Saul Myers, ten years a decorated soldier in the french foreign legion has just received a call for help from his daughter Lisa, an international journalist who was last seen being kidnapped by men dressed in black in the small banana republic of Realia, South America. Two days pass and still no word of a ransom. Saul Myer's decides to take action and get back his daughter. Saul Myers is going to hit boiling point.
Boiling Point:Road to Hell (Originally called Xenus) is an FPSRPG that was made exclusively for the PC by Ukrainian game studio Deep Shadows and published by Atari in 2005. It is also a game I happen rather to enjoy. The game was praised for it's immense size and replayability but ultimately suffered for it enormous level of bugs, although most recent patches have eliminated the ones that make the game unplayable. Based in the fictitious South American nation of Realia you play as Saul Myers a determined father ready do anything and everything necessary to find his missing daughter. Throughout this task you will have to go to the aid of several factions in order to secure the funds, skills, vehicles and connections necessary to help you along the way. You stand to make a lot of friends and even more enemies.
You'll never take me alive pigs!
One of Boiling Points major flaws is in it's starting point. There is simply so much to learn and very little way to learn beyond trial and error as well as pushing the right button at the wrong time. Standard FPS controls aside, you will need to discover how to talk, check the time, change ammo, answer the phone, sleep, refuel a vehicle, repair vehicle, change a tire and numerous other little tidbits that require more than just playing at a casual pace. However, that being said, a little bit of determination and heck of a lot of play time and I soon began to get the hang of the game and thankfully spent very little time being impoverished, out of ammo, fuel and being dead.
Don't ask me what the hell cold weapons are supposed to be. I'm probably too drunk to use em anyway.
There's a lot of fluff in this game that makes it a worthwhile experience. As well as becoming exhausted from lack of sleep you can also improve your stamina and become tired less often. Build up your carrying capacity over time. Improve your aim with a weapon from frequent usage, head shots and ammo conservation. You can get drunk and develop an alcohol addiction as well addictions to painkillers and synthetic adrenaline(this games illegal narcotic). Perform routine maintenance on vehicles and keep them well fueled as well as replace any tire that happens to have been shot out. Trade stuff and improve your skill at trading. Upgrade weapons either personally or someone with the appropriate skill. As well as learning to pilot vehicles other than a car, such as boats, Naval class boats, light planes, helicopters and tanks.
Check out my bitchin' Humvee! Vroom! Vroom!
One of the major points of game play is the level of interaction you will have with Realia seven factions. The Realian government, the communist guerilla forces, the local mafia, the native South American Indians, local bandits, the CIA and the civilians . Each with there own allies, enemies goal ambitions and perks, you can do odd jobs for them in exchange for cold hard cash as well as new weapons and access to cheap health care and occasionally backup. The difficulty level vary from mission to mission as well from faction to faction. Sometimes it's as easy as talking to some guy over the road or a simple drive through the jungle. Other times it's involves waltzing into another factions base and killing their leader, or stealing a truck or some documents without anyone to save your arse when the shit hits the fan. The upside of working for factions that treat you like a one man army is that they pay you better. You can, however, make a lot of enemies quicker doing this. They'll start to lay down ambushes on roads, cutting down trees to halt your progress or simply shoot you on sight. Get a faction really angry at you and it'll send attack choppers out to cut you to ribbons.
Believe me, make a faction mad at you enough and you'll soon bolt for the nearest building at the sound of a rotor blade.
The graphics for this game definitely look out dated, but that being said the jungles, especially with the water contrasting look simply gorgeous. The jungle is quite dangerous too. It's riddled with killer bees, jaguar, roaming bands of all sorts of factions, and the waters are filled with deadly piranhas in some parts. As well as two detailed cities, there are also numerous military bases, Drug plantations, villages, ancient ruins and caves to be found almost everywhere. The character models on the other hand are fairly ugly looking and there are only about two types of models for each faction plus unique NPC's and faction leaders. The sound quality varies a lot, vehicle noises tend to get messy in a way I find difficult to describe and can grow quite irritating after awhile. In-game cut scenes tend to suffer from sound effect delays a lot too. The music is rather nice, the combat music always makes me want to cheese it every time I start a fight, and the night time sound track is fairly pleasant too. The theme song lyrics seem rather confusing though but I blame translation for that.
I think I'm lost...
Yep, definitely lost...
The dialogue is for the most part OK, but translation errors crop up again and again and some conversations become rather disjointed. The voice acting is rather good in my opinion although it is rather out of place for the most part. Hearing what sounds like somebody from the Bronx say "You're goin' down, Gringo!" is more than a little odd and I'm fairly certain they saved on hiring a lot of people by changing the pitch of the dialogue for numerous lines of dialogue but it could just be a sound issue I don't know. The guy who plays Saul Myers is rather good though, and I never get tired of him saying "Y'know half my friends call me (insert context related description here)"
I'd like to report a roaming eldritch abomination.
The A.I. is not one of the games strong points and comes off a little clunky, you'll find the people drive like complete maniacs, making random turns and slamming into walls and running over anyone who isn't you, who they will instead slam on the brakes and blare their horns endlessly. Combat A.I. tends to have little else other than enemies running around or standing still and try and shoot you from wherever they stand or throw volleys of grenades at you. This can get silly when every enemy within range(and sometimes when they're not) will throw a grenade at you and you'll be forced to retreat from a volley of about twelve or so before resuming the fight! A bullet to the head will kill practically anyone, so the difficulty comes in the form of range and sheer numbers, that and healing yourself can be rather difficult and almost impossible in the middle of a fire fight. Close combat against guys armed with shotguns is the absolute worst as they tend to be heavily armored as well, anyone who's ever had to spring somebody from a prison in this game shares my pain and I had to return to that bloody prison three frigging times!
A stunning view from Puerto Sombra's lighthouse.
Overall there's not much left to say about this game, other than if you're really into FPSRPGs, always wanted to be a mercenary in sunny South America or want to know what secrets lie at the heart of Lisa's kidnapping and can stand a little out dated graphics, minor bugs and AI problems(after patching naturally) Then check it out, you won't be sorry you did. I really enjoyed playing this game and in fact I still am playing it. Hell, you get akimbo Uzis in it and all the peso's you can scrounge!
Ooh, you can shoot down coconuts too, I didn't know that...
