Epsilon (PC) Preview

Everything starts off with a comic book page that looks like it's from the late '80s, that presents the situation in a fairly barebones manner. Some terrorists are inside the Unipol building, they have shown themselves to be willing to kill for their ends, and they need to be taken out. The characters so far, lack personality and are not voice-acted, probably because no actor would want to be associated with such bland-looking cast. Fortunately, and while the story obviously needs work like many other things, Epsilon is a breath of fresh air gameplay-wise.

It starts off by allowing the use of some measure of tactics before the mission begins. A building needs to be cleared of terrorists, and two hostages need to be rescued. Before doing that, enemies can be tagged through the use of the building's security cameras, and the building layout can be scoped out a bit too. Rotating the cameras is usually pointless, though, because their view is often largely obscured by walls and doors. The map is also a bit vague, with a few obscure symbols. Once the place is scoped out, a sniper can be placed in one of several locations, the best location probably being somewhere across from where the action starts, so that enemies can be picked off easily. It's also possible to have him take care of enemies on one floor, while you take out the enemies on the floors above. It's really nice.

After choosing tactics, the squad can be equipped with one primary and one secondary weapon, both of which can have two attachments. There's not a big selection of weapons yet, and choosing anything other than just the standard assault rifle and pistol is pointless, since squad members can only use their primary weapon (one of the assault rifles or a shotgun). In fact, equipping them with anything else would be a security hazard at this point, because they miss enemies a bit too much, even when they're standing right in front of them - or shoot enemies as soon as they spot them. As for armour and tactical items, they will be available in the future.

Once the mission has started, you'll find it's quite fun to choose where to go and what to do first, though the enemy AI needs work, since they simply stay put instead of flanking the player team or doing anything tactical. Sometimes they even surrender when they could just run to notify their friends of your presence. However, there is danger in being spotted nonetheless, as enemies quickly do much damage, and healing is impossible. That necessitates using a camera to peek under doors, and to order the squad to stay put beside the door in order to clear the room. It feels much like an unfinished Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.