When reading an “About the game” section of this title, it proclaimed: “take advantage of refined game mechanics that take the traditional shoot-to-kill approach to a new level.” After an 
hour of gameplay I felt the need to sue the publisher for false advertising, on behalf of every poor soul who spent money on this game. The only thing new with this game is a blatant bypass this title took around the quality assurance department at Black Lion Studios. I think the developers finally just agreed: “F--k it. It’s impossible to fix this game.” The game’s tag line, which is always displayed with CapsLock engaged, is equally laughable: “BEHIND EVERY WAR IS A TRUTH YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO KNOW.” As this subtly hints, Shadow Harvest: Phantom Ops manages to encapsulate every cliché you could fathom. The terrorist arms dealer plot. Walk a straight line down the road and shoot everything you see style of boring gameplay. Enemies reassuring themselves “oh, it was just the wind,” while you maneuver around them loudly and in plain sight to murder them.
You can take to the action using one of two play styles: guns blazing or stealth. These both might normally be perfectly acceptable approaches to killing things in a video game. Except they’re both excruciatingly bad and executed in a poor fashion - both via design and implementation. When blasting everything in sight, you fumble through an awful cover system, walk the same speeds and never sprint while shooting at silhouetted enemies, highlighted even behind cover. When sneaking past guards you can practically wave at them and they won’t see you. When stealth killing guards it is always the same approach and tactic – turn magically invisible. Really, I’d tell you more, but there’s no reason to, because you should never play this game.
Have I perhaps mentioned my dislike for this game yet? It is listed at $40.00. The truth of the matter is, I wouldn’t recommend playing this game even if you got it for free (you dirty pirates). The one thing this game does well, is put into frame what it means to get a 9/10 or higher rating. Without titles like Shadow Harvest: Phantom Ops, we at Gamer’s Daily News wouldn’t have a proper frame of reference when giving out a high rating, and that’s about the only thing I was thankful for when I painstakingly reviewed this game – that I could soon turn off this game and go play a better one. Any other game really, should do. I had to stop playing this game halfway through it was so bad, and just let it stew over the weekend. I figured, maybe I was being too critical? Can a game really be this bad? I went back and looked at it again three days later and quickly found my initial findings were spot on.
