Trigger Man

Trigger Man has a hard time with first impressions. Case art? Solid. Title screen music? Solid. First ten minutes of the game? Not as much. I went into Trigger Man with no expectations, which is the best way I could have. I did read the back of the case, however, which promised a realistic setting, guns, and a knife camera to steer my throwing knives. It certainly delivers on those fronts.

Trigger Man tells a cheesy, Hollywood style story about the mafia. It contains all the plot twists, betrayals, and Italian bars you might expect. The main star of our game is "The Trigger Man": a huge Frankenstein-ish member of the Coladangelo family who was raised as the son of the Don. The Don's rise to the top brought peace to the feuding crime families, until Don Montagano's son was apparently murdered, and he pins it on your family. There's credit to be given for an attempt at some kind of story, and it's certainly competent, just nothing outstanding by any means.

Well lit rooms are not a priority to Don Colaandnadnangfnfan

In the presentation department, Trigger Man is a little rocky. The cutscenes are voice-less and told entirely through text, although I assume for budget reasons, and quite a few of the textures wouldn't seem out of place in an N64 title. For the most part, though, the game does keep its promise of realistic locales. That doesn't necessarily mean the environments look interesting, but they still delivered on one of their drawing features.

The music accents the gameplay and general mood of the title nicely. It wouldn't be as fun to listen to on its own, but it doesn't really need to be. There are also a small number of cute little details that add to the admittedly flimsy immersion, such as permanent bullet holes in the environment and accurate gun shells dropping to the floor.

I cannot express how impressed I was when I found out they made both Male and Female bathroom doors.

Gameplay wise, Trigger Man is a little bit confused about what it wants to be when it grows up. For quite a while, the title is an awkward mish-mash of tactical shooting, outright over-the-top firepower, and stealth. This makes the first three stages pretty rough.

The first thing you're bound to notice is that every enemy takes near countless rounds to the torso to go down. If you plan on scratching deeper than the first ten minutes, you're going to learn really quickly how to pull off head-shots. In spite of the many other play-styles Trigger Man tosses at you in its first act, over half of the game is dependent on your proficiency at this. Luckily, the controls work fine, which makes this more of an earned skill than just luck.

After your first experience with the precision based combat, the game nearly immediately hands you a shotgun and asks that you just blow the hell out of everything. The ammo crates and health packs -which are normally spread further apart to create more challenging stage design- are abundant, and there isn't an enemy that won't go down with a blast or two. It's easy to mistake this as Trigger Man's true intention, and then mark it off as another fun but straightforward shooter.

Again, immediately after the newly introduced shoot em up style of gameplay, the game switches gears again to give you a stealth section. Thankfully there are only three of these in the game, but you have no way of knowing that, and after your first outing with one, it's pretty likely you'll be done playing Trigger Man.

The stealth sections are based entirely around trial-and-error. Also lots of waiting. I assume Point of View was trying to create a tense situation with these segments, but due to the ridiculously picky nature of the game, you can only hide in a few spots, and even then need to be completely concealed. All three stealth sections are about equally frustrating, and if you have enough patience to fumble your way through them, you may be the kind of person who manages to squeeze enjoyment out of the less broken elements of Trigger Man.

Although the game introduces all of these play-styles, only one of them is going to be the main star. The majority of your playtime will be spent with the precision based combat. While the game starts out very rough, and the first three stages easily put most people off, it honestly gets some wind in its sails about halfway through. Enemy placement begins to require simple real-time strategy from the player, and tests both their reflexes and ability to keep track of their surroundings.

This becomes most strongly represented in a very small stage where you're tasked to move down rows of train-cars toward a boss holed up in a small office. Enemies are behind every box and around every corner. They have to be dispatched quickly and precisely, because the greatest danger to you in Trigger Man is taking more than a few seconds to down your enemies, as several are bound to be swarming you at any given time.

Most importantly, during these sections, I never wanted to put the game down. Nearly everything else about the gameplay flounders, but it did precision combat right. That still doesn't mean the game isn't rough, or that it's by any means necessary to play. You have to want to get something out of Trigger Man, and when there are so many other third person shooters with the same kind of satisfying combat, it's hard to find a reason to bother with this one specifically.

Trigger Man isn't a broken game. It's playable, and in long stretches, it's fun. There's value to be had here, certainly, but when you have to work so hard to uncover it -unless you're a really big fan of cheesy mob stories- there's very little reason to actually play. It's a shame.