New World Order Review

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 May, 2003

For a game with 'new' in the title, there's an awful lot of 'me too'.

Version tested: PC

New World Order is the sort of game that reminds you to read reviews, play demos, ask your friends, check message boards, and force freckly bastard Virgin Megastore employees to take polygraph tests before you hand over your money. For that, and for that alone, it must be applauded.

Blow me up. Now.

'New World Order' Screenshot 1

I cannot even be bothered.

From the very first line of the manual (which begins "In th enear future") to the very last level of the game (which cannot be completed for various reasons), New World Order is a total farce. You play this chap called Dobbs, part of the Global Assault Team - a poor man's Rainbow Six - who travels the world from one drearily decorated, uniformly overcast location to the next, unloading the free world's justice upon unsuspecting terrorists. But despite claiming to be a squad-based tactical shooter, Dobbs' only contact with his team is this commanding officer chap, who dispenses orders in an eerily abandoned base of operations before each mission.

Once in the field, Dobbs (or Parker, as the game occasionally claims) is forced to take on about a dozen enemies who can see through walls and whose secret weapon is the ability to hinder your machine's performance whatever the spec. Unfortunately all of Dobbs' weapons are jammed on full auto and sound like spud guns, and it's virtually impossible to advance without dying horribly before getting anywhere near the end of the level. As you might imagine, the developer hasn't included mid-game saves (not even rationed, Black Hawk Down-style), and doesn't let you interrupt reload animations to select other weapons when startled, but the good news is that you needn't bother accumulating intelligence documents or rescuing hostages, because none of these objectives apparently affect the mission outcome: the brass is quite happy enough if you just obliterate everybody.

In-between listening to anguished terrorist screams of "Take him down!" (whatever part of Eastern Europe he's infiltrating), Dobbs is free to admire his mediocre surroundings, from the badly aligned textures on most buildings and the pre-Quake 2 lighting effects, to the low-poly enemy models, the way they all lie dead facing in the same direction and the rather worrying way their blood seeps away like that black alien goop in The X-Files.

Uninstall or Exorcism?

'New World Order' Screenshot 2

I actually asked to review this game.

There are some good ideas, but they're all badly implemented. You can only pick certain weapons between missions, and the quality of your arsenal depends on your rank, but once you've advanced beyond level two or three you can pick up pretty much anything you want. And, cleverly, the game forces you to think about how much your arsenal weighs, slowing you down in the field if you're carrying a lot of kit. And you'll have to think, because the game doesn't tell you how close you are to the 10kg limit. Then again, with the framerate leaping around like a startled wallaby with a coke addiction, you won't really notice the difference between a satchel full of Kalashnikovs and a couple of side arms anyway.

All the weapons seem pretty rubbish though, spewing bullets off-target as if Dobbs never made it through basic training, let alone through a spell in the Navy SEALs, and this counter-terrorist never bothers to pick up an enemy rifle if he already has one anyway, so when you're really low on ammo the best thing to do is empty the last remaining rounds and pick up another gun.

Of course New World Order's real attraction is supposedly its Counter-Strike-inspired multiplayer mode, which features familiar team deathmatch, bomb disposal and hostage rescue missions. Sadly the maps are all pretty basic, and we never found more than a couple of people playing the game online anyway - when we did, they seemed pretty surprised to see us, perhaps because the net code only favours those with direct Internet backbone connections. Some people have commented that NWO may mature with subsequent patches like CS did, but we doubt that.

To top it all off, the single player game (which is pretty much the only viable option in the absence of any online competition) can be wrapped up in less time than it takes my Gran to drive from Milton Keynes to York. About five hours. And it would have been over quicker if the AI couldn't see through walls, and my supposedly chipper gaming rig (1.8GHz Athlon XP, Radeon 9700 Pro, etc) hadn't been coughing its lungs up over the task of rendering each enemy encounter.

Terrible

As we said at the outset, New World Order is horrendously bad. It makes you realise how spoilt we are with modern masterpieces like Raven Shield, which combine realistic counter-terrorism with addictive gameplay and produce enjoyable scenarios for single and multiple players. If you want to pretend you're fighting the war on terror, then buy that. Or download Counter-Strike. Whatever you do, don't buy New World Order.

1 / 10

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Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (38) Latest comment 9 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Blerk #1 9 years ago

    Hee! 1/10! Is that the lowest score you ever gave out? I don't remember anything below a '2' before... :-)

  • Slim #2 9 years ago

    Such a shame. The engine had serious potential, but the finished product is indeed a steenky pile of doo doo. Bah.

