You won't see Ben Affleck's face (or J. Lo, for that matter...shucks)
anywhere in the Game Boy Advance version of Tom Clancy's new movie, The
Sum of All Fears. Still, the graphics are on target for what's
presented here, a top-down tactical action game. The squad-based combat
goes to its logical conclusion, so 4 GBA's can be linked for play, and each
squad member can see and control the action on screen during a mission. This
is the good stuff, the reason you'll want this game. If the best you think
you'll do is play this by yourself, I would really advise you to look
elsewhere, probably at something like the great Metal Gear Solid
where 1-Player rules. Not that playing alone isn't interesting, but the
dynamics are so much more limited than what you can get into playing with
friends.
Some of the better aspects of the interface include a visual indicator for
where gunfire is coming from, so you can quickly lock onto an enemy or avoid
fire when an enemy may be off screen or obscured in the background. A nice
monitor showing enemy positions is available for certain commandos, and a
neat sniper effect is used. Instead of going into scope mode the way you
think of it in FPS settings, Sum of All Fears sticks with top-down
perspective and cuts out all but a scope view you can use to target enemies.
Cop out? Maybe, but it still looks okay and does the trick. What I can't
quite get over is the cognitive dissonance of being behind a wall but still
being able to snipe an enemy on the other side... Sound is also done well,
to the extent that voices are easily discernible and the music is rousing
Hollywood stuff instead of tinny beats or nasal guitar riffs.
Gameplay:
Sum of All Fears follows the movie only so far as the general idea (a
loose nuke), and hones in on one aspect of the movie's action to create a
game. As I said, it is at its best for multiple players, either in
cooperative or competitive modes, but there probably are some folks who
would enjoy the tactical action alone. I guess... Since Multiplayer is
where the meat is, we'll start by saying the manual does little to nothing
to flesh out the mechanics of playing or the setup. Basically, it tells you
how to hook the GBA units together. Each player has the chance to pick an
'operative.' In Cooperative Mode, anywhere from 2 to 4 players can go
mission by mission to try and find the nuclear weapon, taking out terrorists
and saving hostages along the way. Making a well-balanced team is very
important, since each commando unit type has a strength that may play well
on some missions, but be less important on others. Each unit is rated
according to how sneaky he is, how skilled he is with his weapon, how sturdy
he is physically and how quickly he'll be able to respond under pressure.
But, the main thing you'll want to pay attention to are the weapons
available with each unit. In sneaking missions, all the grenades and
shotguns in the world won't help you when a silenced rifle is the best tool.
And, when a full-out assault is happening, the silenced pistol won't be much
good against automatic rifles. Another option for you is to play
Adversarial Mode and play against one another. A choice of operatives is
still involved, but I found this mode less useful or interesting since there
isn't any real progress or story and the choice of operatives can give one
player a clear advantage. What would have been fun would have been to give
players a chance to play as enemy units against the 'good guys,' or vice
versa.
Winning conditions are established at the beginning of each mission, usually
with an objective or two you'll need before you can consider the stage
perfectly completed. Sometimes you'll be able to move on after only
completing the main objective, but it is nice to have the depth of
additional requirements for each mission. Not all the objectives involve
killing people, but most do, even as a means to an end. In a level, there
are often objects you'll have to interact with, like doors, machines, and
hostages. According to how the mission is supposed to be played, you will
be cycling through available weapons (or operatives, if you're playing
alone) to address a particular situation. In Multiplayer, there's a nice
back and forth as you talk out the problem with your friend(s), calling on
someone to deal with an enemy or scan the area. Without Multiplayer, you
have to rely on the AI for how the other units on your team will respond to
a threat. I'd give the AI about a 4 out of 10. Most times, before a level
is completed, your team will be wasted. If you really get sick of the team,
Sum of All Fears does have a mode called Lone Wolf, where you follow
mission objectives but play by yourself. Fun enough, but not like that team
gameplay.
Difficulty:
It's hard to play the squad missions (the Standard Campaign) by yourself
without feeling cheated. The AI tries, but your team just can't match the
skill level of the terrorists unless you do some major intervention. And
then, you'll find situations where the best thing you could have done would
have been to have hung back and let your team go ahead. Problem is, they
don't really do that on their own. So, most times you end up leading and
then running away if the action gets beyond what you can handle. A
necessary evil. Some of the issues are valid gameplay features, having to
do with matching characters and their abilities to a specific mission type.
The balance you'll need on your team and the skill necessary to employ a
particular unit at the right time in the right place is fun, but all the
balancing in the world can't make the CPU team members as smart and
responsive as when there's human on the button.
