CO:ND, the US version of the original Japanese game, Chase The Express, is the story of Jack Morton, an Air Force officer who is assigned with a force of soldiers to guard a train, the "Blue Harvest", and it's VIP passengers, the French ambassador to Russia and his family. Unfortunately, not long after the train departs from Russia, it is attacked and overtaken by a terrorist group calling themselves "The Knights of the Apocalypse". Jack is the only surviving member of the force after the attack, and is instructed by NATO to save the ambassador, the train and possibly the world.

The game opens with an excellent CG cinema of the attack on the train. In true action movie style, there's plenty of shooting and shouting and organized mayhem. Some of the character models are nicely detailed, others are just really ugly. There's also some sync problems between the voices and the models' mouths, but nothing too distracting to hinder enjoyment of the cinema. The opening movie sets the pace for an action-packed game, but unfortunately it fails to deliver.

The camera views in CO:ND are very limiting. In the vein of Resident Evil, the perspective is third person, with preset camera angles. Unlike RE, you have the option to hold the camera in a preset position and rotate and tilt it to get a better look at your surroundings, but this becomes even more disorienting as you usually must reposition your character multiple times to get a full view. It would have been better to use a first person perspective when viewing. Another problem with the perspective is that it changes far too often. A couple steps down the car of a train and it will switch to a totally different view, and a few more steps and it will switch yet again. It's not uncommon to have four or five drastic camera angle changes in the course of walking down the length of one car on the train.

The camera and perspective problems hinder the gameplay, which is already weak to begin with. Control of Jack is a cross between Syphon Filter and Resident Evil. Pressing up moves Jack forward, back moves backward, left turns left and right turns right. L2 and R2 roll to the left and right, respectively. R1 crouches and L1 make Jack turn 180 degrees quickly. Square fires a weapon or punches, triangle views your surroundings, circle makes Jack run and X perform searches and other actions. This control scheme doesn't make for a very action oriented experience. If you were hoping for a Syphon Filter level of action or control like I was, you'll be dissapointed.

Combat is a very disheartening process in CO:ND. Since there is no true auto-targeting mechanism or "lock-on" button, you must line up Jack with an enemy until you see a circle appear on the enemy's chest. Then you must play a timing game as you shoot. Since you can't pump an enemy full of lead as soon as you draw a bead on him, you must fire once, wait for the circle to reappear, fire again, and so on until the enemy drops. This would be acceptable if the enemy was realistically affected by being shot, however, they snap back to a firing position almost immediately after being shot, forcing you to have near-perfect timing to pull off the next shot before getting shot yourself.

Aside from the struggle with controls, the challenge of non-combat situations--puzzles--is nothing compared to RE, SF or MGS. Not to say that the puzzles in those games were mindbenders, but CO:ND's puzzles rarely (if ever) rise above the "FIND KEY, OPEN LOCKED DOOR" mentality.

A better acheivement comes from the graphics and sound. No pre-rendered graphics (similar to Dino Crisis' graphic style) make the game appear a little rough around the edges, but maintains a consistent, enjoyable style throughout the game. The music is haunting (almost to the point of being straight horror) which is oddly suitable to help set the tension in the atmosphere. The bloody corpses of soldiers and crew members leaves a distinct impression of a quick, dirty struggle for control of the train. If there's one thing that Covert Ops suceeds at, it's atmosphere. But that isn't enough to make it a great title, which it could have been.

This is a shame because upon playing through the title, you'll be rewarded with a good storyline. But forcing yourself to play through, fighting with the controls and cursing the combat system all the while, makes the game a chore instead of fun. So, unless you're a die-hard action/espionage fan desperately seeking a quick fix, stick with Metal Gear Solid and Syphon Filter 1 & 2.