Formulating the story for The Mark probably went like this: the developers were drunk during a long B-grade action movie marathon when one bright fella stood up and said “Boy, what if we mix all of these ideas from these terribly bad action movies and make a game?”. Sure, everyone there probably laughed their arse off but the unfortunate thing is that they did just that – made a game that has as much cheese-factor as those early, and silly, Jackie Chan movies that made absolutely no sense plot wise, but all we needed to know was that all these bad guys were after you.
Brace yourself - The Mark is about a real threat in today’s society, terrorism. A group of terrorist has managed to secure themselves a nuclear missile and plan to blast London to pieces. Get this though, their missile isn’t long-range friendly so they seek assistance from a Russian billionaire who agrees to supply them with a carrier that’ll ensure their success. We are only getting to the good part; there are only two people in the world capable of foiling their plans to prevent the attack, so it is up to you to stop their plans - a real winner.
There are two playable characters that formulate most of the story – Steve Fletcher, a US Marine officer, and elite mercenary Austin Hawke. The odd pair find themselves working together to prevent the terrorist from making a successful attack. Both have their distinct personalities but neither of them are at all interesting, as is the case with the rest of the irritating cast of characters – it’s just one big cheese fest.
Dirty looking henchmen number 1002.
Providing gamers with two playable characters allows for several possibilities. In The Mark, you can play the game from a completely different perspective and use different abilities, and experience areas that the other cannot reach. The implementation of the two characters doesn’t work as well as originally expected though. The potential for such an idea is certainly on the table, but in this game it fails severely. You see, the game and its characters just aren’t that appealing so it doesn’t make a difference who you play as because it’s all the same regardless. What is provided though is two distinct abilities between the characters. Fletcher is much quicker than Hawke, so he’s your obvious choice for run-and-shoot situations, and since he has a bullet-time effect (where time slows down) you’ll be able to avoid bullet fire altogether with relative ease. Meanwhile, Hawke has the ability to spot enemies hiding behind cover and walls. So, while both have their differences, none of them warrant a second play-through just to experience their abilities.
The Mark is everything we’ve experienced and seen long ago with first-person shooters. The game fails to provide any sort of innovation, and gets run down by the typical errors that many others have been hurt by. In fact, The Mark is quite simply the worst first-person shooter ever. It’s virtually a game of sitting ducks, where enemies generally stand in the one spot whilst you fire at them. AI is unresponsive and stupid – they’ll either stand in open spaces making it real easy to shoot at them or just won’t make any movements at all. Gameplay is terribly scripted too. Certain enemies will only appear or start shooting at you once you’ve reached a certain spot. Their movements are easy to predict, and seeing as the game doesn’t feature any checkpoints, you’ll probably become accustomed to them soon enough anyway. What’s really stupid is that despite knowing that a room is full of enemies, throwing a grenade will do nothing until you’ve triggered the scripted event. It destroys any sort of strategy that could’ve been involved with the game.
AI as a whole is pathetic, whether it is friendly or enemy AI. Generally, you’ll be fighting your way through most levels with another character, so you’d naturally hope that the character that accompanies you is intelligent enough to stay alive. Well, the staying alive part isn’t too hard since they are invincible, but the intelligent part... well, not so much. Your friendly target will frequently run in front of you whilst you’re shooting, jump right in front of bad guys and absorb their bullets and very rarely dealing any damage of their own. What’s great though, your ally will magically be able to push you if they are near you. So, say for instance, you’re hiding behind cover trying to stay alive, only popping up every now and then to dish out a few bullets. Your stupid AI friend will quite frequently push you out from this cover, leaving you vulnerable to attacks. There was one occasion where we were pushed out of a room and had the door locked on us. Enemy AI is far from better though, since there’s absolutely no utilisation of surrounding cover or tactics.
There’s very little to do outside of shooting everything you possibly can in this game. There are no side objectives within chapters; just reach a certain point and shoot the bejesus out of everyone in your way. It is purely a case of shooting aimlessly at enemies the whole time, but is usually mixed up with you being placed in different areas and shooting different enemies. You’ll come across enemies in castles with suits and jeans on and even terrorist with dynamite strapped to their bodies in Iraq. There are often things included that make no sense at all, such as terrorist with dynamite strapped to their bodies riding motorcycles in a mine… sure, okay.
Terrorist with dynamite strapped to their body? Sure, why not.
There are many small annoyances that make The Mark even more frustrating than it already is. The game for whatever reason forces you to go to the start-up menu every time you die just so you can reload a previous save file, and the physics are beyond terrible. Enemies will die unrealistically, flying and flapping their arms around before kicking the can. There are plenty of unfinished touches, including flickering texture problems, characters constantly running into walls (and even through them), animation that doesn’t even consist of bodily movements and jumping that feels as though you’re running in mid-air. These issues just overcomplicate things for gamers, forcing you to compete with the game rather than enjoy it.
Visually, the game is a nightmare. The game borderlines on PSOne quality, with plenty of terribly modeled objects, textures that lack detail, robot-like animations, and shadows that are formulated from objects that aren’t even there. The voice acting is disgraceful; everyone sounds terribly unemotional, and the delivery just isn't there.
The developers really need to reevaluate their group of staff, because there are frequent bugs popping up, laughable gameplay sequences and elements that are a step (way) back in video game evolution. There’s absolutely nothing that sets this aside from any other first-person shooter played in the last decade, and some of the problems encountered are pathetic. Truly flawed game.
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