After completing the Bishop campaign, I moved on to the Black Op series. I found these missions significantly less difficult than those of the previous character, largely because as a Black Op character, the player is capable of using guns, operating vehicles, and pulling and pushing objects with psi power. While the Black Op character is not the most powerful character in the game – it is certainly the best rounded. One interesting aspect to the game that is not found in many others is the ability of the characters to perform multiple tasks at once. In games like Counter-Strike, the player is confined to one attacking method at any given time – for instance, you cannot be firing a gun while throwing a grenade at the same time. In CellFactor, however, you can attack in two different ways simultaneously. This ability is perhaps best exhibited by the Black Op character, which can fire a fully automatic rifle while using psi power to hurl massive quantities of debris at opponents. This kind of firepower amounts to immensely spectacular frags. It was not uncommon for me to encounter so-called “triple-kills” – not three frags by the same bullet, but three frags by similar means over a (very) short period of time – during game play.

The final character in the game, and the last one I played with, is the Guardian. In essence, the Guardian character is a bazooka-yielding, fast-moving, extremely versatile fighting machine. The guardian character does not possess any psi powers, but compensates for that with several unique (and just as powerful) abilities. In terms of firepower, the base weapon for the guardian is a pair of handguns that are not unlike the glock in Counter-Strike. This weapon allows single shot, or “open fire”, capability, as well as the option to fire three shots at once. On the opposite end of the spectrum there is the dual rocket launcher weapon. This thing can have you firing rocket after rocket at your opponent, or a burst of up to six rockets at one time with a brief pause for charging in between. The potential for havoc in this mode is just as impressive as the “red-sea splitting” capabilities of the Bishop character. The Guardian character also has the ability to run really fast. I like to compare this ability to that of Mario getting a star – everything the Guardian touches while running is completely destroyed – including opponents. The feeling you get when you run over an enemy and the word “Roadkill” flashes on the screen is about the most satisfying thing you will encounter while playing this game. Doing this repeatedly only adds to the enjoyment. Aside from being able to shoot six rockets at once and running over opponents, the Guardian character can also jump really high into the air to gain a 360-degree view of the battlefield. This allows you to see your opponents as well as rain a few rockets down on their heads. Similar to the high jump is the long jump, where the Guardian can leap literally across the map to get the “jump” on the bad guys.



I purposely left out any mention of one of the weapons in the game that I consider to be the very best implementation of this particular type of weapon that I have seen in any game. The Black Op and Guardian characters in various levels of the single-player campaign can use the R2-Phlegethon Sniper Rifle. The weapon has two firing modes: Open fire – in which the gun functions just as a normal sniper rifle, and proximity stake – which fires a dart type thing anywhere on the map and then has a psi power effect of pulling objects towards it before blowing them up. The one-hit, one-kill ability of this gun makes it very attractive in multiplayer use (read: AWP), but also might make it the only weapon in the game that could be considered slightly over-powered. However, the thing that really sets this particular sniper rifle apart from those found in other games it the zooming feature. To zoom the sniper rifle you first have to hit “Z” and then you can vary the level of magnification by scrolling the mouse wheel. What makes this incredible, however, is that each level of magnification exhibits its own depth of field, incorporates increased motion-blur effects, and is accompanied by a satisfying zoom sound. I have included a short video of game play with this weapon, as it is something that is quite more difficult to describe in words than it is to show visually.

Click to Launch Sniper Video

Finally, as with most future-based games, the vehicles in CellFactor are very imaginative. These vehicles, not unlike those found in Half-Life 2, are influenced heavily by the material through which they navigate, are inherently impaired in terms of maneuverability, and are not so blatantly overpowered that opponents will become frustrated and leave the game.