Science fiction always works as a setting for a shooter. However, humanity's future is always grim: over polluted and over crowded cities, mega corporations vying for power and technology, people barely making a living. It's depressing, really. But there's always that lonely hero, who arrives just in time to save humanity from yet another disaster. Like that would do it any good. Anyway. Project: Snowblind isn't the most original first person shooter out there. In fact, if you take it apart, you'll easily identify the ideas and gameplay mechanics that were borrowed from other highly successful games, thrown together in a mix which works surprisingly well, and while it doesn't raise the standards of the genre, will keep you glued to your seat for the 8 to 10 hours of the singleplayer mode.

     For all you Deus Ex fans out there, Project: Snowblind will look and feel pretty familiar: Grim and dark future of humanity? Check. Futuristic weapons and high-tech gadgets? Check. Cyber enhanced hero? Check. Maniacal bad guy who's trying to plunge the world into darkness? Nope, sorry ... oh who am I kidding, of course we got him too, otherwise there wouldn't be any story in the game, right? Speaking of which, it's pretty straight forward: in the not so distant future, a crazy general starts a civil war in Hong Kong, with the intention of detonating a massive EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon that would knock out every electronic system in the world and throw us back to the Stone Age. As you can imagine, the free nations of the world can't just stand and watch this happen, so they send in peacekeepers to try and stabilize the situation. You play Nathan Frost, a soldier of the peace keeping force who has just arrived in Hong Kong, who at the very start of the game is sent to knock at the door of St. Peter by a bomb dropped in the courtyard of the allied HQ. But thanks to modern medical science, our hero is brought back to life and augmented with millions of dollars worth of cybernetic implants.

     Although the story won't win any prizes for originality, the action on screen and the pacing will help you overlook this little shortcoming. Those of you who have played Deus Ex will have a sense of deja-vu when going through the missions in Snowblind. And for good reason, since initially the game was to be called Deus Ex: Clan Wars, but Eidos decide to drop the Deux Ex from the title. Maybe the fiasco with Invisible War had something to do with it, but we'll never know. Anyway. Snowblind can be viewed as a Deus Ex with the role playing part striped to a minimum, with the focus being on action. Lots of action. And intense firefights with a lot of enemy soldiers coming at you from all directions. Perhaps the greatest quality of the game is that it allows you to breath just enough between two firefights. No more, no less. Once you start again, you'll have a hard time letting go of the game, because it's truly intense. True, the levels are fairly linear (you don't have alternate routes to take) and they abound with scripted events, but the designers from Crystal Dynamics managed to glue all these elements together in such a way, that the only time you'll feel like you're wasting time will be during the in-game cutscenes.

     Although the textures are pretty low res (a negative side effect of the fact that the game is multi platform, like Invisible War), the level designers managed to create some very credible environments, some of them being truly amazing, like an opera house which has been hastily transformed into a prisoner camp. The character animations are very good and the architectonic style of the city is very similar to that from Deus Ex. On top of this, the heavy rain, cumulated with the demolished buildings and lack of civilians manage to create a very grim and dark atmosphere. The voice acting is convincing enough, with the musical score perfectly matching the alert on screen action, while the sound effects, although not something to talk home about, they certainly do their job well.