CT Special Forces

It becomes almost instinct, when playing a 3D FPS, to use stealth and evasion frequently for the sake of your health, being wary of your ammunition and knowing to run like hell at the sight of a tank or a giant demon. 2D shoot-em-ups, on the other hand, promote the mindset of leaping headfirst into a frantic situation, blasting and slicing in every direction, and hoping you'll make it out alive; unless you die upon touching an enemy, in which case you just sit from afar and blast them to pieces before they can get close. These two vastly different mindsets, for a genre that are roughly the same despite the change in dimensions and view point, are rarely acknowledged or changed greatly for the sake of experimentation.

And then CT Special Forces did just that.

Clearly inspired by the likes of Metal Slug, CT Special Forces drops you in control of Raptor and Stealth Owl, two counter terrorist units who must stop any terrorist threat that crops up, but aren't exactly armed for the task. They can pick up weapons and grenades along the way, and in some games a tank, but if they were to simply dash into the situation with only a pistol and a knife, they'd be toast in no time.

And thus, this is where the 3D FPS mentality comes into effect; your characters are weak. Your enemies are strong. For you to defeat them, you must take cover behind obstacles or above their field of fire and exploit their weaknesses, even if it does involve firing slow-moving pistol rounds into their feet until they keel over dead just to avoid having to deal with that giant gattling gun. And just like the 3D FPS mentality, you can happily go nuts once you've stocked up on powerful weaponry with lessened threat of dying embarrassingly.
 

CT Special Forces - PlayStation / Game Boy Advance (2002)
 

The first in the series, it starts off the basic fundamentals for the whole series, but most importantly, it provides us with it's first nonexistent plot.

"You are a part of the CT Special Forces unit, elite commando of the Special Intervention Forces.
You must secure the areas under enemy control, destroy their armies and capture their leaders.
The entire world is counting on you!"

With a burden like that, how could you refuse?
There are four worlds in total: the Snow Covered Mountains, The Arid Desert, The Hostile Jungle and the The Forbidden City, each with three levels. Each world begins with a briefing from your zombie-like commander, usually featuring nonsensical conversations, but they don't change the fact that your goal for each level is to simply reach the end checkpoint.

The primary gameplay is just your typical side-scrolling shooter; you can jump, you can crouch, you can fling grenades and are equipped with four other weapons; a pistol, machine gun, rocket launcher and flame thrower. In addition, you have grappling hooks to climb up steep cliffs (and by climb up, I mean fade to black and you're at the top), handcuffs to capture the terrorist leader of each world, awarding you an extra life, and usually after you climb a cliff, you'll need to parachute down it again, requiring you to open your parachute at the right time and right place or else you'll just inexplicably die.

Also in each world is one signpost with a crosshair painted on it. When you come across these, you're forced to set up your sniper rifle and take out a number of terrorists with hostages; kill them all with the hostages untouched and you'll be awarded an extra life; cock up and you'll have just wasted your time.

You will come to dread those signposts, as you cannot skip them at all, even though their purpose should be purely optional, and sniping enemies is just an incredibly grating chore. With only a small fraction of the field visible, featuring snipers who duck behind walls and scenery after firing and no idea where they are aside from simply looking around aimlessly, it's just a simple way of draining your health to zilch and usually costing you a life or two before you can proceed. And if you accidentally kill a hostage, you receive no compensation either.

Worlds 2 and 4 begin with a vertical helicopter shmup segment almost similar in style to Xevious, where you use your cannons to attack airborne enemies and bombs to attack whatever is below. However, they barely last more than two minutes and supply you with far too many health pick-ups, meaning they're actually the easiest parts of the game, even in the second part which utterly bombards you with helicopters and tanks from every direction, it continues to supply repairs just as often.

And finally, there's also a 2-player co-operative mode, featuring both Stealth Owl and Raptor going through missions, but due to them having to stay within the boundaries of the screen as well as having to avoid all the hazards the levels provide, it's more than a little cumbersome and means one can't go ahead to take care of enemies for a weakened ally. The Game Boy Advance version (see below), however, changes a number of things; it is supposedly made more competitive by claiming the first person to die to be the loser, though aside from eliminating the extra lives and the screen boundaries problem, nothing has been changed to actually make it more competitive. One can actually do the mission while the other sits around doing nothing and they'll still win if the other kicks the bucket.

