Boiling Point: Road to Hell

The Good
Night descended upon the quiet city. Only in the bar an elderly bearded military leader was still enjoying the striptease. I went to the toilet and got the respawning doughnut from the corpse. There was still some time to kill. I checked my new car - it looked pretty beaten, but with 58 health I figured I could still make it to Pueblo Faro. I just hoped the mafia wouldn't bother me - my work for the government has really driven them crazy. Oh, well. You can't please everyone.

I actually felt pretty comfortable with whatever money I could save and a sniper rifle in the trunk of my car. I stood on the river bank for a while. The breeze was refreshing, though the lighthouse made me feel sad for some reason. I decided to take a stroll. I suppressed the urge to kill the mayor when I was passing his office - the bastard didn't do anything to help me find my daughter. I slowly swam towards the lighthouse. A large colorful bird was flying above my head. It was already morning.

"Time to take a nap", I thought. I ran back to my car. A bandit tried to ambush me. I whipped my machine gun, shot him in the head and took some much-needed painkillers off his body. I hope I won't get addicted to this stuff. I returned to the car, climbed in, drove to the central square, turned off the ignition, and dozed off... when I woke up, it was already noon. Hot sun, blue skies, people selling fruits and cigarettes outside... Without hesitating, I drove out of the city, through the jungle in the direction of Pueblo Faro. It was going to be a long trip. Life was good.

Boiling Point... a game that really requires you to get to know it; but once you do, it welcomes you into its fantastic world. It is about adapting yourself to the game, gradually uncovering and understanding what makes it tick, becoming immersed because the game has its own set of rules and you are intrigued to find out how you will fit. That's the kind of gaming I have been longing for.

Its RPG elements might look shallow on paper (you become tougher and more proficient with weapons the more you fight), but actually this game feels like a real RPG - a game in which freedom and decisions are cardinal aspects. It is technically a first-person shooter, but it is also an open-world game with a lot of choice. I think this is more or less what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. wanted to be before things got cut out of it. I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R for its atmosphere and challenge, but Boiling Point has atmosphere, challenge, plus all those great features that make it more than just a FPS in a sandbox.

Driving adds a lot to the gameplay. This game is certainly not "GTA in jungle": driving is by far less prominent here. Still, nothing compares to traversing miles upon miles of terrain in a vehicle. Boiling Point has a huge world, and it can be explored to the full - on foot, swimming, with a car, helicopter, or boat. There are just so many things to explore here that it almost gets overwhelming. I love open-ended games, and this one is like a gift from heaven in this aspect.

Plenty of little details add to the game's greatness. There is character management - sleeping, addiction to drugs, equipment. Detailed car management - changing tires, repairing, storing items in the trunk. A large variety of weapons and inventory items. Challenging and ultimately very rewarding money management - one of your primary goals in the game will be earning money; how exactly you do that is entirely up to you. The knowledge that in every corner of this world there might be something of interest makes the game incredibly addictive. In a weird way it almost reminded me of System Shock 2; the two games are not at all similar in concept, but they both mesmerized me with their personality, attention to detail and atmosphere.

I call this game a RPG because it conveys the feeling of growth and accomplishment, which is probably reason number one why I play video games generally. You start as a lonely foreigner in a country you know nothing about. You barely have any money, no friends, and no car. Gradually, you get acquainted with Realia's important people and try to win the trust of those you think might help you find your daughter. The storyline itself is nothing special (though the game could have gotten away even with a much worse one), but the portrayal of local life is so detailed and impressive that you wouldn't mind. The dialogues can get weird, but some of them are surprisingly witty. I blame the weirdness on the translators: I played the original Russian version of the sequel and the conversations were clearly better-written there.

Freedom of choice in this game is almost unparalleled. The mission structure is handled much better than in GTA games. I always disliked this "all or almost all missions are mandatory" approach of GTA. I remember how San Andreas dragged because you had to complete all those missions, otherwise you couldn't return to Los Santos and get straight to business. In Boiling Point, theoretically, you could just rush through the several story missions and complete the game. The problem is that people in Realia will help you either for money or because they trust you (which actually makes a lot of sense). To win the trust of a faction, you'll have to perform missions for it.

The beauty of this game is that it always gives you several options. You are never forced to work for a particular faction; you can always opt for paying large amounts of money to more neutrally minded characters and still get the job done. This is something I really want to see in more games: solve problems in different ways. I actually spent a lot of time thinking and planning in this game. Should I help the guerrillas? They seem straightforward, but will they pay well? Won't I spoil my relationship with the CIA if I work for them?.. Everything in the game is delicately balanced, and every choice has a consequence. Mind you, there is no deep ethical role-playing here: it's basically about which guys you kill, and on behalf of whom. But this still allows you to act on your own - and the greatest part is that pretty much the whole game is built like that. You are not prompted to make moral decisions; you are free to shape your entire behavior, with anyone you encounter.

The Bad
Patch the game to 2.0 before playing. The idiotically swirling camera that kicks in whenever you enter a car can drive you crazy. The patch fixes that and a lot of other minor problems. Still, it doesn't really cure the game of its general weirdness. Clearly, Boiling Point was made by passionate people who love gaming, but who got a little bit carried away in paying all their attention to game content. Basically, they didn't polish the game enough: they presented an awesome concept, but the actual experience might be just too rough for some people, especially the impatient modern-day players.

Weird occurrences are everywhere - cars that honk without stopping, people getting aggressive without a reason, people refusing to enter your car when they are supposed to; disappearing voices, odd and funny glitches like a completely demolished road barrier that cars still miraculously bump into, thunder without rain, and so on, and so on. The game is buggy; while some of these bugs are actually fun to exploit (a not-so-obvious infinite treasure glitch... bring it on!), I can understand how they would irritate people who are sensitive to such things.

If you rely too much on the hand-holding game design philosophy that has been dominating the industry for a long while, you might not have that much fun with Boiling Point. It is a game that throws you into its huge, complex world, and tells you that you are on your own. Thankfully, the main quest is always clearly outlined (I recall with horror Gothic 3), but how you survive or get wealthier and more powerful is entirely up to you. Personally, I love this kind of attitude, but I imagine not everyone would agree. The game is also quite hard, and moments of frustration (oh no! That guy sniped me when I was staggering with 1 hit point left and forgot to save!!..) are not uncommon.

The Bottom Line
Boiling Point is like a very talented musician who fails a competition because he played wrong notes. Yes, it is buggy, strange, and uncomfortable, but it's clearly a game made by people who understand what gaming is all about. It's about freedom, exploration, decisions, and losing yourself in a virtual world. For me all its flaws were just part of the game's charm. Boiling Point is a generous game, and a great reward for anyone patient enough to deal with its quirks.