  • Errol #3 9 years ago

    You play this chap called Dobbs

    Most uninspired name choice of the decade ?

  • FWB #4 9 years ago

    WTF? This game rocks! You is all ass-munchers.

    I tried the demo once... long time ago. Took me a while to figure out how to move (yes, bloody move) and then I was joyfully greeted with the inability to perform 90% of the actions one can do in any other FPS (like reload a gun). It looked alright, but I dare not try and play online... well actually, that's a lie, I couldn't find anyone without a ping of 400 to play with. Seems like Termite Games is a good name for the developer.

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #5 9 years ago

    Most uninspired name choice of the decade ?

    "Postal Dude" is hardly better.
    Edited by 1 at 12/05/03 @ 10:22

  • Errol #6 9 years ago

    At least 'Postal Dude' is funny.

    allegedley.

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #7 9 years ago

    Yeah but, no it isn't.

  • Errol #8 9 years ago

    Still, the Postal review user comments certainly make amusing reading !

  • Killerbee #9 9 years ago

    Heh, sounds terrible.

    What was the 1 point actually for?

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #10 9 years ago

    I'm not sure we have a zero...

  • Errol #11 9 years ago

    The 1 point was for the last sentence of this excerpt -

    New World Order is the sort of game that reminds you to read reviews, play demos, ask your friends, check message boards, and force freckly bastard Virgin Megastore employees to take polygraph tests before you hand over your money. For that, and for that alone, it must be applauded.

  • Grom #12 9 years ago

    "the game doesn't tell you how close you are to the 10kg limit."

    Isn't that the thing on the bottom right of the HUD saying whatever/10000, with the little weight icon next to it?

  • LFace #13 9 years ago

    Rofl. This review has to be the funniest ive read in a while.

    I remember trying the first beta test of this game only for it to BSOD the pc as it was loading which gave HD corruption. That reason alone put me off every release this had be it in beta test or demo form.

    What is it with people copying Counter Strike for new games. Only reason CS is still succesfull is because everyone has it and even those with geriatric pc specs can play it. The gameplay is seriously dated compared to modern classics like RTCW and BF1942.

    What I would love for a company to do, is to copy BF1942 but with modern day stuff (like the Desert Combat mod only not on the shitty bf1942 engine which truly is dire both physics and netcode wise) where you can storm countries with modern day vehicles and weaponry. A kind of MMOFPS that isnt sci fi laden like planetscape.

  • FWB #14 9 years ago

    where you can storm countries with modern day vehicles and weaponry.

    OFP or OFP2? I hope OFP2 has the ability to plant flags in every square inch of land that you capture.... opps, sorry, "liberate".

  • JohnBye #15 9 years ago

    It can't be as bad as this abomination, surely?

  • Tiger_Walts #16 9 years ago

    1/10, I take it NWO doesn't even include the 3rd rate 'humour' of Postal 2 then.

  • MaTTy_P #17 9 years ago

    it includes the 4th rate humour, of just being plainly 'shat!'

  • LaundroMat #18 9 years ago

    JohnBye: what's that new-test link-thing?

  • JohnBye #19 9 years ago

    It takes you to an old version of the new site that doesn't all work properly. :) For some reason that's the link that came up when I ran a search, so either they've not finished porting all the old content across to the new site design yet or the search system is throwing up the wrong links. Either way, you can read the review, which is what matters. :)

  • Martin #20 9 years ago

    Heeee... To bad it gives us Swedes a bad name. Jim Malmros, hang your head in shame!

  • Midnight_Raven #21 9 years ago

    Hm, just judging from the screenshots contained in the review, it most certainly does NOT look like Doom 3 quality to me... totally understandable of course, given the fact that this game´s out NOW and Domm 3 will only be released a lot LATER. However, this DOES tarnish your own assessment of NWO a bit, hm?

  • FWB #22 9 years ago

    Well the comments section is here for a reason. :)

  • Whizzo #23 9 years ago

    Today on Eurogamer : "When Fanbois Attack!"

    The other reviews that are mentioned on Gamerankings aren't too complimentary about it either.

  • UncleLou #24 9 years ago

    Come on, one has to admit most of the guys here gave some good reasons why they like NWO or explained where they think the review is wrong. They're nowhere near the Postal 2/WWE Raw posse. And less amusing hence. :-(

  • FWB #25 9 years ago

    Is there an updated demo of this? I might give it a whirl and see what these guys are talking about.

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #26 9 years ago

    Kindly scroll up to the top of the review, and you'll notice that it's actually right next to the title of the game.

  • BigMac #27 9 years ago

    To mouse: Oops. Missed the most important fact (actually one of the few actual facts) in the complete review. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

    Therefore ignore my last sentence of my previous comment.

