Years ago I picked up Soldier of Fortune for the Dreamcast because I was attracted to its wanton destruction and ridiculously high level of gore, only to be disappointed by its mind-numbingly long load times and its chugging frame rate, which were also factors that kept me away from the Xbox version. However, the same cannot be said of Swordfish Studios and Vivendi Universal Games' Cold Winter, a PS2 first person shooter that, while not the most polished game on the block, features a smooth enough frame rate, an entire gun shop full of weapons that go BOOM, and wave after wave of bad guys who feature multiple points of disconnection. If you enjoy squeezing ketchup packets you'll be in sweet love with this bloody and disgusting game.

So here's the deal. In Cold Winter you play as an MI6 agent known as Andrew Sterling, a tough as nails super spy who wears plain clothes, doesn't drive fancy and expensive luxury cars, and has probably never in his life asked for a martini. The problem is (sucks to be him), Sterling was captured by the Chinese government and his motherland denied his existence (essentially leaving him for dead). Brutally tortured (the finger breaking scene still gives me chills), Sterling was left to rot in a jail cell along with the other "criminals", but as luck would have it, he's rescued by an old friend, and after escaping China, takes on some odd jobs that wind up plunging him into this much larger situation, but I'll leave the figuring out to you. Just know that although Cold Winter is a pretty mindless shooter, its narrative is actually well told and worth checking out.

So yeah...mindless. That's the best way to describe this game. Swordfish didn't go the extra mile to make the missions open ended. In fact, you'll always see a cursor (complete with a distance meter) that informs you of where Sterling needs to go, so Cold Winter isn't a particularly smart game per se. Rather, complexity has been tossed in favor of wanton destruction. All of the game's real world weapons can be used to unleash hell upon the multitudes of bad guys you'll square off against, guards and terrorists that are governed by intelligent AI that enables them to analyze situations, so they may decide to lob a grenade instead of shooting or dive behind some cover, though you'll still come across the one moron who has a death wish and stands out in the open blasting away, but when I see that pathetic fool I don't shake my head and blame Swordfish Studios. I can't, and really no one can, because this idiot is merely a set up, a means to an end. The developers want you to shoot this poor scum bag and make him suffer, and I don't mean with a bullet to the chest. Each of the game's enemies feature multiple points of disconnection, so you can blow off hands, arms, legs, feet, thighs, and the best of the best, heads! Seriously, if you shoot someone in their melon the damn thing will explode all over the place. We're talking bits of gooey crimson-covered brains splattering against the wall. It's the sort of over-the-top violence that makes me proud to be an adult.

The senseless killing isn't the only reason to play Cold Winter, because it's not all about shooting. Sterling also has the ability to manipulate objects in his environment in a not so Psi-Ops kind of way. Basically, you can pick up and throw boxes, smash chairs over people, flip over tables to use as cover, or push and pull heavier objects, such as a dumpster, to hide behind. This is one of the few features that make the game unique, especially since most shooters feature AI that can utilize cover better than you or I can. However, in Cold Winter these options are really what you make of them. The AI is aggressive but it's by no means overpowering on the normal difficulty setting, and therefore I didn't have much trouble running into a wide open area and just destroying anyone that moved. In fact, the only time I ever flipped over a table was at the very beginning of the game, when I wanted to see if I could do it so I could write this review and therefore inform you that yup, you can do it!

In addition to flipping, pushing, and pulling you can also combine items to create weapons and useful tools. For example, a bottle of booze, some cloth, and a light can be used to create a Molotov cocktail. Similarly, you can use wire and other useful bits to birth a lock pick. Unfortunately, you don't always need to combine stuff to progress, but as I said before, you can do it!

Unfortunately, Cold Winter isn't without its faults. Its graphics, while not nearly as horrendous as other reviews say, aren't the best that we've seen on the PS2, and to make matters worse the frame rate occasionally takes a dive into the shallow end of the pool, so expect some stuttering. However, I found most of the game's environments to actually be pretty detailed. Can't say the same for the character models, some of which are blocky and just poorly put together. Thankfully, they don't remain "put together" for very long.

Multiplayer is also nothing special. All of the modes are what we've all come to expect from games of this type (Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Last Man Standing, Domination, Flag Tag), and at times there was a tremendous amount of lag. It's not a horrible experience by any means, but I tired of it quickly.

Complaints aside, Cold Winter is one of the greatest PlayStation 2 first person shooters ever made. It's got a good story, great controls that feel right, more gore than the NJ Parkway has road kill (and that's quite a bit) and some nice subtle features, such as the ability to only carry two weapons at a time, solid voice acting, well-directed cut scenes, and all of the aforementioned "you can do it" stuff. You can't put it next to the likes of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, but considering the platform it's on and the available games for it, this is at the very top of the PlayStation 2 shooter heap.