S&S Indie Review: SEAL Team 12

 

Title: SEAL Team 12
Platform: PC, Xbox 360
Release: 4/25/2012 (PC), 5/10/2012 (Xbox 360)
Publisher: Social Loner Studios
Developer: Social Loner Studios
Price: €2,99

When evil lurks on the horizon, you need the best. You need the strongest. You need SEAL Team 12!. This is Social Loner Studios description of the upcoming and promising indie game: SEAL Team 12. I've taken a look at the game and here is my impressions of the game. Presentation and Story With SEAL Team 12 (ST12) Social Loner Studios have created an indie shooter, full of cheesy humour, lots of different weapons to choose from and a lot of enemies to kill. The story evolves around ST12 and, their efforts to stop Guardians of Devastation from recruiting new soldiers and devastate the world. On a site note the people they recruit get a free pair of socks. Ironically enough Guardians of Devastation's, abbreviation is GOD and through the game you get a lot of cheesy but also funny punchlines. A good example of these cheesy punchlines are "Damn you GOD, I'll send you to hell". The villain behind GOD is very stereotypical but it adds to the fun of the game, even though he can be a bit annoying sometimes.
ST12 is full of references to other games, movies and TV series an example of this is Duke Nukem I won't tell you what references, you'll have to play the game and find out about it yourself.

Gameplay & Graphics   If you're familiar with playing shooters either on PC or Xbox 360, then you can go straight ahead and play it without any real troubles. If you're new to shooters, this game is also very friendly. It has a very good and easy tutorial, that only takes about 5 min to complete and then you're off with the game. The game has two game modes, you can either complete the game in singleplayer mode or you can do it in co-op with a friend. The game is an A to B game where you start one place and have, to get to another place. It is possible to "roam" a bit in the different levels, because you can go back from where you came from and pick up things you may have missed.
There's a very good variety of enemies spanning from the normal, and most common foot soldier to ninjas and dogs. There's one vehicle available for you to drive, and that's a tank, however it is only at certain points in the game that they're available.There's a minor problem, with driving the tanks. It can be a bit tricky to drive the tanks, you sometimes find yourself stuck in places where the tank should be able to drive through, or you find yourself stuck on barrels, corners of fences etc. This needs to be smoothed up a bit.
You have a good variety of different weapons at your disposal, that can be either found in the "Stuff" chests or when enemies drop their weapon and they have a limited amount of ammo. You have a primary weapon that has infinite ammo, and then you can pick up the other weapons as secondary weapons. Grenades are also at your disposal you have 3 main grenades that keep "regenerating" and then you can find better grenades in chests, however these won't "regenerate". You quickly find your favorite, I became very fond of the shotgun.
The camera angle is set, to an above view, and it gives it a very retro like look and it's very charming. It gives you a good overview, between the hordes of enemies. There's techno/electronic music playing in the background and it can, be a bit annoying to listen to in the end but that's just the rock dude in me talking. You can always turn the music off in options.

Final thoughts ST12 is a great game and, you get a lot of game for a low price. At €2,99 you get a game, that takes about 4-7 hours to complete depending on the difficulty in singleplayer.You can however get more out of the game, since it has the co-op possibility so it's a game with great replay value.
As I said before ST12 is a great game but there's, still some things that needs to be fixed. A good example is, if you run backwards but you are aiming forward, your legs will turn around and run backwards while your torso is aiming forward. It was a bit funny to look at but, it's something that needs to be fixed.
All in all I was positively surprised by ST12 and Social Loner Studios, has made a game that could turn out to be a great success, if they just adjust and tweak the graphics and gameplay a bit.
Final rating: 7/10