Titles developed by Eastern European teams often have a hard time "gelling" with American tastes, putting them far under the radar (in a bad way) when they hit U.S. shores. CDV Software is always pretty good about bringing a lot of these over to the States, and though most of them are pretty hit or miss with us, some of them gain some pretty decent traction. Though the first-person shooter library is growing on all platforms to an almost nauseating degree, CDV is delivering a potentially interesting title called UberSoldier.

There is no denying that UberSoldier isn't your standard Nazi-killing fare, but this time there's a bit of a twist. You actually play the game as Karl Stoltz, an occult Nazi experiment gone wrong. While trying to imbue your dead corpse with mega (read: uber) powers and turn it into a walking undead killing machine, things went horribly awry. You didn't like your carcass being messed with, and the result is that some very unfortunate Nazi goons now have a pissed off, fully equipped and armed evil-powered zombie to deal with.

What makes UberSoldier a bit unique are the powers granted due to your tinkering at the hands of the Nazis army of evil scientists. You have two: the temporal shield and the rage/fury. The rage/fury is easy enough to grasp, having your hitpoint level increase and your shield level go up, respectively. Where things get sort of cool, though, is with the temporal shield.

The temporal shield functions as this big bubble that surrounds Stoltz. While activated, it will not only stop any bullets from hitting the player, but also suspend them mid-air, trapped in the shield. Then, with these bullets surrounding you and trapped in this field, you can run up on enemies and use the suspended bullets to tear them apart. Does this really make any logical sense? In all honesty, no. No, it does not. But, it makes certain sections of UberSoldier a hell of a lot of fun, and it feels really cool to do.

Powers are recharge with how savagely you take out your enemies. In the session we got to sit down with, this meant the more headshots the better. Melee kills also have a beneficial effect, but in all honesty we were too busy plugging Nazis full of holes with 1940's-era weaponry to even think about using a knife. Hopefully with some more hands on time we can get a better idea on what kind of dynamic this will lend to the game, but for now it seems pretty basic.

UberSoldier has your standard first-person shooter elements, but they all feel like they're coming together quite nicely. Level design is detailed and realistic, but still incredibly fun. There's actually a firefight sequence we were able to check out with some brief hands on that had us tearing through a section of closely placed rooms actual pulled off an incredible dynamic - enemies effectively maneuvered, threw grenades, and otherwise made themselves a pain in the ass to kill.

The weapons available in UberSoldier are pretty varied, and pack just the right amount of OOMPH!, both in their use and how they effect the enemies and environments.) Weapon physics feel spot on and accurate, and there is a care put into location-specific damage that feels a lot more solid than a lot of some triple A titles seen even today. Gunplay is pretty familiar, with Stoltz being able to fire in both "standard" mode and an aimed targeted mode.

Visually the game makes it past the finish line. The machine we played it on apparently wasn't maxed out to full potential, but the game still looked quite good. All your expected PC graphical effects are there, and models are quite detailed and realistic. The temporal shield lends itself to some pretty interesting looking situations, and walking around with a ton of bullets suspended in a force field isn't something you're going to see in any video game, but UberSoldier pulls it off quite well.

This title isn't promising to be anything groundbreaking, but after playing through brief sections of the game you realize that with so many first person shooters popping up, it's still surprising how often they're missing some of the most basic and fun elements of the genre. UberSoldier really looks like a generally fun game - it has all of those fun elements there, and they come together nicely. UberSoldier looks like it has a lot of surprises in store for first-person shooter fans, and with it's currently set budget price you should really check back with us for our review when it hits this April.