Cold Zero-The Last Stand is third person action-strategy game from developer Drago Entertainment (Hell-Copter makers). You play the role of John McAffrey, a former marksman with a SWAT team who was discharged from service after shooting a hostage by accident. He becomes a private investigator but apparently he doesn't have many clients because of his reputation. He needs money so badly. As the game itself finally begins, he takes on a job (very well paid) to rescue a man who is going to be killed by the local mafia but as with these kinds of storylines things get all twisted for McAffrey as he is soon forced to take on missions he doesn't want to do...

The game is a mix of action, real time strategy and RPG. You will get to visit over 16 locations around the world like Russia, Mexico, and the U.S. doing what you have to in order to survive amongst some of the worst slime of the criminal underworld in various indoor and outdoor locations. Each mission will have a specific goal, but how to achieve that goal will be left open for you to decide. Goals range from a simple "get there" to rescuing hostages, retrieving items, eliminating enemies and finding information to capture somebody. The action takes place from a 3rd-person isometric perspective, with almost all decisions and movements controlled by the mouse. You can make John do all the usual things you'd expect like climbing over obstacles, and hiding in corners. The game has over 100 weapons to choose from, including all sorts of handguns, rifles, and machine guns. There are also melee weapons for use as well like straight razors and baseball bats in case someone really piss you off. The game limits the number of weapons and other inventory items you can carry. Fortunately, you can still carry an unrealistically large number of items, such as silencers, telescopic sights and healing medicine kits. Once you finish a mission, the game contains a lite RPG-aspect that allows you to improve your character's skill in various areas (better accuracy with weapons, abilities to repair damaged weapons, etc) or even increase your strength so that you can carry more.

There's no doubt that Cold Zero is a difficult game. The enemy AI is fairly well written. The enemies react intelligently to your maneuvers and will gun you down instantly if you make too much noise or stand in the open. They don't have hard-coded procedures, but choose their actions dependent on the situation. So, for example, when you play a mission a second time, you can't rely on enemy A coming from the left and enemy B standing behind the corner.

Multiplayer Cold Zero can support a maximum of 16 competitors via either LAN or the Internet and does run at a pretty solid rate. This mode offers three multiplayer options - a classic team deathmatch, "capture item" (where one team needs to capture a briefcase and the other team tries to prevent it), and "team escape" (where one team needs to reach an escape point and the other team's job is to eliminate that team before they can reach it).

Cold Zero isn't for everyone. The repetitive gameplay, numerous bugs and a difficult camera make the game frustrating at several points. But if you are patient and you are a hard core strategy gamer then you really can't go wrong with Cold Zero. Try this playable demo (72MB).

System requirements:
Minimum: Pentium III 600 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 16 MB 3D graphic card, Direct X 8.1 , Soundcard, CD ROM
Recommended: Pentium IV 1GHz, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB 3D graphic card, Direct X 8.1, Soundcard, CD ROM