Even with its dull title, Special Forces: Team X is surprisingly fun. You wouldn't think it had any aspirations beyond stealing the Most Generic Name Ever trophy from last year's beloved Prophecy Of The Shooter Man Chronicles: Origins, but no. This generous demo may not have many brand new ideas to bring to the genre, but its fast combat and slick cover system promise much when the full game comes out in... wait, what? This is the full game? Oh.



Surprisingly enough, Special Forces isn't free-to-play.
Men With Guns: The Action Game Special Forces: Team X comes to us from Zombie Studios, makers of the slightly more interestingly named Blacklight: Retribution. That's a decent pedigree, and it shows, even if the two games have some major differences -- the biggest ones being that this one is a third-person cover shooter rather than an FPS, and somewhat oddly, isn't free to play. Not yet, anyway. If one of its modes had involved placing bets on when it'll make that big jump, it would not have come as a surprise.

Mechanically there's little innovation here, just strong execution. Combat is cover based, and all modes revolve around team play -- a familiar set of capture-the-whatever and deathmatch objectives -- Capture The Flag, Control Points, Hotzone (where the control point moves), High Value Target (one player is marked with a target and attacked/defended by the respective teams) and classic Team Deathmatch, all for between 2-4 teams and up to 16 players in total. Successes bring XP that eventually unlocks new gear and costume pieces to customize your character, while defeat means nothing unless your ego is as fragile as a water balloon full of baby tears. It's the standard shooter drill, just filmed over one shoulder.

Going to the Dogs

The details work well, though, from the way you always respawn amongst squadmates to avoid unwanted lone-wolf situations, to the hilarious way that one of your first unlocks is the ability to swap grenades for a couple of attack dogs that will bound across levels and try to rip enemies' throats out. Admittedly, the operative word here is "try," since they do have a tendency to just stare as if waiting for their handler to throw them a biscuit rather than sinking their teeth in, but they're great fun when they do bite down.

Blind fire isn't as blind as the models make it look. That's the joy of the third-person.

It's one of the better examples of a cover system done right.
The cover system is especially well implemented. You can leap into it from a distance and get between points easily enough, while still detaching quickly if necessary and keeping full control over aiming, grenades, and other tools. Occasional glitches or moments of accidentally leaping over/past the thing you were planning to hide behind aside, getting behind cover actually feels like a tactical advantage rather than tiresome imposition. It's one of the better recent examples of the style, making the run-and-gun more tactical, encouraging squad play, and barely slowing the action down at all.

Team X Chainsaw Massacre

At no point does Killing Guys: Bang Bang You're Dead Special Forces take itself too seriously. It's a game that acts like you should care about the +0.83 damage upgrade that the AK47 offers over the M4A1 rifle, but one that's happy to mix things up by randomly handing someone a chainsaw because chainsaws are cool, and whose hardware routinely takes off heads at a distance and flings dead bodies through the air like a tornado in a ragdoll shop.

Rounds are fast and brutal, with practically no downtime between lives, and an interface that always makes it obvious where you're meant to be going and who needs to be shot when you get there. Visually it's not exactly polished, and it can be a glitchy at times, but it's never less than a good time that you can just jump into and enjoy.

There are bonuses for sticking with squadmates, not least a longer lifespan.

There aren't many weapon types, not many customization options, not many skills or perks...
There's just not very much of it. At all. Not many weapon types, not many character customization options, not many skills or perks, and little to drool over as you climb the ranks to Level 40. Even the rounds are pretty short due to small fixed caps on how many points each team has to score. Most notably though, there's the map. Singular.

At least, sort of. It's a little complicated...

Mix & Match & Shoot

Rifle Dudes: Revelations Special Forces' biggest claim to novelty is that the map isn't pre-set. Instead, it comes in kit form -- before every round, players spend 45 seconds voting on its structure, with 108 total combinations available. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? The catch is there are only actually three pieces to swap out (two of them having the same options mirrored, like Barge Inlet, Container, and Water Treatment) and all of them feel as interchangeable as they literally are. It's like going to a new ice cream shop and finding its menu consists of chocolate, dark chocolate, and chocolate chip... only with lots more concrete and steel, and absolutely no chance of raspberry ripple.

Clear target spotting allows for on-the-fly tactics and satisfying team-play.

The map design is always roughly the same: two sides, with a big structure in the middle to keep them isolated.
The concept is undeniably clever, even if it would be more at home in a game like Gotham City Impostors where the designers could stretch their imaginations further than "Warehouse, Refinery, or Irrigation?" It's not, however, as big a deal as it could be, not least because the design is always roughly the same: two sides, with a big structure in the middle to keep them isolated. You may not always have the Junkyard block in play, but if it's there, you know what to expect from it, and the fact that there's an Admin block instead of a Container on the other side is tactically irrelevant. The system isn't granular enough to combine things in interesting ways or stop every combination feeling much the same. It's a map of configurable blandness, not a DIY de_dust.

The High Cost of Any Cost at All

The real elephant in the room though is the fact that Soldiers At War: Army NCO Professional Development Ribbon Special Forces has a price-tag, despite its design, the current market and basic common sense screaming that it should be free to play instead. Even at a budget price, it's hard to see it building up a sustainable audience next to the heavy hitters out there, and it's far too loose and casual to have a decent shot with hardcore players sick of Counter-Strike, et al.

The long waits between rounds to choose the map design soon get tedious.

If you walk in front of someone with a minigun or sniper rifle, you're going to die quickly.
There are advantages to paying upfront of course, not least that fact that there's absolutely no chance of pay-to-win players taking over, and the balance of upgrades feels okay. If you walk in front of someone with a minigun or sniper rifle, you're going to die quickly. Head in from the right angle though, or be backed up by your team, or throw in a grenade/dog or two, and nobody is invulnerable. Occasionally they seem a little too bulletproof for comfort, especially if they're shooting you with a better gun or have remembered to actually use perks like Toughness, but only up to a point, and far less so than in many F2P shooters.

$15 doesn't buy you much variety though, and the appeal soon fades. Even with the chopping and changing, the combat zone gets old quickly, the leveling system offers little to shoot for, customization is minimal, and there's nothing complex about the action or design that justifies the lack of content. At worst, it feels like a generous demo. At best, that can be upgraded to a game tentatively dipping a toe into the water to see if it's worth risking going all-in. At this point, that seems a bigger risk than simply following the lead of games like PlanetSide 2 and Tribes: Ascend. If the basic game was amazing, it might be easier to ignore this. Instead, it's simply good. Good enough? That's your call.

It still feels weird to say "It should be free," but time has moved on, and even free shooters can find it difficult to keep their populations humming. $15 isn't a lot, but it's $15 you don't need to gamble any more to have a good time.