I enjoyed my time with this game. But it's sloppy as shit, just like every Arkane game. Arkanes MO is make a game with a tonne of awesome ideas, fun gameplay, and then shit it up just enough that's frustrating and average when they should be some of the better games out there. fighting in 3D Space which I'm very used to courtesy old 6DOF, Shattered Horizon, etc games, is really rough. Being hit by electrostasis unguarded means you can't even aim. If you set up for hacking and fighting shit in 3D then boy is aligning stuff going to be annoying because you can't rotate or anything. Picking up heavy objects is near useless, because its a pain to move them how its implemented, and almost anything you can move can also just be moved with a nice explosion. Balance is ridiculous you go from being worthless to god with a certain (obvious) upgrades. The econmy for it is easy to destroy early on, which is fine, its a bit of a playground with actual stuff to it unlike most other sandbox garbage. two really bad side missions, a ton of bugs, easy to get stuck in geometry. But it's fun. Like I said. It's an Arkane game. They just need more time do fix shit up and do things in better ways. That said the ending(s) is fucking awful garbage. I suspected the twist pretty early and didn't know anything going into the game. Didn't even realize it was supposed to be a horror game. Yet another game that's a waste for illusion of choice sadly, and has the nerve to try to sidestep that fact by calling it out. Just because you call out that 'thinking what you did doesn't matter' doesn't mean its still wrong. And that's pissed me right off. Anyway I'm ranting now. Average game that should have been way better just like every other Arkane game.
Boy the design of this game is all over the place. None of the systems play off or benefit each other save for Loss Progression, and even that was built in a way to make the game worse (in story mode, it's basically a forced reset for 5+runs). Mechanically the game manages to be inferior to older games, and can't decide if it wants to be an annoying collection/mining game, with a nonsensicallly small gather range, no autopickup on anything like money and crafting materials which there is never a reason not to grab; there's no limited storage space or anything like that. Weapon system that is tied to engines, but no proper micromanagement system, instead its a lazily done system which is annoyingly punishing. Speaking of weapons, hope you find an alternate loadout and better weapons quick; the starting gear is unrelentingly terrible. I don't mean it's bad, or weaker to be challenging, its just terrible. All the upgrades are boring numbergrades save for 'extra X slots' for gear, and there's a select few that are immediately superior to want to get over anything else. Nothing in the game *really* changes anything up. Other ships are the closest you can get. Hell, it doesn't even have a map and instead has the claustrophobic indicator spam all over around the screen. This could have been good and I'm hoping 2 is better which is the whole reason I checked out this one. Combat when you finally get somewhat ok stuff / perks is fairly decent. Music's passable, looks great. But so many problems, can't say it's actually good.
But not without a few problems; mostly some performance/(I suspect optimization) issues, and issues on where you can go. This is a pretty solid, fun 2-5 hours. Unfortunate that moving quickly requires a keyboard. Totally check it out for a fun 3D Platformer.
This game starts off, and for the most part kept being okish, but fun. But then it makes the mistake of asking you to use it's shoddy, poorly done mechanics. It's got some bad level design and unclear visuals. I beat it but have no desire to go back to complete everything. The music is solid, the aesthetic I'd have liked a little more detail on in some places but is fine otherwise. Skip it even if you're a fan of Bloodrayne. It's short, which isn't a positive or a negative just letting people know. I like that upgrades required you to know what you're doing, but again the problem is relying on poorly done mechanics. Buy it for the change on sale if you want to have a short bit of fun but don't feel bad about not finishing or enjoying it past a certain point. Oh the story is not there and completely ignorable for the most part.
