Equipped with just a pistol to begin with, initial shootouts give you a shotgun, an AK-47 and grenades. Enemies leave behind plenty of bullets so you'll rarely go short, but you are limited to carrying just one smaller weapon and one larger weapon at any one time, which means no shotgun/AK-47 combos.
Get close enough to an enemy and tapping Square at a variable speed results in a range of different kicks, punches, clotheslines, choke holds and drop-kicks to various parts of the body - occasionally triggering heads slamming into walls and other environmental objects.
At this stage, the combat needs a hell of a lot of work. When you zoom in to target an enemy, the camera switches to a Resident Evil 4-style over-the-shoulder view, which is fine, except that the camera floats around horribly and the target reticule is unreliable at best. The crosshair may turn red when part of an enemy's body is sticking out from cover, but more often than not, you won't do any damage. Even worse is the way you can pump an enemy with AK-47 lead at close-range, only to watch him somehow stagger to his feet again like he's a Terminator in disguise. And for some reason, it's virtually impossible to hit an enemy who isspasming after being hit; you actually have to wait until the animation is over and he returns to normal before firing again. Thiscontrastswith the ability to kill with a haymaker punch in hand-to-hand combat. Everything needs a good polish before the game ships.
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