    The rest stands, of course.


  • ssuellid #28 9 years ago

    To the obvious fanboys: - NWO is getting slated everywhere - check gamesrankings - average review is 45%.

  • JohnBye #29 9 years ago

    "I guess it's fun to slam a game that comes out of nowhere and where the publisher didn't court you with cups and t-shirts"

    Ooh, cups and t-shirts. *giggles* Let's face it, you've got to be pretty sad to leave the house wearing most of those freebie gaming t-shirts the PR companies keep foisting off on journos. Most of mine went to a charity collection recently, so if you see some starving African kid on TV wearing a 3dfx shirt, you know why. ;)
    Edited by 1 at 13/05/03 @ 21:59

  • Whizzo #30 9 years ago

    Could someone post a link to a review of the game that doesn't slam it? Gamerankings obviously doesn't cover every review site, it doesn't feature EG after all, I would be interested to see a positive review from somewhere...

  • Whizzo #31 9 years ago

    Er is there a single review in English that doesn't slam it then? Every single review I've seen of it says the game is crap and one even suggests that at least you get a jewel case you can re-use, that one was is only a couple of weeks old so must be a recent version.

    Donka your comments about Mugwum just prove that you're an immature fanboy who can't accept criticism about his "precious".
    Edited by 1 at 14/05/03 @ 10:28

  • Bigfoot #32 9 years ago

    As you all are aware (including you fan boys, be honest).

    This game sucks, literally! You need a computer from NASA to run the game and even then it still demands more power.

    Nobody with a sane mind would give this game a good review, this is why there are none to be found in the UK.

    Who ever developed this game, you should be ashamed of yourselves!!! I've got just two words for you, 'Counter-Strike'

  • bungalooBunny #33 9 years ago

    I've looked at several screenshots from different websites and haven't noticed any signs of DOT3 lighting - if it's there it sure isn't being used properly.

    Donka you obviously seem very aware of the technical bits of the game to be just a player - maybe you are closer to this project then it seems?

    I haven't played the game so I can't really say how good/bad it is but 1/10 does seem quite a low score. The graphics offer nothing new but are fairly good - the game must really suck arse to get such a low grade.
    I wouldnt think the game was that bad, but it does seem to suck since all other reviews are below 40%

  • FWB #34 9 years ago

    bungalooBunny, you forget that EG scores are not as "generous" as other sites', ie. 5/10 here is average, where elsewhere it tends to be rank as weak. Poor on here, I would say, is about 3-4. Bad/awful is about 1.

  • JohnBye #35 9 years ago

    "I think the NWO shots look better"

    I think you need your eyes testing. ;)

  • ssuellid #36 9 years ago

    Already downloaded the demo and it looks rather ok but its nothing special - certainly not as pretty as the doom 3 alpha. Also attempted shooting a corner off a brick to check out the 'wall penetration' and it left a bullet hole sticking out in the air.

    Also the update link the install sticks in your program menu does not actually point to a valid web page.

    There are 18 servers running, 17 with 0 people on them and just the one with 17 people on it.

    The animation is not impressive either - looking down at the characters feet just made me laugh - whoever they modelled that on needs to learn how to walk properly.

  • yog.sothoth #37 9 years ago

    "fooking britney spears llamas"

    Llamas and Britney Spears? Does anyone have a link for this??

    Does Jeff Minter know..?

  • bungalooBunny #38 9 years ago

    I downloaded the 1.4 demo version of the game and played it for a bit.

    I found the graphics great - there's bump mapping everywhere and the levels are very realistic. The textures are very detailed and the lighting is far better than that of Quake2, including shadows and all. So I guess Angel was right about this one. The animation is quite poor though.

    In terms of gameplay.. here's where it hurts. It's all very clumsly done with detailed actions getting in the way, such as having to duck and point the mouse, and only then press a key to pick up a gun - surely Quake/Half-life/AnyFPSreally has found a better solution for this by just picking up a gun when you walk over it.

    Another thing excrutiatingly painful is the fact I'm always running out of ammo - being an SAS infiltrating terrorist-packed area shouldn't we have at least a M4 and bucket loads of ammo? Also all terrorists seem to be very aware of where you are once they hear any shooting, not only ruining the game because in the end they won't be where they were supposed to in frist place but also forcing you to face 5 or 6 enemies at once (with no ammo!).

    I wouldn't be as harsh as this review but would rate it 3/10 (single player, based on the demo) simply because of its pale entertaining factor.
    Edited by 1 at 16/05/03 @ 15:10