Scrolling thru gog and what do I see, I had to stop and pay respect to this game with a review. I can't even tell you how many hours I spent playing this on my trusty Compaq Deskpro 466. In a dark room with the volume cranked. You control 4 cyborgs, you can move as a group or spread them out to cover separate positions or cover multiple objective/targets. I remember just exploring the city and taking in the atmosphere.. with the background music droning on. do de do, do de do.. do de do de do de do de... wona-na-na-na.. wona-na-na-na.... Then the fight music kicks in and you juice up all your cyborgs for ass kickery.. unleash the miniguns! another fun thing was to use a persuadatron and recruit the entire city into one big mob *evil laughter* This game made me a fan of bullfrog and they are sorely missed. American Revolt is incredibly hard btw.. it's just brutal. This is not a fast pace shooter game, the action can be intense when it kicks off but it's more strategy and most of the time you're just moving into position or planing your attack. If the screen shots interest you grab it, I don't think you'll be disappointed in the game play.
My 1st exp with this series was actually the second game Last Light. That was a blessing and a curse, A curse because I knew the rough plot of the game already. The blessing was I understood the game mechanics already. This game gives you very little help along the way, most things are never explained. I also felt the dialog and story telling was not as good as last light. I swear it felt like 3 people voiced this entire game.. and if you played Last Light you'll cringe every time you hear Pavel coming out of another NPC in this game. You'll also hear multiple NPC's having the same dialog which was kinda disappointing. Eh.. it also made me realize how many reused assets last light had. So they was probably able to devote a lot more time to things like voice over dialog in LL. I also felt this game was not as long as last light and was actually over too quickly. However it definitely delivers on the action and I genuinely jumped in my seat a few times. The level designs were interesting although sometimes confusing as you'd come to forks, not knowing which way to go but almost always lead to the same path this might not seem worth mentioning but the game has a tendency to create one way travel where you can't back track so this was frustrating at times. Which is better you might ask me.. I'll say neither.. 2033 and Last Light are like bowls of soup from the same pot but seasoned differently. The auto save system just like in last light makes me want to write angry letters to the dev team. However, setting all that aside, it's a great game if you like action/horror and it blends really well with the 2nd game, so you can play them back to back and it feels like it's one seamless story. Now.. on to Exodus!
A big complaint I had about the 1st game was it's map & navigation, it's much improved this time around. My other big complaint was the repetition.. that sadly is firmly ingrained. The game world is huge.. overall looks pretty good, I'd especially praise it's water/weather, The map has lots of varied enviroments, desert, jungle, snow covered mountain tops. Your clothes change as well, if you get wet your clothes show it, in the desert you get dirty, in the mountains you get snow on you. The grappling hook is improved and can be used in interesting ways, The guns can now be duel welded and controlled independently which is a neat feature, Sadly the game is not greater than the sum of it's parts. The combat often turns annoying especially if waves of helicopters get involved which is quite often. Enemies do not drop first aid, instead you have to locate a box.. a step backwards from the 1st game, you also can not save vehicles. There is no cover system, your health doesn't fully regenerate, you can crouch but you can't move or even fire while doing so. You still can't fire from inside a car except on a bike, unless you get on the roof. You spend most of your time hunting down boxes with money/health/weapon/vehicle upgrades And there are lot of them. There are settlements and strong holds to take over and also challenges that are usually checkpoint racing. There is not much in this game, The NPC's are boring, You'll probably find your self grinding settlements for chaos points to unlock the story line. You're suppose to help the people and your agency by overthrowing a dictator, somehow blowing up electrical transformers, water towers and gas stations is helpful for the people? You do some really awful stuff without question and you're suppose the good guy? Other than it's size it doesn't do anything better than similar games of the era like Mercenaries 2, GTA 4, or Saints Row 2. is it a great game? no Is it a bad game? no it's "just okay"
