone.
We move out into heavy street fighting and have air support of a chopper. We can designate targets for it to hit with it's machine guns and also a tank for it to take out for us.
We then encounter an anti aircraft gun and have to take it out.
We flank the gun and place c4 under the floor of the gun to bring it down. The chopper then takes out a tank that is holding us pinned down.
We then get to the LZ. The wounded are taken first and we have to hold the LZ until more choppers arrive. We have claymores and are swarmed with enemies. A tank arrives and we have to use the target designator to paint it for air support. a boat comes in and extracts the gang.
Mission 6
One of Dragovich's men has been captured a scientist named Clarke. Hudson is torturing him for information about Dragovich's plans.
Clarke is more scared of Dragovich than the CIA. Dragovich's men arrive to tie up loose ends which means they were going to kill Clarke. we shoot at them and gas escapes from large canisters. This is Nova six and it kills very quickly.
We escape through a roof hatch and climb up fighting onto the roof.
Then jump from roof to roof until we come to a safe house armory of Clarke's. Clarke is with us and suddenly on our side. seems being double crossed will do that to you.
We then start fighting through Clarke's planned escape route, which is of course swarming with Dragovich's men.
We find out along the way that the Nova six project relies on the numbers, which we still don't understand.
We fight on through more ambushes and stands until eventually we end up dangling off a rooftop holding Clarke by the wrist, he start to tell us about the numbers then is shot in the head. The numbers are a key to something.
We then escape and are extracted. The next move is to go after a scientist, a German named Steiner who Clarke named as his contact.
Mission 7
We are now flashing back even further, to a tale told to Mason in Vorkuta by Reznov. He is a young soldier in Russia during the second world war. We are apparently going to learn what kind of man Dragovich is and why he must be stopped.
We learn that Dragovich left Reznov's unit heavily outnumbered and ignored their requests for reinforcements.
We are following Reznov as he is tasked with securing a defector named Steiner from a German base.
We storm the camp with the aid of mortar support. We have smoke grenades that show which target we want hit by mortar fire. when we come to something that is hard to get past we chuck a green smoke grenade at it and watch it go away.
eventually we get to Steiner and he is arrogant and insulting.
The next scene shows Steiner, Dragovich and some soldiers including Reznov of course entering the wreck of a german u boat.
We progress through the grisly remains of german soldiers to a room where the Nova six is kept.
This was to be a strike to end the war. The Germans planned to launch Nova six missiles at Washington and Moscow from the boat. Allied bombers had destroyed it in the nick of time.
Steiner shows Dragovich Nova six in action on some of his own men. Reznov is about to be killed also when British Commando's show up to get Nova six for themselves.
We now have to fight both sides and blow the ship and escape. This is a short breathless sequence but great fun.
Mission 8
We are back with Mason,Woods and Reznov trying to escape Vietnam. They are shot down and we have a semi gameplay cut scene sequence where we escape from the crashed helicopter, swim underwater then jump up onto a vietnamese boat and hold one hostage while we shoot the others.
We then stealthily approach a village and plant C4 in a few places.
Triggering the C4 we then all out attack.
The village is in chaos with air support and all out attack and defense going on. The vietnamese are popping out of holes in the ground.
We then progress to one of their bigger tunnel systems and go in to clear it out.
The tunnel is crawling with VC who jump out when you least expect it.
We come to one of the Nova six research labs and Resnov learns more about the nerve toxin.
We escape as the tunnels come down around us.
Mission 9
The interrogator tells us that the numbers are being broadcast to us and we have been brainwashed. The world is also on the brink of war.
A plane with Nova six has been shot down and we are to go in and investiagte the contents for clues.
Now we have a boat driving section. We can shoot missiles and fire a machine gun. There are also other soldiers on the boat shooting as well.
We steer using the Halo method.
We come to the area we want to explore, the crash site and have to go on foot. Here we have the charging nutters and snipers in the trees that were in World at war.
We come to the plane and find that that Nova six has been taken.
There is a handy map left behind though which shows the location in Laos of Cruchenko's compound.
We start shooting at forces out of the wreck of the plane and are then shot up pretty badly. The plane starts sliding down the hillside and we are crawling from the wreckage as Dragovich and his men arrive to capture us.
Mission 10
We are told that Hudson went on to try and find a station which was broadcasting the numbers in the Urals. We see a blackbird take off and are using it to see down to Earth to guide the team.
This is fairly novel, if you haven't played Raven Squad. Let's see if it's better.
We have to move the squad towards the base, a patrol comes by road and we have to get the men to hide in a house. The patrol comes in and we zoom down to earth to take control and shoot them.
We then move on and have to use the right stick click to make the men hide as a patrol passes.
Next we move to a building and come down to earth and take control as we breach and clear the building and plant c4 on the comms equipment.
We then move out and go towards a large pylon.
Back on the ground we watch as a large patrol go by. We then move in and rappell down to a base and jump in through the windows.
We then move down to a base and storm it. There is the same attempt at stealth gameplay as Modern warfare 2. Make the alarm and you get more people to shoot.
We enter the main compound and using the explosive crossbow again get to shoot lots of soldiers before breaking a radar dish.
We then have a scripted moment where we are shot at by a rocket. One of the team is killed and we then have to run for it through the beginnings of an avalanche and then base jump off a cliff to the lower part of the mountain.
Which just happens to be the base.