As a first instalment, CT Special Forces is rather experimental by including the three different play styles, but doesn't excel in any particular part; looking at them as a whole makes them seem unbalanced and contrasting, the cakewalk that is the shmup segments seeming really out-of-place next to the utter frustration of the sniper segments, while the side-scrolling gameplay just seems to fluctuate. The sequels, for the most part, sort out these problems, and leave the beginning of the series more as an example as how it changed from there.

A Game Boy Advance version of the game was also made, a lot easier to find but featuring a number of changes from the PlayStation version. The graphics are different, featuring black outlines, trimmed animation and different briefing scenes; enemy AI is a lot more simplistic, involving them simply walking back and forth and shooting periodically, in contrast to the shoot-on-sight mentality from the PSX edition. The flame thrower is also toned down a lot, featuring shorter range and you can no longer use it while crouching; grenades are also thrown more vertically [CONFIRM], the barricades in world 1 damage you when they explode, and the flying levels seem to take a lot longer and make you suffer more damage from attacks (this would remain the same through all of the GBA ports). And finally, a trait shared by all the GBA ports, the save function is replaced by a password system, allowing you to skip ahead as well as featuring a password that lets you choose who to play as in each level after completing the game.

Comparison screenshots

CT Special Forces 2: Back to Hell / Back in the Trenches / Elite Squad - PlayStation / Game Boy Advance (2003)
 

With an experimental beginning under their belt, LSP Games knew what to add and what to change, and what they did adds a fair bit to the gameplay, all for the better. For starters, there's a new pilot on the team, Avenger, who adds a new kind of helicopter mission to the game: Rescuing prisoners. Similar in style to Choplifter, you simply avoid or fire at the enemies (making sure not to shoot the prisoners) while landing your chopper by the hostages, loading them on and flying them back to the helipad. It's simplistic, barely difficult, but it's slightly more entertaining than the regular helicopter segments.

New to the side-scrolling sections is the ability to forward roll. Similar to the slide of Metal Slug 5, except actually useful, the barrel roll makes you just about invincible when used, although you can't attack until you get back on your feet, and you can't stop it prematurely, but it's a welcome addition. Also increasing the similarities to Metal Slug is the addition of vehicles, the most prominent of them being the tank: Hop in with the grenade button and you can slowly trundle backwards and forwards, using your cannon or the incredibly awkward turret that doesn't quite feature the flexibility of the turrets from the SNK games, and also requires you to press backwards or forwards to alter it's direction, not up or down. If there's one advantage over the CT Special Forces tank has over the Metal Slug, it's that you can aim the cannon diagonally. Not by much, but it's certainly much more helpful than fighting with the turret's limited range.

And then there's a new weapon named after the squadron; the CT Special Forces gun. In the hands of Raptor, it's a arcing grenade launcher with a blasts that travel in an arc, while with Stealth Owl it becomes a short-range shotgun; both modes are actually more powerful than the rocket launcher. Go figure.

Not so much of a new addition but one that was bound to happen, there are sequences where Raptor rides on the back of an unusually small truck while enemies parachute down at him and terrorists roar up from behind in their own vehicles, requiring you to fill them full of lead, though it's not a necessity since these sections are rarely a challenge.

And the sniper sections? They're actually tolerable now, thanks to the addition of a little arrow that points you in the direction of the next sniper! It ultimately kills the satisfaction of surviving those parts, but it means you won't die fifty times to a man hiding behind a palm tree. Not that you can die fifty times anymore, as one death is all it takes to end the segment with a failure but no additional punishment aside from the lost life.

The game itself, not just the changes and additions, actually feels like a game, rather than the experimental "let's see how this works out" style of the first instalment. You are contacted throughout the level via your superiors, prisoners or the terrorists, offering advice or name-calling and in a number of stages you must work with bombs, either ones that have been set by the enemies and need defusing, or ones you must plant yourself in preset locations. It's not much, but it's small bits of diversity like that that make the game feel like a whole. It also helps that the locations are defined better by their artwork and settings, and the bosses are a lot more interesting than a car that rolls backwards and forwards spewing missiles, even if an armoured cannon with turrets rolling along a monorail track is the most interesting it gets.

