With the speed bonus this game really picks up enabling some really lightning fast dodging, and you need it with the amount of bullets that are flying around the later levels. The graphics are extremely variable, from the very good looking ships to the woefully substandard pictures used when explaining the story.

The enemies are not very challenging on their own, doing nothing more than following set paths around or across the screen and perhaps shooting at you occaisionly. But when there're a lot of them on the screen it gets good. And you need to make sure you kill as many as possible because the appearance of power-ups is linked to your kill count.

Set during World War II, Hidden & Dangerous (henceforth known as "HDD") is a formely commercial squad based first and third person tactical shooter, somewhat like a WWII version of Rainbow Six, which was released (along with a slew of extra features: the Expansion Pack, re-done graphics and mod-maker) for free to promote the sequel, cunningly titled Hidden and Dangerous 2.

Graphics

Graphics are as, one might expect, rather good, with clean models, lush scenery and fairly smooth animation. However, they are very 'last-generation', with angular features, and a distinct lack of real variety (all your teammates faces look the same, for example) and a lack of 'living' animations (such as breathing, emotion and so on). This can be forgiven to a certain extent, as being a shooter, the aim is usually to make the other team STOP living. Plus the game is originally from the late '90s. However, I must mention that the weapon models are very, very basic, and seem more like 2D sprites rather then solid 3D models, giving a feeling of artificality to the game, however, they can be turned off under the Options menu. I ran the game on a 32MB generic video card at 800x600 and experienced an excellent (60+) framerate.

Sounds and Music

Sound isn't all that good. It seems to come from a variety of 'emitters' dotted around the levels, which is fine if your standing right underneath one, the guns roar, the commands are bellowed, but if your standing a distance from one, the guns sound weak and waterlogged, and you'll be lucky to hear what you just said, which can lead to utter amazement/confusion if you accidently tap the wrong button, as your squad will quite happily throw themselves onto a machine gun nest, forcing a restart.

Gameplay

Gameplay is brilliant. There's a steep learning curve though, made harder by the sometimes clunky interface and awful default bindings. Basically, you choose a team of eight soldiers, each with different skills, then load them up with whatever guns, ammunition, explosives and other equipment you think they'll need. Be warned though, these eight soldiers have to last the WHOLE campaign, if one of them dies in a mission, thats it, hes gone for good, along with any equipment he was carrying on him.

The actual ingame game is tense, edge-of-your seat sneaking, sniping and sabotage, with genuine moments of explosive action as your suddenly rushed by the games variable (from occasional moments of genuine skill, to being nearly moronic) A.I. In a nice twist, the same damage applies to you and your team as to your enemies. The game takes full advantage of this, if a sniper gets a bead on you he'll do his best to shoot you in the head, which will kill instantly, rather then waste precious ammo trying to kill you with 2-3 body shots. A number of vehcles can be piloted, and some even require your entire team to operate it.

Ordering your troops around can be handled one of two ways. You have basic voice commands (think Counter-Strike or similar) to a far more intuitive and complex map-based system, you should be warned though that mass-rushing won't ever work. Not even on the first stage. The game is moderatley violent, however there is no dismemberment, and blood is restricted to a small gush which is only really visible through a sniper scope.

Conclusion

Overall, HDD is tense and enjoyable WWII fun. It's not all peachy though, I have experienced an above-average amount of random crashings and lock-ups, and some weapons are useless or too simliar to standard equipment be worth scavenging. The game also contains a number of historical innaccuracies: The sniper scopes have variable amounts of zoom, and the German officers are equipped with American weapons for example, which seems a little odd when you consider that the game does its best to immerse you in its world. Be warned: this game is nothing like Medal of Honour or Call of Duty, and those with a low tolerance for doing the same repeated thing again, and again will probably be bored to tears. Everyone else is recommended to at least try it, even those with dial-up modems.