I have to highlight some of the(potentially fatal) flaws before I can move on to mitigation. 1. The keyboard bindings incorporate all the letters, forcing you to shift your hand from the WASD position regularly. 2. The Quicksave function is vital as the autosave knocks you back quite a bit. This should've been an F-key shortcut. 3. There are supposedly many ways for you to get through the game but anything that doesn't include efficient resource-gathering and attacks that exploit Typhon/Mech weaknesses are bound to be very long and painful. 4. The enemies are bullet-intensive where ammo is hard to come by, and stealth seems like an afterthought that discards the exploratory elements(sneaking by=leaving things out). 5. If you leave side quests for later the levels will, as a matter of story progression be overrun with Typhons and Mechs, making things even harder. 6. The one fast travel option is only between three areas, and that doesn't connect well to the rest of the levels. Slow travel is...slow. For the third point I suggest the following to the player: a. There is eventually a mission that leads you to a recycler chamber(not the big bin, but a whole room segment) that can recycle anything you can move into it. Together with the lifting ability this'll get you a lot of resources. b. Focus on Psi abilities the moment you can - the Electroshock and Psych attack when maxed out will not only damage but disable enemies for awhile(where you can wrench 'em to death). All things considered once I pushed through the difficulties things did get easier, and I did like the Bioshock-ish environment: not a copy, but certainly inspired in a good way. The storyline was decent as well with the player having significant inputs, adding to nonlinearity. It's three years late but if they iron out the little kinks there's a lot of shine and polish to be added to what's already a good game.
This game was released to plenty of negative reviews, mostly regarding playability, now that most of that's sorted out by way of updates we're free to judge the gameplay without these annoyances. There's a LOT of driving to be done, and it does get monotonous after awhile. They do spice it up with some shooting and racing in between, but I feel that the best way to make the time go is with either a huge and diverse radio selection(I especially enjoy talk radio, absent here), or have a lot of character dialogue, neither of which this game has. In fact the dialogue vs pacing could've been done better, since on almost all my missions I finished the driving part before the talking ended. That said, the driving mechanics are stellar and even with my streaming setup having a very slight lag I was able to accurately navigate between cars and posts with high speed, having a sense of accomplishment there. The cover and shooting work great, if you're playing with a gamepad the aim assist takes a lot of the burden off fiddly stick aiming(you can tone this down or turn it off completely). Stealth mechanics are also good, forcing you to think your way around the map, and you're rewarded well for picking off only the enemies that matter. For example in truck stealing missions you can pretty much get away with minimal kills if you can make your way to the truck undetected, it's even faster this way. Lastly I love the stealth kill animations - the stabbing and slitting is brutally satisfying. As for the characters, they're very well told through the cutscenes, and you do get 'into the story' as you progress. If you play Vito's missions you'll also uncover some interesting backstory. Yes, it is the same thing repeated many times. People are quick to complain. Isn't FPS and MMO and racing the same though? The big question is have they made it fun to play, and to that I say, they've done a decent job.