The PlayStation version ditches the level select and co-operative of the previous instalment, leaving only the ability to start a new game, load a saved file or change the options on the menu; strangely, this and the third game feature manuals that are only around five pages long, whereas their Game Boy Advance versions get more detailed multi-language manuals. The Game Boy Advance version still uses passwords instead of save files, but adds in a 2-player challenge mode, where you and a rival go through the level trying to reach the goal first or survive the longest. Aside from that, the only difference between them seems to be that the rescue missions with Avenger appear to be a lot more touchy about colliding with the ground; the PlayStation version doesn't seem to punish you, whereas the GBA version makes you explode on contact. Of course, it could've just been that I wasn't joyriding when playing the PSX version.

Comparison screenshots
 

CT Special Forces 3: Bioterror / Navy Ops - PlayStation / Game Boy Advance (2004)
 

The last of the 2D instalments in the series, Bioterror isn't quite as much of a step forward as Back to Hell was, but acts more as a polishing up of flaws, making it more suitable for a newcomer to the series. However, as suggested by the second subtitle, it does introduce aquatic exploration, providing Raptor and Stealth Owl with diving gear and a harpoon gun that replaces their weaponry when swimming. The rest of the additions are relatively minor, the most prominent being the ability to shoot downwards when jumping, enemies dropping ammunition and grenades when killed, and the pistol having a faster firing rate, making it more useful than before and means you can cope better with no weapons; which is unlikely due to the aforementioned plentiful ammunition.

Unlike the tweaking to everything like in the previous game, CT Special Forces 3 puts all it's emphasis on the side-scrolling gameplay, all but ignoring the remaining play modes. The helicopter pilots, Aquila One and Avenger, only get one stage each in the entire game; the sniper segments are mostly optional, leaving one to ignore them if they so desire, and the stages where Raptor rides on the back of a truck while taking out enemies are gone completely, arguably for good reason. Presumably to make up for all this, more of the stages are labyrinth-esque, requiring more than a simple "go right and leap over obstacles" approach to reach the end, and there are moments where the screen locks and you must take out the enemies that appear before you can move on, similar to Metal Slug. While this makes the game the best in the series regarding the side-scrolling gameplay, it does feel slightly empty without the diversity of the earlier instalments.

Although the communication with enemies and allies has been lessened significantly, the levels tend to make sense with what's happening and you don't suddenly go from a mountainous blizzard zone to the middle of the desert; the second world takes place on a harbour where remnants of a genetic processing material have been found, which ends up belong to an Ian Mouravitch, whose boat is where the third world takes place and has pools of the material that you have to leap over. It's the absolute baby basics of story telling and is in no way outstanding, but considering this is a series that previously just threw you in whatever location looked cool while the counter-terrorist group spouted one-liners, this is riveting stuff.

Predictably, the last world ends up showing what the genetic processing material was used for: Supersoldiers. Featuring both prototypes and finished products, those things are all too happy to club you with their ham fists or blast you with pulse guns, and the final boss is a robotic suit that flings all manner of blasts, lasers and shockwaves at you. Severely out-of-place for the strictly military theme of the series, but it's a refreshing change from the usual grunts and battle machines.

The PlayStation port keeps up tradition from the second instalment by lacking the Challenge mode and using saves instead of passwords; however, the game seems to suffer from a slow frame rate and some unbalanced changes. The hoodie-wearing goons who fire five shots in different directions are now among the toughest enemies in the game, as they fire a lot more often now, especially when on parachutes, and due to their wide range it's difficult to kill them without losing a large chunk of your health. Even enemies who can be killed easily still rip a chunk of health from you with each attack, rivalling Metal Slug Advance in terms of damage dealing. The GBA version features a faster frame rate, is more balanced in difficulty, and just seems more polished as a whole, plus it's much easier to find, so go with that one.

Comparison screenshots

Ultimately, CT Special Forces is a series that has good and interesting intentions, but just lacks a little something to make it that more long-lasting and challenging.

Yeah, the foreword is half-assed at the minute. It's unfinished, see!