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That's really the best word I can think of to describe Combat Task Force 121. It's sterile. It's a hard attribute to define on paper, but it's like the clichй - "you'll know it when you see it." The premise of the game is simple. There's a Marxist uprising. American special forces are sent in to help put it down.

That basically means you play one of a group of interchangeable soldiers. You can't see anything of them, really, except their camouflaged arm holding their weapon, or when you die and see your body. Even then, it looks like you're simply in normal camo fatigues, not in any kind of armor, the new Marine camouflage that's digitized, or even a hat or helmet.

You get your missions via a PDA with stuttering video - I assume it's supposed to look like limited-bandwidth video, but instead it just looks stupid.

The enemies are dumb. Weapons are powerful - only one or two shots to take down enemies, and no, you don't have any kind of "boss" or anything like that - these are all normal people. It also means that the most challenging parts are when you have to disarm a bomb or somesuch - which, given the interface, can be difficult.

Interface? What do you mean by interface? Well, as you go through the world, clues, doors, etc., aren't marked as "useable" unless your reticule turns into a little blue hand over top of them. That means if you need to search a lab, for example, you have to "look" at everything at the right range (fairly close) in order to figure out what to pick up.

When you "use" something, it has a bar that fills up to show how long it takes. That includes searching the bodies of enemies for ammo - since you do not automatically pick it up, and you don't even know if they have any until you search them.

You have two weapons at any one time. I hope you like them, because that's all you have - you can't drop them or pick up more. They tend to change depending on the mission, but you have no choice between them. As far as I could tell, that was the only differentiating feature between the various "characters".

The graphics aren't bad, but it doesn't feel like a real world. You're pretty much on a straight line "go here, then go here, then go here" type of map. They'll put some sort of obstacle in your way to keep you from going elsewhere - for example, one level starts off at the bottom of the building and you're surrounded by jersey barriers. That's an attempt to be more realistic, but instead just feels contrived. They also have issues with clipping at times, which can be a bit jarring.

To be honest, the entire game feels like an attempt to be as realistic as possible, and in some respects it succeeds at that. At the same time, the game play is simply boring. You don't really feel like a special forces kind of guy, or even like any kind of specific "character" - instead, you're a floating gun.

The sound was, well, average. It didn't stink - but it didn't really stand out. That's about the best I can say about it. It's also short. There are only 10 levels; my brother beat the whole game in 3 hours.

When it comes down to it, it's a budget game. It's got Xbox Live capabilities, so you can play it in a few different modes there, which might save it. But there are a ton of FPS games out there, and so many are so much better than this one, even at this price range, that it's hard to honestly recommend it except perhaps for the "must collect FPS" types, or someone desperate for more realistic military games.