Game Mechanics:
Controlling your team unit can be challenging, especially in an exchange of
bullets. Good choices for control options are executed in some questionable
ways, but the complexity of the control scheme is necessary for a game with
so many options. Moving around is handled simply with the D-Pad. One
button fires an active weapon or throws a grenade, and holding down the
button longer will make for a longer throw in the case of grenades. The
other button reloads. So, you can imagine that for all the other functions
in the game like strafe, change item or character, aim manually, perform an
action or look at the map you'll be using combinations of the buttons and
the shoulder pads. In theory this should be a piece of cake, but I'd be
lying if I didn't acknowledge some bit of a learning curve for the controls
in Sum of All Fears. In one sense, I like seeing GBA games
incorporate enough gameplay elements to demand more creative use of the
controls, but I also think we'll reach a point where the need for
complicated control schemes start to weed out more casual gamers. Probably
for the blood and shooting, Sum of All Fears earned a 'Teen' rating,
but even if it hadn't, I couldn't recommend it to younger kids for fear
they'd lose interest during the time it takes to master the controls.
My verdict is simple. Sum of All Fears is a cool game, with many
nice features and a clean look that reminds me a bit of Die Hard the
game, back on PlayStation. But, where it offers the most depth is in
Multiplayer. Apart from the fun of getting a couple or three friends over
to save the world from nuclear disaster (if only it were that simple in real
life...), Sum of All Fears did very little for me in Lone Wolf Mode
or as a 1-Player game. But, don't let that stop you from picking up a copy
if you happen to like mission-based squad action and don't mind a few little
quirks.
You won't see Ben Affleck's face (or J. Lo, for that matter...shucks)
anywhere in the Game Boy Advance version of Tom Clancy's new movie, The
Sum of All Fears. Still, the graphics are on target for what's
presented here, a top-down tactical action game. The squad-based combat
goes to its logical conclusion, so 4 GBA's can be linked for play, and each
squad member can see and control the action on screen during a mission. This
is the good stuff, the reason you'll want this game. If the best you think
you'll do is play this by yourself, I would really advise you to look
elsewhere, probably at something like the great Metal Gear Solid
where 1-Player rules. Not that playing alone isn't interesting, but the
dynamics are so much more limited than what you can get into playing with
friends. 
Sum of All Fears follows the movie only so far as the general idea (a
loose nuke), and hones in on one aspect of the movie's action to create a
game. As I said, it is at its best for multiple players, either in
cooperative or competitive modes, but there probably are some folks who
would enjoy the tactical action alone. I guess... Since Multiplayer is
where the meat is, we'll start by saying the manual does little to nothing
to flesh out the mechanics of playing or the setup. Basically, it tells you
how to hook the GBA units together. Each player has the chance to pick an
'operative.' In Cooperative Mode, anywhere from 2 to 4 players can go
mission by mission to try and find the nuclear weapon, taking out terrorists
and saving hostages along the way. Making a well-balanced team is very
important, since each commando unit type has a strength that may play well
on some missions, but be less important on others. Each unit is rated
according to how sneaky he is, how skilled he is with his weapon, how sturdy
he is physically and how quickly he'll be able to respond under pressure.
But, the main thing you'll want to pay attention to are the weapons
available with each unit. In sneaking missions, all the grenades and
shotguns in the world won't help you when a silenced rifle is the best tool.
And, when a full-out assault is happening, the silenced pistol won't be much
good against automatic rifles. Another option for you is to play
Adversarial Mode and play against one another. A choice of operatives is
still involved, but I found this mode less useful or interesting since there
isn't any real progress or story and the choice of operatives can give one
player a clear advantage. What would have been fun would have been to give
players a chance to play as enemy units against the 'good guys,' or vice
versa. 
It's hard to play the squad missions (the Standard Campaign) by yourself
without feeling cheated. The AI tries, but your team just can't match the
skill level of the terrorists unless you do some major intervention. And
then, you'll find situations where the best thing you could have done would
have been to have hung back and let your team go ahead. Problem is, they
don't really do that on their own. So, most times you end up leading and
then running away if the action gets beyond what you can handle. A
necessary evil. Some of the issues are valid gameplay features, having to
do with matching characters and their abilities to a specific mission type.
The balance you'll need on your team and the skill necessary to employ a
particular unit at the right time in the right place is fun, but all the
balancing in the world can't make the CPU team members as smart and
responsive as when there's human on the button.
Controlling your team unit can be challenging, especially in an exchange of
bullets. Good choices for control options are executed in some questionable
ways, but the complexity of the control scheme is necessary for a game with
so many options. Moving around is handled simply with the D-Pad. One
button fires an active weapon or throws a grenade, and holding down the
button longer will make for a longer throw in the case of grenades. The
other button reloads. So, you can imagine that for all the other functions
in the game like strafe, change item or character, aim manually, perform an
action or look at the map you'll be using combinations of the buttons and
the shoulder pads. In theory this should be a piece of cake, but I'd be
lying if I didn't acknowledge some bit of a learning curve for the controls
in Sum of All Fears. In one sense, I like seeing GBA games
incorporate enough gameplay elements to demand more creative use of the
controls, but I also think we'll reach a point where the need for
complicated control schemes start to weed out more casual gamers. Probably
for the blood and shooting, Sum of All Fears earned a 'Teen' rating,
but even if it hadn't, I couldn't recommend it to younger kids for fear
they'd lose interest during the time it takes to master the controls.