Plays well, looks good, sounds good and carries a tiny bit of a deeply personal story. There are neat little secrets to find, challenges to overcome that unlock perks and mechanics to figure out. Sure it stutters sometimes but thats the only downside i can find with it.
Lovely studio splash art but thats about it. I have only played the first three missions but i doubt i missed anything by quitting there. The player drone moves incredibly slowly and besides a small speed increase while boosting there is no movement abilities. No dodging, no quick dives or rolls, no nothing. It controls exactly the same as the free flight in minecraft's creative mode. There is no recoil, no ammo, no overheating, no bullet drop (i think, they vanish out of render distance almost instantly even with render distance set to max), and only two types of weapon: machine gun and rocket, both with one singular firing sound. The maps are somewhat interesting but the combat - which is supposed to be the main point of the game - is basically "shoot the same enemy with three different skins while you complete a boring objective". Oh, and the laser sight is misaligned or just not made with 3rd person camera in mind. The rockets sometimes touch your rotor while firing and explode instantly, luckily the do not deal damage to the player. The enemies always approach you head-on and fire their laser gun until they die. They do not use formations and just circle around your current position unless you move away from them, in which case they revert back to the beeline chase. If this was the first game someone made then they shouldn't feel too discouraged by this review, because at the end of the day it is still a finished product; it plays like in the trailer and it looks like the trailer footage. It is simply not very fun. I suggest that for the next game there is more focus on the gameplay and the general look-and-feel even if that means there will be less levels in the campaign.
Note: i did not have the Revision mod installed for my playthrough, i used a different mod that focuses mainly on bugfixes called GMDX. Good soundtrack, level design and sound FX. Amazing story, gameplay mechanics, secrets and progression with upgrades and skills. Bad lighting that doesnt show actual visibility of player in stealth, voice acting is flat on most characters and control bindings do not accept number keys for some reason. Weapons not only handle differently with each perk upgrade but also come with many ammo types for different situations which gives you something to think about before starting a shootout. Secrets and bonus objectives can be achieved in more than one way which lets you try many different skill builds without locking you out of resources or upgrades. While the tutorial is very detailed, it still leaves out a few things which is both good and bad depending on if you like finding things out through experimentation or not. Augmentations are fun to use and you get many chances to use whichever you choose to install because of the good level design. Enemies are diverse and have varied resistances that allow you to use many different weapons, ammo types and skills in order to defeat them. All in all it took some getting used to but i am glad i finished it. Reccomended for anyone looking for a bit more serious version of metal gear or anyone who is looking for an action packed political drama with a bioshock-esque upgrade system in a 90's high tech setting.
A really fun battle shooter with a unique racing concept that features a whole bunch of interesting tracks with branching paths. Pickups are fun to use and varied, you get a lot of them too so the races are never boring. HOWEVER. The 'out of bounds' hitboxes are strangely positioned, sometimes you will get automatically reset while you could still save yourself and bounce back onto the track and sometimes they let you drive on the wrong part of the track / backwards (happens a lot in a game where your vehicle is constantly tumbling) for a few seconds before kicking in. One track in particular features a FX bug where every effect like missile explosions, reset animations and pickups eat up 90% of your frames for a split second which is horribly irritating. That being said there are still a lot of good sides to this game like the splitscreen multiplayer, a long campaign with rivals, lots of customization options for your tumbler of choice and a solid tutorial and explains the mechanics step-by-step.
Can be frustrating but cmon. You shoot massive skeleton horses and demons with uranium cannonballs. Its a grand ol time.
Everything is just top-notch. The story is amazing, the soundtrack feels like this little imaginary world itself is singing it and its all coupled with the most exquisitely crafted visuals i have ever seen in a RPG. I heard this studio spent quite a few years making this game and it was all worth it because they created a work of art that stands out even to this day.
The physics are a bit floaty but thats understandable given the age of the game. Menus are quite annoying to navigate and whenever you save the "save successful" sign covers some menu options so you cant click them untill it hides. Lovers of good music rejoice! This game has one (1) track that plays both in the menus and during races and its not terribly good either! The best part about this are the powerups, there are fun weapons, fun speedups, fun troll pickups like hovercar and hot rod that mess up your steering and best of all silly NPC modifiers that can make them fat, tiny, give them weapons and so on. The racers / cars you get to choose from are also neatly designed and driving each one feels completely different. All in all it was fun for like an hour for me but a serious fan of the genre could get a lot more out of it. Also the difficulty selecting at the start of the new game is almost pointless since picking the right car has the most effect on difficulty.
...and it's got a really good soundtrack! Also all those innuendo-type gags which might or might not really fit into the whole thing but thats just my opinion. The dark magic collectibles are NOT QUITE optional if you're looking to try this one out.
...the controls are awful at times, the sound mix is inconsistent so even if you tweak the sound settings some things are gonna end up sounding way too loud or too quiet, and some sections take way too long to navigate. The story survived the ageing process, but the techical stuff sure didnt.
Things that are top-notch: - music, - sound effects, - voice acting, - art style, - most of the story, - character designs, - upgrade system, - secrets, - the interconnected map design / exploration, - the 'Keepers of the Void' DLC Things that are allright: - combat since it feels like an unholy union between dark souls and devil may cry but there are still many fun combos, the close dodge retaliation is unique for each weapon and all the specials look good and feel good to use - quick menu for the consumables since its really handy but has a hidden cooldown where you cannot swap items a few seconds after using one of them Things that are underwhelming: - even though 90% of the game runs smooth there are certain areas where performance drops massively, especially in cutscenes (PFS drops to 30-40 on an rtx 4060 ti, cheesus), - merchant menu and upgrade menu behave strangely, sometimes they ignore mouse inputs and they don't have all the navigation options mapped properly - the ending is poorly written, suffers from millennial humor especially the final boss character as a whole, - new game + only has a singular new type of enemy that drops a singular new resource, no point in going for another round trip since the story and the boss fights remain the same - 'The Crucible' DLC is the biggest letdown on this list, just like it was in the first game. The lovely facts you can buy things there if you do well and get to see new...-ish bosses is completely overshadowed by the fact you have to sit there for about two to three hours (best case scenario) to see all of them and if you truly wanna complete the DLC and get the final reward you have to do all 100 enemy waves without resuming from checkpoints a.k.a. in one go. It would be perfect if it was two difficult enemy waves per boss (and i do mean difficult not incredibly long and mostly boring as it currently is). Also ignore that one guy saying you cant guard break enemies, use the damm hammer
