It’s a cliché to say this but I need to make a point: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?
It’s a cliché to say this but I need to make a point: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?
Similarly, in the military shooter “Unit 13,” if I kill a terrorist with a silencer pistol, and the terrorists’ friends aren’t there to hear it, does it make a noise?
Well, the silencer is very quiet, yet bad guys seem to magically hear it from 50 feet away, and then they come running at me with guns a’blazin’.
Why does “Unit 13” (for the PlayStation Vita) bother to give me a silencer if it isn’t effectively silent? This is frustrating.
“Unit 13” is still a good shooter. I just hate that alarms are tripped during stealth kills, even when I quietly sneak behind a terrorist and knife him.
So instead of going stealth, I usually equip a shotgun and just storm through “Unit 13’s” military assignments.
The game doesn’t have a thick plot. It’s a collection of three dozen missions, each lasting roughly two to 10 minutes.
In a typical mission, you sneak into a metallic terrorist base and shoot bad guys, while accomplishing tasks such as stealing intel, planting bombs or rescuing hostages.
There is a lot of replay value here, because you can game through all those missions with different soldiers, who have their own battle strengths.
And since missions are short, “Unit 13” feels designed to be gamed in spurts, the way people play casual games on subways and backseats.
But missions can be quite hard to beat. So that’s unusual: “Unit 13” (from the creators of “SOCOM” Navy SEAL titles) is a solid casual shooter for hardcore players.
Biggest complaint: Terrible directional arrows and maps are supposed to guide me along pathways, but they’re more confusing than a Stephen King maze.
I haven’t heard any buzz about “Unit 13,” raising another question: If a game is good but you don’t hear people talking about it, does it exist? (Answer: Sure, why not?)
Headaches: You can go online with “Unit 13” and play cooperative missions with friends or strangers. But my Vita won’t let me go online lately.
I spent two days trying to make my Vita WiFi work, so I could download software updates and to game online.
But my WiFi function is funky already?
On my laptop, I surfed online for solutions and found some other gamers claiming to suffer the same trouble:
Our Vitas will connect to our WiFi access points, but they won’t actually go online beyond the router, or sign into PlayStation Network.
So I plugged my Vita into my PS 3 to update the software that official way. However, that connection kept crashing. (It finally worked.)
Even after all that, my Vita WiFi still wouldn’t connect past my router (despite full bars on a working router). Thus, I never got to test the “Unit 13” cooperative modes.
Sony, seriously. Fix this, please.
“Unit 13” by Sony retails for $40 for PS Vita — Plays fun if basic. Looks good. Challenging. Rated “T” for blood, drug reference, mild language, violence. Three out of four stars.
Doug Elfman is an award-winning entertainment columnist who lives in Las Vegas. He blogs at http://www.lvrj.com/columnists/Doug_Elfman.html. Twitter at VegasAnonymous.