There are some games which really scream to be remade or redesigned to take advantage of 3D and the various lovely special effects of today's consoles. There are some franchises that have done amazingly well for themselves on such hand-held consoles as GameBoy Advance and one of those is the Counter Terrorist series.

This franchise is set to make the leap onto Xbox, PC and PS2 very soon with Counter Terrorist Special Forces: Fire for Effect. Games Xtreme was lucky enough to get a close look at the first game on the Xbox and give it a run for its money.

Right from the word go the graphics of CT are solid and dependable with no noticeable frame-rate drops or issues, they are not the most stunning graphics in the world of gaming especially by today's standards, but anyone that can't see the wealth of gameplay that bursts forth from this game are the ones that probably know how many polygons went into making Lara Croft's backside.

It's all about shooting and blowing things up with a variety of deadly weapons at your disposal and CT pulls that off perfectly. I noticed a similarity in the controls to that of another spec-ops blaster game :Kill-Switch which isn't a bad thing because I loved that game for the 'offensive cover' system. CT actually pulls this off perfectly and the system works even better than in Kill-Switch and is much easier to use.

You control two characters as the game progresses, Raptor: heavy weapons and gung-ho lunatic with an array of devastating hardware at his command. Owl: stealth expert and has a variety of gadgets such as thermal, amplified and sonar mode goggles - the latter mode allows you to see through doors and with the aid of a specialised rifle, shoot through armoured targets and hit enemies or other elements on the other side.

Both characters play very differently and have their own quirks to set them apart from one another; Owl's personality is far more methodical and logical than Raptor's, who is a true blow-stuff-up kind of guy.

It also introduces a fun Sky Diving style of level where Owl must kill enemy paratroopers while speeding up to make his decent through the heavy cloud layers and towards his target, before the timer runs out. There's a real sense of Bond about this particular part and it had me humming the theme for a while.

With the ease of control and the sheer enjoyment of just blowing things to bits using a variety of weapons, vehicles and stationary cannons CT elevates itself from being just another mundane 3D shooter, it truly has character and the game has ragdoll physics that allow for some nice looking explosions plus flying bodies.

Based on this particular play-through of the code we were given I expect to add this game to my collection since it really is fun, and to me that's why I play games. Games Xtreme will be doing a full and in-depth review of this cracking game, so stay tuned for that. CT promises to be a mix of action and stealth and so far it delivers that promise in spades.