The plot of this first-person shooter revolves around terrorists who have acquired a tactical nuke. They're taking it closer to London on board a ship, because it's only a short-range missile and... oh, it's all too insufferable to dwell on, really. The gist is that only two people in the world can abort the launch procedure - as unlikely and ridiculous as that sounds - and they are a meathead US army sergeant and his sister. Unlikely and ridiculous as that sounds.

Naturally, the terrorists have targeted them for assassination, and as an internationally renowned mercenary your mission, should you decide to listen to any of the introductory cut-scene twaddle, is to protect them. Actually, you can choose to play as the mercenary or the US sergeant and you're free to switch characters as you progress through the game's various chapters.

Not that there's a huge deal of difference between the two blokes. They take slightly different routes through the levels, but it's nothing much to get excited about. Whichever you play, you'll be running and gunning your way through swarms of terrorists, trying not so much to win their hearts and minds as splatter them over the nearest available surface.

The combat, however, isn't really very satisfying. This is down to two factors. Firstly, the game doesn't feel very smooth; movement is imprecise and clunky, and you often find yourself getting stuck on bits of scenery and the like. Moreover, the frame rate tended towards the jerky, even at 1024 x 768 resolution with modest detail levels on our reasonably specced PC. Throw in some annoying "authentic combat" visual effects - basically the screen keeps going blurry with too regular a frequency - and you've harvested yourself a fair crop of annoyances.

It's not all dire straits where the shooting's concerned, mind you. The action can get quite intense and almost absorbing in some of the larger firefights, in which the air fills with smoke, bullets ricochet around madly and a terrorist runs towards you with his AK-47 in the air apparently ready to surrender, until he gets closer and you notice the pipe bombs taped around his chest.

Unfortunately, these odd moments of entertainment are swamped by the game's overall air of amateurishness. Not only is The Mark badly plotted, the cut-scenes are extremely poor, the dialogue is total corn-ball and the graphics are unimpressively ropey, featuring poor animations and some of the most bizarrely unrealistic fire effects we've ever seen.

At least JoWood has sensibly priced this at £20, but even then your money's much better off staying in your wallet.

Verdict
Unfortunately, this shooter misses "the mark", and by a fair old country mile.

Company: JoWood

Tags: london terrorism ak-47 pipe bomb personal computer cutscene first-person shooter video game