We fight our way inside, the soldiers seem to be destroying evidence and setting the place up to be blown up. We fight to the control room and find maps of the USA with lots of targets on them. Steiner's voice can be heard talking about activating the agents. Seems that there are Russian's in the USA ready to be part of the plan. Are they brainwashed agents? Is Mason one of them?
We have two minutes to get out of the base before it is blown sky high. We run and shoot past some troops and get to a truck. we have to defend the truck from an emplaced gun on it's trailer as it is hotwired.
Mission 11
We are back in Laos with Mason, Bowman and Woods. The vietnamese and the Russian have them prisoner. Bowman is beaten to death in front of Mason and then Woods is forced to play Russian roulette. We are to take a turn, but shoot the guard and grab his gun.
We are now chasing the russian through the caves.
We catch him up and fight our way to the surface where we come to a helicopter.
We kill it's crew and take it.
Now we have a flying mission, we can shoot rockets and machine gun from the helicopter and control it by using the analogue sticks. Altitude is done for us and keeps up low to the terrain. We have to deal with ground forces and other helicopters. A sam site is hard work and we have to take out around four targets in a large enemy base. We then get two helicopters to fight at once.
We then land and go on foot into Kravchenko's compound.
We fight into another cave system and find some prisoners. Resnov is one of them.
We then fight to a control room where Kravchenko is hiding. We see a cut scene where Woods and Mason fight with Kravchenko, he beats up Mason badly and is stabbed by Woods. Kravchencko pulls the pins on around five grenades and Woods chucks both of them out the window and saves Mason. Mason sees a silhouette figure of Woods which resolves into Resnov. It looks increasingly likely that Resnov is a figment of Mason's brainwashing.
Misson 12
The USA and Russia are at the brink of nuclear war. The nova six is in place on US soil waiting for the trigger from Dragovich. Mason seems to be the only one who can shed any light on the plan. The interrogator wants to know where the numbers are going to be broadcast from. Mason is asked why he went rogue to Rebirth Island off the coast of Russia to kill Steiner.
We flashback and find Resnov and Mason sneaking into the base on Rebirth Island. We start in a cargo crate and sneak out and kill a worker.
We then have to sneak around following Resnov's instructions. We climb onto the roof and sneak in through the elevator shaft.
The CIA have arrived in force and are trying to capture Steiner alive. We want to kill him.
We fight our way through the lab and confront Steiner. Resnov shoots him shouting that he has his revenge.
The interrogator tells us that Mason shot Steiner not Resnov. Further confirming that Mason is seeing things and probably working to Resnov's agenda not his own or the CIA's.
We flashback twenty minutes to Hudson who is coming to the island to stop Mason and get to Steiner so the CIA can find out how to stop the Nova six attack.
We start in an armoured vehicle. Which I was finding hard going until I realised it had a rocket as well as a machine gun.
The armoured vehicle is knocked out by a helicopter and then Nova six is used. We have to get into hazmat suits and then fight in the fog. We have a gun with a scope that can see heeat signatures. This allows us to see in the smog.
If you are shot too much in the nova six your suit is ripped and you die from the gas.
Playing as Hudson we fight through the other side of the base that Mason went in from and eventually find ourselves in the same corridors he fought through.
We burst into the room where Mason is confronting Steiner and there is no Resnov, just Mason. We watch as Mason shoots Steiner and then subdue him.
Mission 13
The interrogators are revealed to be Hudson and Weaver and we are in the CIA building.
Hudson comes to free Mason and tries one last time to reason with him. Mason knocks Hudson out and is free.
We wander the corridors staggering around seeing numeric hallucinations.
Eventually Hudson punches us and we see the truth. Steiner and Dragovich tried to brainwash Mason in Vorkuta to kill president Kenneday. The programming took to a certain extent but could not be fully trusted. Dragovich sent Mason back to his cell and was going to leave him to rot. It seems the Resnov used the vorkuta techniques to implant his own programming in Mason and had him complete his revenge for him, to kill Steiner, Dragovich and Kravchenko.
The programming is broken. Mason is freed from Resnov and Dragovich's orders. He listens to the numbers broadcast with a clear head and finds that the numbers station is a ship named Rulsalka which is moored in Cuban waters.
We approach by helicopter and blow the crap out of the ship. We then land some soldier on the ship and have to give them air suport. A hind turns up and we shoot it down then land our damaged helicopter on the ship. We then fight along the ship killing two hinds with rockets as we go.
We get to the lower decks and fight until we meet up with Weaver's squad who are pinned down.
A cut scene shows that the ship has a moonpool, which presumably leads to a submersed facility.
Hudson and Mason go down to investigate. They are warned by Weaver that the air force are going to sink the Rulsalka in fifteen minutes wether they have came back or not.
Mission 14
We start diving down to the huge underwater base. It is a staging post for russian submarines that would be used to invade the crippled USA after the nova six attack.
We enter through the moonpool and start fighting our way through the facility.
Eventually we get to the numbers control panel and break it. Dragovich appears and we fight and end up choking him to death. He tells us not to be so sure that he has failed and dies.
We escape and see a scene of Mason swimming up and being rescued by Weaver.
We see Mason in Dallas Texas as President Kennedy gets ready to go on his fateful drive.
The credits roll with Sympathy for the Devil playing. Sumblime music choice.
Game over
8 hours
355 Achievement points
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