To me, a game is something you take part in.. the level of interactivity here is pretty abysmal. Your chosen gargantuan typically stays on the left side of the screen while the screen scrolls right as your creature automatically walks through each and every level. You have no control over its movement save for the boss fights, which in general are incredibly short lived.. and the only thing you ever really do is button mash whichever attacks you find appropriate, pending resources (typically skill cooldown and mana). After completing missions, you are awarded mutation points which you can then spend upgrading existing monster abilities, upgrading pets that you find (not much variety really) or unlocking skins for your base monster (these typically alter one base stat or ability). Your monster can also be automated, meaning that even that small level of interactivity that you do have can be taken away from you.. and you’ll be thankful for it on account of the repetitiveness.
I lost many an hour playing the original incarnation of this game in my younger years and so i'm thrilled to bits to see a re-release with some graphical improvements etc. The well balanced mix of action and strategy is still as addictive now as it was back then, although many of the games flaws are still present. the Aiming reticule still lags and drifts for example, and while this can be mechanically justified to some degree while piloting the many vehicles, it almost seems to completely ruin the first person mode when on foot; the narrated mission briefings too, are also showing signs of age, sounding far more more tinny and fuzzy than I remember, but I can imagine that many of the people who are familiar with this title might find this to be quite nostalgic.
I absolutely adore this game. My only gripe is that I can only get the default screen resolution of 800x600 to work on my laptop with HD4000 graphics. (no widescreen). Perhaps this is an issue with the 1.3 update as it was working perfectly before..
