Ah, the life of a sniper. The cool evening breeze, the cityscape spread out before you, the calm and serenity of being with oneself while bringing on terror and chaos with each precision shot you fire from an unknown location. I'm sure many of us have felt the lure to take a nice big sniper rifle close to our hearts, and now, thanks to Konami's Silent Scope for the PlayStation 2, the dream can be realized; without the nagging moral questions and ensuing murder charges. Many will remember this innovative title from the arcades - a first person shooter, which was played mostly from the viewfinder of a full sized replica sniper rifle. Although there's been no word of releasing a full sized replica sniper rifle for home use (you've won this time parents!), Silent Scope for the PlayStation 2 succeeds in translating everything else from its arcade counterpart that's made it very addictive and fun to play.

Your character is essentially a disembodied target finder running on a fixed course, and your role is to provide sniper back up in a number of locals and dangerous situations. You're working for the good guys of course, aiding in a weak plot line that has the president and everyone he knows being kidnapped and taken to a place with lots of windows and guys with guns. General fare for a police shooter, but made enjoyable by the location variety and ability to pick your next destination. Often, your mission will be done while on the move, dangling from a helicopter over a football stadium, barreling down one of the most seemingly dangerous highway ever, or dog fighting over a beautifully created city location. Variety in action is a definite plus in this title. No matter what the event, however, enemies appear in droves-packed with the next-generation intelligence to act like someone getting shot at and proceed to duck for cover. In this aspect, Silent Scope relies more on trigger reflexes and enemy targeting (aided by helpful arrows), than anything else. It's not a long game in itself, but it's still significant in gaming lenght to master.

Control wise, Silent Scope doesn't benefit from the analog capabilities of the PS2 controller, but it does concentrate on using the analog sticks instead of the standard direction pad. Warning, this is very hard to get used to...and frustrating...very frustrating. While the analog sticks make for quick moving, centering on a small target takes hair-fine tuning and pushing back and forth in small increments will become a standard practice while the bad guys collectively laugh at your inability to come close to hitting them. You can use the direction pads to locate, but this is much slower and by the time you work back and forth between the two control types, someone has already made it to safety with the president's daughter, wife, dog, or intern. Firing is simple enough; though it's a one-button deal. If you miss once, reload time can often result in someone getting away with the president's cat, cigar, lawyer - (you get the picture). Essentially, the focus here is on accurate shooting, a factor the requires substantial time to develop.

A noticeable indicator that you are playing a next generation system is the graphics and resemblance to the arcade version. Silent Scope incorporates two views at once: the background and the aiming circle which highly magnifies the area which you aim at. Together, there is virtually no slow down. Shoot someone in your target and you will see them fall as a tiny dot in the distance. Character movement is also lifelike and everything from the city buildings to the innocent football players (stadium level) appears to feature photo-like quality. The PS2 has made this game a very clear and clean one graphically. Gone are zigzag edges or noticeably drawn surfaces, everything is true and beautiful 3D. In fact, Nothing has suffered from the arcade translation. Simply put, if the gaming activists want to attack anything for life-like violence, this would be the ideal game.

The sound has been constructed in a pleasing fashion. Audible 'police-radio' hints are regularly thrown in to provide tips or give you an indication at how much time you have left to complete a certain task. I was blessed with hearing every possible way a police officer can say 'bad shot' and still there seemed to be a great number of recorded voices. In-game sound effects are also effective, but nothing that's highly innovative. Given the nature of the game, it's hard to make gunshots sound revolutionary. In all, though, sound acts as another level in this game, and not just background noise.

It would be silly to assume that you can just sit down and become a great sniper. A true master needs years of training and a cold steady hand. Silent Scope has training levels--which do quite fine. In fact, there are enough training levels to justify an entirely different game. Time attack and Aiming mini-games are available right from the opening menu, and they provide another set of locations and challenges in order for you fine-tune your gaming and build the much needed lightening fast response times. High scores and good rankings in these events not only make you a hardened killer, but they also unlock the standard special options. Personally, I spent an upwards of an hour on these side-challenges, proving to myself once again that I am not cut-out for law enforcement.

Konami has engineered quite a fun title with Silent Scope. While it may not be the most politically correct title for a ever charged gaming world, it's one that deviates from standard genres and in short - it's fun to play and highly addicting. PlayStation 2 has just been born, but with games like this, it looks to have a promising life.

· · · Agent Smith