The action stage involves the execution of your plan. You play the team leader in a first-person shooter mode. You can command your troops as you go through the mission, telling them when to hold off and when to fire as well as do other things like escort freed hostages. But mostly you get to go around and kill people. That's what it's all about, right? You get to kill people with many weapons and in many fun ways. We especially liked to take the terrorists out with a silenced pistol. The control is a bit slow compared to that of Quake style games, and therefore more realistic. You can't run constantly because you will tire out your troops. The style of play is slow and cautious. This is more due to level design than anything. If you run out you will get mowed down. But if you play cautiously and intelligently, the unintelligent and slow enemy AI is easy pickings. We hope Red Storm improves the AI in the full version. As far as game play goes, that's the only weakness we saw in the demo.
The graphics in the Rogue Spear demo are good. There is a lot of detail and the environments are pretty realistic, but everything has a very flat look to it. People's movements have been motion captured and are therefore very realistic. One interesting thing is how, whenever someone dies, they do a little death dance that tends to leave them in some odd contorted position. It's vaguely comical and definitely disturbing. The impressive part is the detailed character models. Faces are among the best that we've seen in any game. Red Storm added a breathing effect to all characters, and though it's overdone, it does add a bit of dynamic feel to things. We hope the graphics improve for the final game, but if they remain how they are, Rogue Spear will be doing just fine.