*WARNING* if you're playing on a newer system there is a high probability that you will need to get your hands dirty installing fixes to get this to run right, Also at least on my system running win10 the multiplayer is completely broken.. you can't even play local network matches. If you aren't willing to get your hands dirty I'd recommend you skip this one. If you are willing to tinker check out the GoG forum for fixes. This was a hard game to review, Do I review the game after I fixed it so it ran smoothly or out of the box from GoG install which is a mess?, I choose to review the game as it's intended. The game came out around 05 or 06, It won't win any awards for graphics or sound these days But in it's day it was quite decent and you can tell a lot of care was spent on setting the mood with the lighting and sound. The A.I in this game is also a cut above.. dare I say even some of today's modern games? It has aged well. Reminds me of Doom, blending FPS action & supernatural horror and no shortage of gore. Characters are likable including the villain who is well voice cast. The action is satisfying, The horror elements are generally well done. The game alternates between story telling, scares, and gun fights with good pacing not to over whelm you with any of the 3. One disappointment I had was there is very little stealth element, Despite lots of shadows you're often spotted in near pitch black darkness, the A.I has incredible vision, which was a missed opportunity imo. The other major complaint is the insane decision to put focus-aim as a "toggle" instead of "hold" function. The A.I is smart in a fight, sometimes retreating or even hiding in wait after you've killed it's buddies. 3 games are included I felt the 1st was environmentally repetitive but, Extraction point had a good blend of action and horror, while Perseus Mandate leaned heavy into the action at the expense of horror. If you like FPS and Horror you'll enjoy this 1.. er 3
So I remember seeing this game when It came out but was busy with other sandbox games. Eventually I seen it on sale on GoG and got it. Trying not to compare to modern sandbox games, but even comparing it to other sanbox games at it's time it has interesting elements and in some ways it shines but in most ways it's subpar even for it's time/genre. The game is best described as.. janky.. not quite game stopping bugs but very unpolished in many areas. It starts off strong, you parachute in and killl some bad guys followed by a chase. But it quickly becomes cliche, mind numbing repetitive and with some fairly horrendous voice acting thrown in for good measure. It's like someone played GTA and then watched Desperado and said.. I got an idea. The game just feels low budget, or it was rushed, or both. Either way you'll find your self grinding away at repetitive missions or rinse and repeat taking over village/towns/hideouts. The game is still very playable though, the car physics are simple, and if there is a way to drive by / shoot while driving I sure couldn't figure it out. The ground combat however is actually not terrible, like wise the air combat is actually relatively easy with the lock on system although don't be picky at what it chooses to target first. The map was frustrating to use both the mini and the fullsize, getting anywhere without aircraft is painful.. lots and lots of winding hilly roads, dont' even think of walking, perhaps if you get really good with para gliding maybe but still slow, the towns are cookie cutter copy and paste with nothing interesting in them. I haven't beaten the game got about 3 hours into it, I may nibble at it from time to time but there are a lot of better sandbox games out there and I wouldn't generally recommend this.. It's not terrible it's "Just Alright" (I would have gave it 2.5 that was possible) BTW there is a wide screen fix on git hub.. just google: just cause wide screen fix pack
My 2nd attempt at a review, my first one was 3k chars too long for GoG well here goes. The game is like fallout3, If fallout3 had levels instead of open world. The game blends FPS combat and Stealth, Obviously the emphases here is on stealth as they are very stingy with the ammo in this game. The GoG time to beat times are pretty accuracy there is a lot of dialog to listen to and it probably took me 12+hours taking my time and also I sneak thru almost the entire game. The combat is frantic, dialog is generally well written. You're on a guided tour of a post nuclear war world, clearly the dev's spent a great deal of time on trying to build a compelling world and tell a story which they accomplished. There are a lot of scripted events, and not much exploring given the game uses levels kinda similar to Doom if you can picture that.. with "stations" that serve as towns for story telling, information and resupply interspersed between levels. I guess this is a good time to point out the game has nudity particularly in 1 part of the game, nothing too explicit and It felt organic and fit the setting not just added for the sake of it like some 80s' slasher movie. I applaud a studio being bold enough to not shy away from it though, the game feels gritty and it just adds to it. The texturing and models are fine, nothing too special, but the particle effects and lighting are extremely good and have aged well, The music is also dynamic and helps enhance the mood quite well. The two negative things I will say about the game is this. There is a decent variety of monsters but you typically end up fighting the same 2 or 3 over and over, also the saving system is insane using a check point auto save and no manual saving. You can later load a previous level though. Best way to put it is this is like a good book or a movie, You don't feel like you have much control, you're along for the ride but what a ride. Sadly this means replay value is pretty low.
