If you were to take the concept of the television show 24, one of the most generic ‘terrorists attack US soil’ storylines, and had it played out by characters with all the grace and on screen presence of The Rock you would likely end up with something not all that dissimilar to Capcom’s Without Warning.

Like the show 24, Without Warning’s most intriguing and noteworthy gimmick comes in the form its per-character perspective story telling. Spanning a 12 hour period, Without Warning is the story of 6 characters perspectives during the take over of a Chemical plant by French / Canadian Terrorists. Players assume the roll of the remaining members of the nearly eradicated military personnel sent in to bring the terrorist force down, as well as that of a plant security officer, news crew camera man and of an office secretary caught up in the confusion. This leaves the developers the opportunity to intertwine the paths of each character and exploit the overlapping perspectives to introduce key moments in storytelling, much like any Tarantino or Guy Ritchie film. Unfortunately the story is about as generic as they come and what story telling opportunities might have been available are quickly brushed aside leaving instead the canvas on which the game play is built and some what disappointingly unrealised.

What is remarkably disappointing about Without Warning is that it fails to deliver any noteworthy change in play style as each character overlap. Instead, military personnel with automatic rifles put up a fair action romp while the other characters trudge the same path only with disappointingly weaker firearms; essentially this means players will play through some areas up too six times with naught but a change in weapon to show for it. Still that can’t be all that bad so long as the action holds up.

Played from a third person perspective, the action is something of a mixed bag. Players are able to go with the more traditional route of aiming with the right analogue stick or using the L1 button to use an auto lock on feature. Unfortunately neither are particularly fantastic; the right analogue movement is slow, especially when turning to face enemies close to the player while the auto targeting could use some refinement, as it often locks onto the enemy of least concern while neglecting to pick up more immediate threats. These annoyances are at least workable using characters with reasonable stopping power, however given only two characters possess weapons with such it becomes more frustrating than fun. Throw in some RPG toting enemies with Terminator like accuracy and you have some controller throwing mechanics right there.

The game does at least look good, some of the time. The player models are sharp and clean, the environments despite being made up of garish grey and brown tones are reasonably geometry heavy and there are some fantastic smoke and particle effects given off by cracked or damaged piping. The only real down side here is that the terrorists didn’t receive the same attention; they are animated stiffly and up close feature some rather ordinary textures. Overall however, it certainly looks up to par.

Without Warning is more a missed opportunity than an out and out failure. The games premise opens up opportunities that the developer just failed to take advantage of. What could have been a fantastic action romp simply fades into obscurity among many of the games minor consistency quibbles and mechanics that could have used that little bit extra polish.