CT Special Forces is a 2002 Run-and-Gun video game made for the PlayStation and Game Boy Advance developed by Light and Shadow Productions.
The Counter-Terrorist Special Forces are dedicated to preventing global terrorism from disrupting world peace, with their elite operatives being the world's only hope against a powerful syndicate called the Network. Against the Network's operations, three heroes stood in the way:
- 'Stealth' Owl, an ex-marine specializing in infiltration and urban warfare.
- 'Immortal' Raptor, a veteran soldier during the conflict in the Middle East, especially skilled in desert terrains.
- 'Avenger', an expert helicopter pilot.
The game spawned three sequels, Back to Hell and Bioterror (both in 2004, also for the Play Station and GBA) and Fire for Effect (2005, for the PlayStation 2).
CT Special Forces and its sequels contain examples of:
- Ace Pilot: 'Stealth' Owl or 'Immortal' Raptor are both capable helicopter pilots, but taken to the extreme with the third member, Avenger, where all his missions involves piloting helicopters across enemy territory, either to destroy insurgent aircraft, anti-air defences, escorting civilains through warzones, and transporting Owl and Raptor through enemy lines.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: Tends to happen in underwater missions, where the players must complete an underwater area before their oxygen tank runs out (it refills in an instant as soon as the player breaks surface). Running out of oxygen results in the player dying instantly and using up another life.
- Big Bad: Most of these games have an insurgent leader which serves as the Final Boss, such as Lin Tao the mastermind from Back to Hell and Kev-1 the Network Mastermind in Bioterror who dons a powerful mech suit to assault the players. The fourth game notably has the leader of the Nemesis network, Anton Call.
- Close-Range Combatant: The sequel games have enemies who forfeits the use of guns (despite being in the middle of a shootout) and instead uses close-range weapons. Like the machete-wielding mooks in the Eastern European ruins and the ninja-like soldiers in South-East Asia.
- Construction Vehicle Rampage: Lin Tao, the Final Boss of Back to Hell, sics an excavator on the player, which they must defeat while on foot.
- Dark Action Girl: Enemy mooks aren't limited to male members. There are female insurgents (from the second game, Back to Hell onwards) who usually serve as Cold Snipers.
- Escort Mission: Bioterror has a few missions involving the player piloting a helicopter into enemy territory and extract hostages, while battling insurgent aircraft and anti-air defenses all the way. As the hostages are Vulnerable Civilians, it's advised to draw out all enemies and destroy everything before landing to collect the hostages, a process that repeats itself several times due to the helicopter's limited seating capacity. note
- Excuse Plot: The briefings and backstories of each games (save for Fire for Effect) can pretty much be skimmed through without missing anything, since the entire game is just a plot for players to kill terrorists and insurgents.
- Far East Asian Terrorists: The enemies in the second and third games that set in South-East Asian jungles.
- Giant Mook: Oversized, musclebound insurgents are a recurring threat from the second and third games, either attacking the players with heavy weapons (like bazookas) or lob torpedoes with their bare hands.
- Gratuitous Ninja: The second and third games have levels set in South-East Asian jungles, where there are fast-moving mooks clad in ninja gear who attacks with curved blades.
- Hollywood Skydiving: Averted in the skydiving stages - randomly triggering the parachute will make you fall to the death and cost you life.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: In several stages, the player can come across unarmed, surrendered enemy insurgents. When the player swapps their weapons to handcuffs, the insurgents will willingly turn themselves in (doing so rewards the player with extra points for "Non-lethal Arrests" by the end of the level).
- Later-Installment Weirdness: CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect, the last one:
- It's a 3D game on the PlayStation 2, for starters.
- Dialogue occuring between gameplay, which none of the previous game has.
- The game also somewhat has a plot to connect the missions together, rather than the previous three's "player kill terrorists and insurgents" plotlines.
- The presence of a Greater-Scope Villain, Anton, who looms throughout the entirety of gameplay, unlike the previous three where the main villains are just some Final Boss pulled out of nowhere.
