DigitalBattle.com

After his movie “Tunnel Rats”, which, like any other Uwe Boll film, failed artistically and commercially, a game based on the movie is now out. Developed by Replay Studios and published by non other than Uwe Boll’s own movie production company, Boll AG, the game is a first person shooter, where players assume the role of a soldier during the Vietnam War. After his buddies are killed, he must fight the Vietcong on his own, through a series of tunnels in the jungle.

As bad as the movie was — which I saw, and wished ever since that I didn’t — I didn’t expect the game to be a Call of Duty 4 in terms of gameplay and visuals. It wasn’t. In fact, it’s far from it. You might actually say; this is the exact opposite of Call of Duty 4 when it comes to FPS titles.

For Tunnel Rats is so bad, it becomes funny. You literally find yourself laughing out loud, thinking, “it is not possible that a game is this bad” and “they’re kidding, this is just a joke”. It’s no joke. It’s dead serious. Serious as war. In the jungle. In tunnels. The entire game, besides a brief moment where you surface, is set in dark tunnels — all five hours of gameplay is one tunnel after another. And the challenge? A few enemies and a million traps. Because of the deadly traps — a fact which the developers reinforce by having you killed every single time with no warning — are everywhere, and for four out of those five hours in the tunnels, you’ll be taking one careful step after the next, looking all over the murky, dark and horribly rendered tunnels after what might seem as a trap. If you find one, you defuse it and move on, 2 minutes later, doing the same. Again and again. Until you die. Then you reload and do it again.

The graphics are horrible, the sounds dated and the voice over is laughable. Even if the game was released ten years ago, the technical aspects would still feel dated. And then there’s the sheer amount of bugs and glitches in the game. Although, once you get above the ground, the visuals are a lot better, you can simply jump over the traps, and the combat is better too. But then after a few minutes, you realize that it’s horrible, it only appeared good because you were in the hell of the tunnels for hours.

In all, Tunnel Rats is just despicable and should be avoided. I’ve seen mods made by one-person teams that are better than this. What Uwe Boll has been doing to game franchises in movie form, the game developers have done to him in form of a video game. I’ll even recommend the movie over the game — it’s cheaper and is over quickly. And you can walk out from the theater, it’s not like a game that you have to play all the way in order to write a review…

The Good:
The font on the box art is cool

The Bad:
Very dated visuals
Horrible audio and dialogue
Repetitive, boring gameplay
Laughable story
Buggy and glitchy
Based on a movie by Uwe Boll

Overall score: 0/10 (Yes, zero).