Special Forces: Team X – Let me show you what action REALLY looks like!

By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

Special Forces: Team X is a third-person shooter with an emphasis of intense action combat. You are given many options to form your character to your own style of combat. Choose from many active and passive abilities, as well as lots of weapons options including attachments. The options available extend so far as to allow you and your fellow players to dynamically generate the game map before the game starts. Zombie Studio has brought another great title to the market, so let’s take a closer look at it.

 

 

Features

Lots of Customization – From characters, to weapons, to the game map itself. There is a lot of customization in this game for a Shooter.

Active and Passive skills – Choose from several different active and passive skills you can use to give yourself and your teammates an advantage.

Dynamic Maps – Use the in-game voting system before each match to decide the layout of the map you will be playing on.

Take cover – Use objects to take cover and protect yourself from enemy fire while dishing out your own onslaught on to unsuspecting victims.

Level Progression – Unlock new abilities, equipment, weapons and attachments as you progress through the levels.

Fast, intense actions – Everything in the game is designed to give you an intense experience.

 

 

Special Forces: Team X has a surprising amount of features for a shooter. A lot of them came as a surprise to me, too. My mind was blown when I realized what was happening at the start of my first game. The combat was fun and it had a great feeling to it, something that can be hard to achieve. I really appreciated all the available features and a majority of them works perfectly.

 

 

Customization

You are given a decent amount of options for making yourself unique in Special Forces: Team X. More than I am used to getting in a shooter, actually. You are able to customize your characters clothing, your weapon attachments, abilities and more. It seems like the current trend for shooters is to give players a lot of options in how their character looks or how their equipment works. I am glad the genre is moving in this direction, and this game is a prime example of this change.

 

 

Graphics

Special Forces: Team X features a very stylized graphic style to fit with its action-packed combat. The animations and effects were great and I enjoyed all of it a lot. The style used is similar to that used in Borderlands, so while it’s not quite ‘serious’, it does try to keep semi-realistic dimensions. It all adds up to enhance the intensity of the game while keeping it fun and light hearted.

 

 

Controls

For the most part, the controls in Special Forces: Team X are smooth. You have your typical shooter control scheme – WASD movement, shift to sprint, Ctrl for crouch, right mouse button for aiming, left mouse button for shooting. When you are next to a wall, a fence, or something else that can be used for cover, you can press space bar to have your character press itself against it. I was a bit put off when I initially learned that I could only use my mouse to control which direction I run while sprinting, it just felt very restricting. Once you get past that and get used to the movement while taking cover, things worked very well.

 

 

Community

I didn’t notice much talking going on while playing Special Forces: Team X. This gave me the impression that people were spending more time playing rather than talking crap. Whenever I had a question, however, it usually got answered. Something I found really weird was that Zombie Studios does not provide a forum (at least not that I could find) for discussion of the game; if you want to discuss it you will have to go to a third-party forum. Overall, however, I would say that interacting with the community was a pleasant experience.

 

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Gameplay

Now it’s time to discuss the important stuff. The actual gameplay of Special Forces: Team X. First, I’ll say that the game was great to play. It was fun, intense and time flied when I was playing. There is only one thing I did not like, which I will mention next.

 

 

The one thing I did not like was the match finder. It seemed to be lacking in functionality. Sure, it has a semi-decent filter, but there are a lot of important things missing that would make finding a match a better experience. Key among the missing features is the ability to have games be listed by the number of people in them or ping. In most match finders, you can click the “ping” or “players” fields and have it re-order the list of available games from highest to lowest or vice versa. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a possibility here.

 

 

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about the most important part of the game, the combat. Combat was, from my experiences, great. The weapons seemed to be balanced well and none of them seemed hyper-accurate or have too much recoil like some shooters do it. Of course, using the attachment system, you can change things like the recoil or accuracy of your gun. There are some weapons that might be considered over-powered, but these spawn on the map and anyone can grab them. Also in the game is the ability to grab the weapons of fallen enemies or allies, so all you have to do is kill someone to get their weapon.

 

 

Taking cover is very important in a shooter. Unfortunately, most games seem to forget this and do not give players the ability to make real use of it. Some games do not even give you the ability to lean from side to side. Thankfully, this is not a problem in Special Forces: Team X. All you have to do is get near a wall, or a barricade, or nearly anything else and press space bar and your character will press itself against it and take cover. You can then shoot over it at incoming enemies. This, combined with other movement options, such as rolling from cover to cover, make for some epic gun fights.

 

 

At the beginning of each match, players vote on different possible parts of the map. The three parts that get the most votes get put together to create the map for the match. I was mind blown again by this feature. I had read about it when looking up the game, but it didn’t hit me how awesome it was until I actually got to experience it. Because of this system, there is a large range of different possible maps you can play on.

 

 

Just as the name implies, Special Forces: Team X focuses on team work. You will need to work with your teammates to achieve your goals in the different game types. To help encourage this, Zombie Studios has given the game a bonus system. If you are near your teammates, you will get a multiplier that gets higher over time. This means to get the most out of the game you will need to stick with your team and complete objectives rather than going around and accomplishing nothing but a high K/D as a lonewolf.

 

 

Conclusion

Playing Special Forces: Team X was a fantastic experience. It’s rare for a game, especially in the Shooter genre, to accomplish any kind of uniqueness, yet this game does it. I am typically not a fan of third-person shooters, yet I enjoyed this one thoroughly. The features, such as the dynamic maps, make this game standout amongst its competition. If you are looking for an exciting third-person shooter, I suggest you give this one a look as you won’t regret it.

 

 

Features: 4/5 – It gave me just about every feature I could ask for in a Shooter.

Customization: 5/5 – You are given a very nice amount of options.

Graphics: 3/5 – Not the highest quality, but the style used helps make up for it.

Controls: 3/5 – Some things took a bit to get used to, but overall they worked well.

Community: 4/5 – I had no negative experience with it, but I would have liked a forum.

 

Overall: 4/5 – It’s always a great experience to find a game that you can give a good score, and Special Forces: Team X definitely deserves this 4 out of 5.