GAME: Kill Switch

Somehow, I missed this one back in 2004. It is your basic straight-forward military shooter. Set in the near-future with un-futuristic weapons. You get your basic rifle. A pocket full of grenades. Possibility to grab a sniping rifle at times. Under-barrel grenade launcher in there some where. Not sure who decided it would be interesting to have advanced communication technology (ie: a neural implant with real-time tactical communication) while keeping the weaponry unadvanced, but it didn't work for me.

Kill Switch also has a clever (at least it tries to be clever) twist on the combat shooter genre: it likes you to use "cover" to take out the enemy. Unfortunately, the enemy also likes to use cover. So the battles typically devolves into you hiding behind a column while the enemy hides behind a truck. And you wait for the enemy to pop up and shoot you, so you can shoot him. Not only is it repetitious and boring, but I typically ran out of ammo all-too-quickly and restored to rolling up on the jihadist and get physical with him.

Which brings me to my final frustration. For such a crack trooper, the character has an insanely limited skillset. He has one mode of jumping. He can pistol whip an enemy, but can't punch or kick them. And his ability to throw a grenade looks to be inferior to mine, and I'm not a gifted grenade-thrower.

The graphics aren't bad. The plot isn't anything special but I did like the unfolding storyline with the girl whispering, "Say my name." But overall, it didn't win any awards. And I'm not surprised.

Within an hour, I had deleted Kill Switch. Even if this were 2004, it would have been an under-performer. It did not have any redeeming value and wasn't worth the amount of space it took up on my drives.

However, if somebody is interested in trying it, the game can be found on eBay for $0.99.