It's a good (very good even) game as long as you stick to one rule. Play goblin difficulty. Really it's almost a must as the games combat is abysmal and possibly even worse than combat in Thief 2014. This is not a big problem however as Styx is a pure example of a stealth game. Styx is not like (the new) Sam Fisher who upon being discovered just flips a table and clears the map with machine gun fire. Far from that! He's a puny goblin who will get his butt kicked and head caved in if you don't play the game to his strengths. The maps are all very well designed... with one glaring issue however. You are going to see them all at least twice as you start playing all the maps in reverse from chapter 4 and onwards. On the upside the maps are well designed and still work well even played in reverse. The good: Expansive levels with a lot of verticality that rarely make you feel like you're being forcibly shoehorned into a predetermined path and if there is one you can easily break out of it by creative use of your clone or invisibility. Chatty (and funny) main character. Minimal handholding. Even silent kills cause some noise so there are no scenes common in many stealth games where entire formations of densely packed troops are silently murdered without them even realizing as long as no one looks directly at the Grave Walker. The bad: The guards occasionally stop patrolling upon loading a saved state and just stand in place. The maps are all played twice... and one even thrice. The map is useless not only not showing the main characters position but also showing a pretty small fragment of the actual map due to all the verticality and the map being drawn from a top down perspective. On some maps that's almost like not showing over half of the level. This might be intentional however, as the game takes after Thief titles where the maps made or received by Garret were often not particularly, accurate or complete. The combat is laughable and best completely avoided.
First of all this is NOT like diablo or it's aRPG kin in spite of the slight aRPG mechanics. It's much closer to a top down brawler (or a twin stick shooter if playing as strife). If you buy it with a "gimme plenty of loot" mindset you are going to be disapointed because creature cores are hardly a replacement for gear. Other than that... This might as well be called Darksiders 4 as It's just yet another take on the same kind of game. So plenty of fighting, a lot of executing and a bit of puzzle solving with a boss near the end. Graphics wise i don't have anything bad to say about the game, it's lively and verdant... as much as crossing the pits of hell can be anyway. The action is great as executions come back after their break in darksiders 3 (I kinda wish they were tied to the core system and slightly limited though, being able to execute anyone and anything gets kinda old, but you do it anyway because it gives you a second or two of iframes an bonus wrath on top of getting rid of an enemy that much sooner) The core progression system (see what i did there?) is tied to slaying monsters that will drop cores you slot into your... not quite skill tree. Those cores can be anything from an insignificant 1% attack damage boost to adding elemental effects to your moves or summoning creatures to fight on your side. There are some problems on the technical side, game seems to microstutter with V-sync on (at least on AMD) but deactivating it seems to fix the issue. It might introduce tearing if you use a non adaptive sync monitor however. What there is too say... if you liked any of the darksiders titles leading up to this game then this is a game for you. The changes were mostly in perspective. What else... the game is 30 USD, has no form of MTX so far. For 30 USD you can't go wrong with this one.
It's a cover based shooter with some tactical elements. The story is fine if a bit... unbelievable (I don't think it'd be a big spoiler if i said the events of the game got classified and no one really noticed a massive alien invasion on the entire planet.) also it hints at the real identity of the commander in X-Com (2012) and X-com 2... sorta. The Squad mates are... sorta useless but not quite. Their base attacks are horribly inaccurate (I suggest equipping them with a plasma minigun and have them attack a gunship. I guarantee you will be amused by their (in)accuracy.) unless they are flanking (and they are still rather weak even when flanking) but they also come with a set of pretty powerful special abilities you are encouraged to use as often as you can. Which is pretty complicated at first as the controls were made with gamepads in mind but M+K players like me can cope after a map or two... or i did at least. The graphics are fine even if there is some weirdness with the cutscenes (instead of rendering it in engine they use a badly compressed avi or something... and it's a badly compressed avi of the cutscene made in game... just... why?) The story has a couple twists including one big one near the end of the game. Plus you get to walk around the base between missions and see how new guns are developed, scientist notes ETC. It's pretty nifty overall. Even if your actions during the campaign have actually very little effect on gameplay and no effect on the ending... with one exception near the end where you need to pick one of 3 options that will result in a bad, neutral, or a good ending. But it's not clear which one is which unless you have some character reading skills.
