Navigation
At least that’s what their website says. Torrente is truly a poorly developed game in all honesty. It isn’t THAT horrible but it is a really bad game. Graphically it is on par with Redneck Rampage. The music is decent and the voice acting is so-so. Gameplay wise it just doesn’t cut it at all.
Torrente is the only game that I failed to play through the first mission, mainly because I couldn’t find the objective.
Graphics:
The textures are poor and the resolution is low. That basically sums it up. The animation for the characters is decent for such a poor quality game. The city environment is not a bad idea but it doesn’t work well with the game. The cars driving by act as cover and obstacles as you make your way through the maze of a city.
The weapon models range from OK to horrible. In First Person View you can see the poorly textured model but when they lay on the ground they look all right. You get a variety of weapons and they don’t look too bad when they are on the ground or when you view them from the third person.
The level design is pretty decent. It would have worked well if it was done a bit differently. There are tons and tons of cars driving throughout the streets. While this adds to a possible realism factor it does distract the player a lot, especially when the enemy is running at you from behind a car. Also it is pretty much impossible to tell where you are since it all looks the same. It’s just a big maze.
Audio:
The voice acting isn’t that great. The lead character does have his moments and he does play the part pretty well but there are other parts where you just look in awe and say, 'What the hell did he just say?’ Also the voices of the enemies are pretty much non-existent. They just grunt when they die.
The music is quite good; I just wish there were a few more tracks. It plays subtly in the background and does a good job at setting an action pace for the game. So props to the composer of the music.
The guns sound as real as you would expect from a game like this. They don’t sound as bad as we have seen in other games but they surely aren’t blockbuster. My only gripe is the uzi which sounds like someone shaking a stick in a tin can.
Gameplay:
Oh man it’s bad. Really bad. This is what makes this game horrid. Your first mission is to defuse some bombs, great I can handle that. Well I make my way through the town and I see an arrow at the top that points in the direction I am walking, or so I thought. There is no indication of the objective until you are close to it so you have to run, more like jog, through the town until you see a red dot. When you come upon this red dot there’s nothing there. I was directly on it and I saw nothing, no bomb nothing.
Also as I ran away my arrow still pointed toward the red dot, which was weird. If I ran away the distance grew but it wouldn’t show that I am going the wrong way. It made no sense as to why they would do this but whatever.
The enemies just seem to spawn out of no where and rush you shooting their guns. Luckily the controls aren’t too bad and you can swiftly maneuver your guy to easily kill them, in 1 shot. That’s all it takes to take out most guys. Rarely will you be shooting the same guy twice as they just fall to the ground and disappear after a while. If they had a weapon they would drop it sometimes or some ammo, nothing special.
If you had civilians near you they would run away in fear and if you shot and killed one you would lose 25 points off of your health. After playing the game for about 5 minutes it is easy to tell friend from foe and you can pick them off at a distance. The only problem is they also hide in buildings and behind other objects so they are pretty difficult to see.
Another issue is the camera. It sometimes gets blocked by trees so you are completely blind. I had to just keep running until the tree was behind me before I could see. I could have switched to First Person View but I had forgotten about that. It’s quite easy to do, just scroll the mouse wheel and it zooms in. Not a bad feature.
As far as a story goes and the bosses I have no clue. I couldn’t possibly play this game any longer to find out. This is definitely one of the worst games released this year. It would have been a great game if it had come out in 1999 or so, but that’s pushing it.
Conclusion:
Don’t bother. It really is a bad game. Maybe if it was in the bargain bin for 5 dollars I could see a reason to buy it. Just to see how truly bad it is.
