Last Saturday, Strider and I had the pleasure of visiting with Sinister Games, the makers of the upcoming strategy title "Shadow Company". When I heard I was going to be previewing a military game title, I wasn't initially too excited. I spent a year and a half testing military games, which was enough to burn me out.

I can definetely say my interest in military games was rekindled after this weekend. Shadow Company's ingenious engine and superb gameplay made this game extremely enjoyable. Not only were these people able to make an enticing single player game, but their multiplayer mode was equally excellent. Can you tell that I am impressed?

We played a 4-person multiplayer game in Sinister mode, a level of difficulty created to challenge even the most confident of gamers. I played as the sniper Chloe Marco, arguably one of the most powerful characters in the game. During this intense multiplayer game, I found myself becoming really sucked into the character of Chloe. I then decided to take a little less traditional route of introducing the game by showing it to you through the eyes of Chloe Marco.

A couple of neat things about the game:

What you wear affects your visibility. Wear the appropriate clothes for the mission. If you want to sneak around, you might want to wear civilian clothing, night ops, or snow gear. The down side being that you will have no armor. If you plan on doing more in-your-face fighting, you might want to go with the armor.

Different mercenaries have different capabilities. Chloe has a 92% sniping ability, but she can't throw a grenade very far. Dasha on the other hand is really good with handguns. After a mission, your stats increase or decrease, depending on what skills you used during the mission. On the next mission, the people you hired before are going to up their prices due to their gained experience. This game does indeed have an RPG element to it.

The enemy has ears. A sniper gun sounds a lot louder than a 9mm with a silencer, and guess what, your enemies will hear it. Each weapon has it's own radius. Similarly, each enemy has a radius of awareness. When the radius of the weapon lies within the an enemy's radius of awareness, they will hear the shot and be on alert. The enemy's radius of awareness becomes bigger or smaller depending on the difficulty level you play.

There is a huge complex map of sounds covering each level. If you go close to the water's edge, you will hear the water lapping on the beach. If you go out in the middle of a desolate area, you might hear the strange croak of a bullfrog every 2 minutes. Why is this? Because all the sounds have be assigned to specific points on the map. The closer you get to the point, the louder it sounds.

Chloe Marco was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She developed an early love of the outdoors and gained a reputation as a tomboy. During college, Ms. Marco became interested in a career with the FBI. After graduation, she joined the Bureau and began training at Quantico in Virginia. Ms. Marco was trained as a sniper and assigned to the Hostage Rescue Team.

After gaining experience in several hostage incidents, Ms. Marco made a career ending miscalculation. During a stand-off situation she made a snap decision. From 700 meters, in moderate winds and poor lighting conditions, she fired on a gunman holding a hostage that she deemed to be in immediate danger. In the time is took the bullet to reach its destination, the gunman and hostage had shifted. The 85 grain hollow- point bullet impacted the hostage just above the bridge of the nose.

Ms. Marco was suspended and reassigned to a desk. Shortly thereafter, she left the FBI, and moved back to Oregon. Six months later, she enlisted with Granite Security Services.

Ms. Marco's psychological profile indicates a highly competitive nature. She is suffering from severe guilt resulting from her error on the HRT. Her confidence and stability should be monitored closely.

Ms. Marco is a gifted sniper. She is also adept with sub-machineguns, and is a certified SCUBA diver.