I base this review on the Uplay version after installing the HD patch (So i can play in 1080p) The PC version is ok as long as you fiddle a bit with the controls. I had to set the mouse sensitivity slider all the way to the left before the camera became usable) they become perfectly fine. There is a superior looking HD re-release on consoles but its PS3 and X30 only i think. Anyway back to the game. It's a cult classic zeldalike. The story is mostly linear but you are free to explore and looking for side missions in the overworld which yield pearls that are used to upgrade the hovercraft... and open up more of the overworld . The Melee combat can be described as proto arkham. There are no counters per say but Jade can hit most enemies out of their attack animation so fights against 2+ enemies can turn into a glorified whack-a-mole. Still there's not too much emphasis on combat for it to become boring and the game switches things up pretty regularly with bosses that require working with your companion to bring down, races, chases, puzzles, photography, (rather basic) stealth vehicle combat etc. And while some elements might be less than amazing (Like the races and stealth section) they are generally short enough to never really overstay their welcome. The story is good for 2003. You can obviously tell who's the bad guy rather quickly but the story has a twist or two in store. The game has a cliffhanger ending as it was planned to be a trilogy and there will likely be no continuation on that story anytime soon (The BGE2 that is in development is a prequel).
Hey remember Carmageddon 2 and the special missions? You know. The extra hard nutcrackers that appeared after every 3 normal races most people needed dozens of tries to complete? Well this game feels just like that except it's not every 3 levels but nearly all of them. The time bonuses for rolling over pedestrians and wrecking opponents are pittance at best so the optimal way of getting through the game is... racing... ACTUALLY RACING. So long story short. if you want Carmageddon 2 with prettier graphics look elsewhere (Like the 2016 Carmageddon). If you want a Destruction Derby 2 or Flatout with a a much more open map and pedestrians you might find some enjoyment here.
So the game was made by the devs who also made the Giana sisters games... which were pretty good and average at worst. So it had competent developers... and the game is competently made. It just feels like a game unlike the billions of asset flips infesting Steam that only exist to farm steam cards. But i swear the production budget probably ran out after designing 3 levels and the developers had to sustain themselves by sniffing a communal hotdog at work while they quickly hammered out the rest of the game before the all die of hunger. As a result the game is insultingly short. It's not even the Angry Joe "4 hours" meme short... as you can literally comfortably finish it within 2 hours... maybe even 1 if you are good at platformers and didn't bother with collecting 100% of the yarnballs. I'd give it 3 or even 4 stars if the game was either 4 times longer or 4 times cheaper... but as things are it's best avoided.
Let's get this out of the way. This game has nothing to do with syndicate beyond having 4 agents in a cyberpunk dystopia. While Syndicate and Syndicate wars were action games Satellite Reign is more of a stealth game closer related to titles like Commandos than action titles Syndicate or Cannon Fodder. So if you want to play SR like you did Syndicate then prepare for getting your teeth kicked in my nearly infinite waves of reinforcements you can't escape from because your asthmatic agents can't run across the street without running out of stamina. Guess trading in that lung for extra chrome and led lights on your coat wasn't that good of an idea in hindsight eh? The game is a bit better (as in possible to play) as a stealth game but even then it has gaping holes like the absolute lack of sightlines. How far does this soldier see? Who knows! And you don't even get the handy tool from the old Commandos games that let you check if a certain area is being watched or not. But hey that's not the least of the games problems. You have limited sight range so you can't study patrol paths anyway so you will get blindsided by a guard you never seen before sooner than later as some groups have REALLY long routes. And even if you manage to study the movements of patrols there is no guarantee they will stick to them as sometimes their pathfinding messes up and they change direction mid turn. And if you were sneaking behind their back at the time then have fun and get ready to defend y... oh wait... you are better off just reloading the save. So far the only tactic that worked for me was using 1 or 2 agents as sacrificial lambs starting a shootout in one part of the compound causing EVERYONE to rush in there and completing the objective with the infiltrator while the rest of the squad is annihilated. Then respawn the decoys and start another ruckus so that the infiltrator can get away. if you want a new syndicate then keep looking. And there are better stealth games than this.