- Mission Control: Jill from Back to Hell, who every so often drops in to contact the players on checkpoints, objectives, and briefings in the middle of shootouts.
- Oddball in the Series: CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect, the fourth and last game in the series, is played in third person and runs on 3D-graphics, unlike the previous three.
- Out of Focus: The CT Operatives consists of 'Stealth' Owl', 'Immortal' Raptor and 'Avenger', the third which is left out of promotional materials and doesn't even shows his face during gameplay, due to him spending the entire level in a helicopter (in all fairness, that's how Vertical Scrolling Shooter usually plays out).
- Powered Armor: Kev-1, the Final Boss of Bioterror wears one of these to attack the player during his battle.
- Red Baron: 'Stealth' Owl or 'Immortal' Raptor, the two CT operatives the players control. They're Only Known by Their Nickname as well.
- Sea Mine: A recurring obstacle in underwater infiltration levels, but these can be shot from a distance.
- Sniping Mission: Tends to show up during gameplay, marked by a checkpoint shaped like a bullseye. When this happens, the player automatically switches weapons to the Sniper Rifle and must gun down every single enemy through their crosshair. It's painfully tedious and frustrating in the first game as these missions give zero indicators on where enemy snipers are coming from, but the sequels fixed that by green indicators visible through the sniper scope alerting the players when enemies are near.
- Stationary Boss: Petra from Back to Hell comandeers a stationary turret during her boss battle. While she's fixed in a single spot, the fact that she spams bullets all over the place (as well as having mooks pop up for support) makes her quite a challenge.
- Synthetic Plague: The third game, Bioterror, notably has the CT Forces preventing enemy insurgents from unleashing one of these capable of wiping out entire populations, with several levels dedicated to the player disarming bombs strapped to viral canisters.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: Arum Baya, the Middle-Eastern terrorist boss from Back to Hell is invincible for the entirety of the battle, and can sic gattling fire from a turret on top of his vehicle... and for some reason, he feels the need to, every few seconds, stick his body out of his armoured truck to take potshots at the players. He's vulnerable during this quick moment, and upon being shot enough, crashes his truck leading to his death.
- Tank Goodness: Back to Hell and Bioterror have levels where the player can commandeer tanks to rampage across enemy territories. The tank's gampleplay is mostly ripped off from the Metal Slug games (vulcan, front-facing cannon, etc).
- Timed Mission: Missions involving disarming Time Bombs require the players to locate and defuse bombs (which can be easily done just by walking to it) before a certain time limit, or fail the mission in a Non-Standard Game Over. Bioterror is prone to having these type of levels in the naval missions.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: While majority of the game is a side-scrolling shooter based on Contra or Metal Slug, every now and then the levels will switch to becoming top-down shooters (usually when Avenger is in play), a Sniping Mission (where the player must gun down all enemies through a scope before they can proceed) or an Escort Mission (collect all hostages via helicopter and return to base).
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: When it comes to parachuting / skydiving-themed levels. In most other games, players can just parachute into an area by hitting a button; but in this game players need to undergo a skydiving sequence where their character free-falls through a lengthy drop while two indicators shows up on either side of the screen (one vertical, one horizontal). Players must time their hits and press the jump button the exact moment their indicator hits a red zone; failure to press and the character falls to their deaths, losing a life and necessiting to restart the whole skydiving sequence.
- A Winner Is You: Oh boy... have we mentioned that for seasoned players, each game takes roughly two-and-a-half hours to complete?
- The first game ends with the player being briefed by his commander with a "Congratulations! But our mission isn't over yet!" congratulatory speech before being treated to the credits, imposed over a still frame of a helicopter taking off.
- The second and third game ends with a two-paragraph scrolling text stating there are more insurgents out there, and then it abruptly ends.
- Thankfully averted in Fire for Effect, with a voiceover congratulating the players while a lengthy cutscene plays over a montage of previous levels.
