. . . and it's mostly true. Superlative game, a little too long and large perhaps - might not be a bad idea to skip on the gazillion question marks peppering the map : not much of true importance or usefulness there, mostly time wasters. Other than that it's one of the best ever made and, especially now, hautingly beautiful!
Gorgeous in every way - if a little repetitive - THE INVINCIBLE earns my respect for not simply shoehorning sci-fi concepts into an extraction looter-shooter. Unfortunately what ended up being made isn't all that great and suffers, like SCORN, from artistic expression in conflict with itself. The gameplay consists of not particularly complex button pushes/switches, driving sequences, the occasional use of tools requiring spatial attention and holding "WASD" to walk about the game areas along pre-determined paths. None of it is compelling beyond the truly excellent production design. Now here is the part I really do not enjoy saying but the bulk of the game is, in truth, talking. Then listening. Then talking. Then talking some more in timed dialogue choices : it's not so much the experience of playing a game as playing a book ; a nouveau "choose your own adventure" if you will. So it has great graphics : so what? Was voiced-over dialogue and pushing "W" to move forward the best way to live this adventure? There is more to it than that, of course, so perhaps I should say it's more like an interactive movie. Put another way : in the game you, the player, have a body inside a realized world : what then does THE INVINCIBLE do with this physicality - this _being_ - beyond the most trite, overused game mechanics? THE INVINCIBLE is a failure at both making a traditional (read : stimulating to the dopamine receptors) game but too as a way of advancing the state of the art. I do not enjoy writing all this about something made with such obvious love and reverence to the source material. I really don't. Let us hope these devs put their great talents to better use next time!
it gets under my skin every time I replay it, which is just about every two years or so - a comfortable blanket of a game which, I know, is an odd metaphor! Lots to love here with the possible exception of creature speed, where I find the game gets a little too "twitchy." That may just be 'cause I'm as old as dirt, however, and the reflexes ain't what they once were! . . . Highest recommendation for fans of atmospheric, thoughtful FPS games.
A classic for a reason and though yes : the presentation is primitive - everything about it is terrific. Many times imitated, its systems cribbed and copied onto a thousand titles, often imitated but never duplicated.
On a surface level, yes, the game is a safe, somewhat predictable, AAA open-world game with all the trappings this entails. I enjoyed that aspect of it - having not played enough such titles to feel bored with the formula - but it was on all the other levels that the game floored me : dialogue, characters, thematics . . . it was much, much better than it had any need to be. There is a video on the Tube : "Uncovering the masterpiece" which lays it out better than I ever could, so I will leave it at that for the here and now.
but it is possible to lock a series of doors for crowd control - playing the game with the bare minimum available strategy - and then LOCK YOURSELF OUT. Some doors you lock can be re-opened later, others are shut permanently, and I found no indication of which was which. Thus I was unable to complete mission 3 and would have had to replay the whole darned thing from the start because ALSO : the game has no manual saves and very stingy autosaves. I might have suffered these grave limitations in a much, much, MUCH better game but, with all due respect to Games Workshop, their space marines/death angels/whatever are slow-ass weaklings in tissue-paper-thin cans. I said it. Those first two missions were a CHORE of trying to survive with wholly inadequate tools. And no : it does NOT make sense that the Emperor should send his "Death Angels" on such dangerous, deadly missions armed with weapons that hit anything and everything *except* where I'm aiming while backed (burdened?) by brain-dead squad mates with suicidal tendencies. It looks tremendous, however. Kudos onto my brothers and sisters in the art department : may you find success in better titles! Long live . . . somebody. (This review for the single player campaign)
"GOG Galaxy and a ProNet account are required in order to get access to community content, multiplayer, leaderboards, and cross platform saves..." And if I just want to play the basic single player campaign? I still need a "ProNet account" since the game will not load a local save unless it is uploaded to their server. Tsk-tsk! Congrats, Bounding Box: you got a couple $ from me to buy one product and then lost yourselves a customer. Forever.
Played version 1.50 and up (playing it now with 1.61) and other than a few visual glitches and ONE crash-on-start it's been entirely bug free - this with many play sessions 8+ hours long. It's not just the level of presentation, which is top-notch, but the characters and their interaction with the protagonist. The level of love for NPCs like Panam Palmer for example, as seen on many Internet forums, speaks volume to the quality of writing on offer here. The game is often vulgar and quite disgusting, in keeping with the setting, and it's left to the player how and where to find meaning: will V be a psycho murdering throught the game, no better than a Maelstrom gangbanger? A force for justice going at it with minimal loss of their soul? Somewhere in between? There is an enormous amount of content here, if one takes the time to enjoy it, and even the inconsquential "NCPD dispatch calls" yield backstories (in the form of texts) that are often heartbreaking. It's the first game since MORROWIND where I'll just get on my motorbike and pick a direction at random - something poignant, sinister or heart-stoppingly beautiful always awaits somewhere ahead . . .
For some it's a system of clear rules giving rise to satisfying complexity. For others it's getting your wisdom teeth pulled during a tax audit in the midst of a messy divorce. And then there's PATHFINDER: KINGMAKER. Joking aside, this game is reeeeeal purdy! It's also a mind-numbingly repetitive "gameplay loop" of nothing but tedious skullduggery that otherwise lays there like an uncooked egg. It's still full of place-holder art and what seem to be proofs-of-concept never actually implemented. I struggled through 5 Acts on the vain hope that things would get better for surely, certainly (all the glowing reviews?!) this . . . stupefying CHORE must, at some point, morph into an enjoyable *game* - right? Something playable and not performative? This is pointy-hat wizards and pointy-eared elves - this isn't the Human Proteome Project ffs! I don't turn to stone when the sun rises, so here's my lesson learned: keep far, far away from Owlcat games...
