All the other reviewers had a lot more fun with this than I did. My very first introduction to this game was 'Restart because the game refuses to read your Logitech F170 game controller'. I mention the controller type because it's not like it's rare, it's very common. After the fourth restart, the controller began working. I almost wish it hadn't. You see, this game is a good example of the concept known as 'Technically correct'. Yes, there's 'controller support'. That's technically correct. The 'controller support' is this: Your R stick is the mouse and your R2 is the left-mouse click. You expected to be able to use the L stick and/or the Dpad to move through the menu? NO. Not only is it the *other* stick, you have a fiddly little pointer to deal with. It's literally just a worse version of the mouse control. If you've ever tried to use the Steam controller input functionality to play an old keyboard-only game, you know EXACTLY what to expect. ======================================== This game is so taken with the idea of gamepad user being forced to use mouse-vibed controls that the game suffers. Do you need to pick up something right next to you? In most games you'd simply stand next to it and press X or another of the face keys. In this game you have to: - Stand next to it - Hover your cursor over it (it must be on the item) - Press R2 Hovering the cursor in the exact right spot takes WAY too long. I can't remember the last time I played a game for such a short amount of time and just lost interest. This game didn't even last 10 minutes with me. The only reason it has 3 Stars and not 2: The game works and has had a LOT of work put into it. Like, A LOT. I only wish I enjoyed their work, because I have no intention of playing this game ever again.
As a huge System Shock 2 fan who found the original System Shock hard to get into, I was *really* looking forward to playing this so I could revisit the System Shock universe. I have three major complaints with this game: - The enemy animations are laughable. The death animations - and you need to understand I'm not joking or exaggerating - are literally just 'ragdoll + spark/blood animation', And they're not much better animated when they're alive. I don't care about graphics at all - unless they break immersion. And my word they do. - Many of the design choices are questionable. If you're going to update the graphics, why not the gameplay systems too? Why should they remain unevolved? For example, the lack of a meaningful quest log reeks of padding out the gameplay hours. Having to delve through tens of minutes of notes and audio logs for one single code is just painful. - The Cyberspace sections, some which can't be avoided, are just plain annoying. In Cyberspace you can move forward, backward, left, right, up, and down. You can also look in any direction and move forward. You get the full sphere of rotation to use. But you do it INCREDIBLY slowly, and you don't get a dodge move or anything similar (either that - or you're allowed to progress to the point where you need it before you've gotten it). Meanwhile your enemies is allowed to gang up on you AND spam their attacks, some of which cast a VERY wide net. Every single Cyberspace battle I've done has devolved into 'tank, heal, tank, heal' - all while my little pea shooter water pistol joke gun is plinking away at the frankly cruelly implemented enemies. This is genuinely some of the most mind-numbingly turgid 3D combat I've ever had the misfortune of being subject to. AND IT CAN'T BE AVOIDED. -------------------------------------- I was rooting for these guys, dammit. They got Shodan's old voice actor which is the only reason this travesty didn't get 2 stars.
The graphics are fine. The gameplay is fine. The onboarding is fine. But the balance borders on cruelty and I don't understand why so many other people are fine with that. I've been playing CRPGs for decades, and most grid crawlers are built on the same principles. It's not that I'm bulding non-viable characters - it's that the game design has a very strict idea of what you SHOULD be putting your points in. This results in feeling punished unless you chose the exact stuff the game wants you to. If our other choices are going to be THIS useless, why are we even given a choice? This isn't 'we're given room to fail'. This 'Screw you for not being psychic'. Here are two examples. I had many more to choose from. 1. I made an Axe user but I didn't get an Axe until I was roughly 1/6 of the way through the game. I understand that I'm a prisoner who doesn't have their chosen weapon at hand, but does the game understand how easy it is to improvise an axe? 2. The game REALLY couldn't care less about your magic choices. After the Axe debacle, I still had 3 more characters who didn't have their weapons. I bit the bullet and restarted with characters whose weapons would appear, because there's no random chest loot. The scrolls are placed in specific spots throughout the entire campaign, which means that your ability to cast certain spells is essentially tied to the map. I get a poison cloud scroll, but I can't cast it because I'm not level 7 in Earth Magic. I play on, putting points in Earth Magic when I level up. MUCH later on, I'm able to cast the spell. I've just hit the fourth map and I've grown to detest the combat. Either move around in an annoying fashion, or rest between EVERY. SINGLE. BATTLE. And this is WITH a good team. The armor feels absolutely pointless in this regard. I've just hit a room that traps me with two poison users. I sure do wish I could use the Poison Shield scroll I just picked up. That'd be handy. Not sure if I want to restart again.
I like the idea of this game, and the execution is generally of reasonable quality. This is probably the most atmospheric grid crawler I've ever played, and that should be commended for that alone. ----------------------------------- But it lets itself down time and time again when it comes to matters of polish and quality of life. Let me put it like this: As some game that some random person(s) made it's pretty damn good. But as the mid-tier (judging by the price) Dungeon Crawler it strives to be, it falls flat on many fronts. I'm annoyed about the tacked-on gamepad controls which don't let you rebind buttons. and thinks the right stick should be used like a mouse to select body parts in combat. I'm annoyed about the weird 'freshly bought from the Unity store' vibe of the faces. I'm annoyed about the the confusing onboarding process: Obvious things are explained in an oversimplifed way, but the real questions don't seem to have any answers. When my agent does that thing before they die, is there anything I can do to help them? Is it a stat thing? Is it random? If I don't understand how the *permadeath* works before it affects me ingame, why would I keep playing? ========================= However, I shouldn't really care about permadeath, because this is basically 'What if X-Com was made in the Legend of Grimrock engine?' I loved X-Com so I should love Conglomerate 451 (calling it C451 from now on), especially given the cyberpunk (the genre not the specific game) setting. But there's a huge difference: In X-Com, when someone dies, it's because you made a mistake. In C451, when someone dies, it's because something wasn't explained properly. In X-Com, when my people died, I felt like I'd let them down. In C451 when they die, *I* feel let down. The game itself works fine. The graphics are fine. The sound is fine. The music is fine. I didn't get very far. I don't regret my time with it but I don't imagine I'll ever touch it again either.
...and nothing I didn't. It's Doom and Doom II. You know what to expect. Except wait maybe you don't, I sure as hell didn't: This is ALL the official Doom and Doom II releases. Thy Flesh Consumed, Plutonia, TNT, The Master Levels - EVERYTHING. There's even a bunch of NEW official stuff!
I'd love to give this a higher score but frankly it doesn't deserve it. Bunch of good times here, but they could be overshadowed for some folks by Bethesda's traditional levels of ineptitude. The story is no great shakes either. Anyone with a modicum of media literacy will see 'the big twist' coming a mile away. So it's unstable and the story isn't great. How's the gameplay then? Combat is the best in the entire Fallout series. F76 has better weapons and more of them, but it also has weapon degradation which removes a LOT of the joy from weapon usage. I want to give this 4 stars, I really do. A decent game, but also one severely limited by Bethesda's refusal to actually be good at what they do.
