9mm - Full Review - J. Belgier

9mm – Review by Joey Belgier

When I bought 9mm, I was convinced it would be a GTA-like game, since that’s what I heard about it. Well, that prejudge was wrong, but the game certainly wasn’t bad, not at all. As you might already know, you play as a cop, Kannon, shooting his way through ghettos, parking lots, and stuff I shouldn’t spoil yet.

Visual Bomb

The first thing you’ll notice after tapping the “new game” button is the quality of the graphics. I can’t really put any other Xperia PLAY game next to it for comparison. Sure, we aren’t staring at PS3 quality here, but everything looks more than decent. There is some degree of lip synchronization, the models have reflections, all levels are well designed and even the skyboxes add a nice touch to the whole reality feeling. That’s where the biggest part of the reality ends though.

Looney Shooter

The main gameplay is purely about shooting hordes of gangsters, which is both cliché as satisfying at the same time. After a while you start losing the count of how many of them have popped from behind the corner. On the other hand, isn’t that just what we want. This is a portable game, which means most players don’t always have the time for deep stories and long missions.
If that makes you think this is one among many of the ego-shooters, you’re almost right. There’s some sort of adrenaline/slowmotion/supercop button which allows you to do just what you think it does. It gives you the ability to jump from behind a corner, shoot a roomful of junkies and land elegantly on your shoulder to finally roll over and land perfectly back on your feet. Ahh, if only cops in real life would be this badass.
Anyhow, the killing sprees get changed every now and then with “slide ‘n tap” missions, interactive cutscenes for that matter. These are rather boring but at least they bring some variety. I guess I would have liked them more if they were optimized for the controls, in stead we just have to use the touch screen, which brings me to the next point.

Keep control

One of the things you are probably wondering whilst reading this is whether or not the controls are decently optimized. I’m glad I can answer you with a yes! The analog pads are easy to use, although the aim pad works like a touchpad rather than an analog stick. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. I tried playing both with the controller and the touch controls and I have to say, I’m glad I didn’t get a cheaper phone.
Only question I have about the controls is, where’s the damn action button. Apparently you still have to use on screen buttons to open doors, interact with people etc. Oh well, I got used to it and after a while it didn’t really bother me anymore.

Tell me a story

If you don’t want to know the story because you didn’t play the game yet, you should skip this paragraph. Not that there’s a lot of work to be done here, though. That’s why I didn’t put this in the top part of the review, it’s not such a big deal. Basically you are a cop who shot the brother of some big boss. Now the big boss is angry with you and he wants to kill you and your family. Somewhere in between you killing the brother and you killing the boss, you also kill a few hundreds of gangsters, a pedophile, a drug dealer and some other scum like a corrupt cop. Cliché, but hey, as long as you can shoot them all with a large variety of guns, who cares?

Kill to the infinity

The singleplayer is rather short, but that doesn’t mean the game is over. As you go through the missions you receive some sort of cash which you can use to buy special weapons and upgrades whilst playing. You can also save it up and use it to buy better weapons and protection for use during online games. You won’t be able to get all you want from the first time since there’s such a lot of weapons to choose from. This means you might want to replay the singleplayer, since it isn’t that easy to gain cash whilst playing online with crappy weapons.
In online games you have the choice between 16 primary weapons, 8 secondary weapons and 18 skill upgrades. Now that’s a lot of reasons to replay the singleplayer mode. That doesn’t have to get boring per se, as you can pick from 4 difficulty modes, ranging from “easy” to “very hard”.
The rest of the multiplayer experience is not exactly very interesting, but it still worth the money. With a maximum of 12 players you can have some decent GTA-style fun, as long as you’re near Wifi-hotspot. There’s the choice between “Free-for-All” and “Cops ‘n Gangsters” which could as well be called Team Deathmatch. You only have choice between 4 maps; Latin Barrio, Train Depot, Customary Jail and Suburbs. Luckily none of them is too big or too small to get boring fast.

So, is it worth it?

If you’re stuck with this question, I’ll have to forgive you for not reading all the above. No it’s nothing unheard of, yes the singleplayer is a tad too short (but we can hope for a sequel or another game using this engine), yes the multiplayer provides some fun, yes you should buy this game if you like some shooter action and nice graphics. That’s all I have left to say about it.

J. Belgier