I'm only a few missions in, but so far I'd say this one can hang with Blood Money for gameplay enjoyment and the graphics are extremely good (at least, from a good ole gamer's perspective who remembers the very first Hitman title and played the pre-release). I'd give it five stars except that I always struggle with the Hitman controls -- even remapping doesn't help me that much. But if you don't have that problem, then this is probably a five start game for you.
The bad: The game is too short -- it doesn't need filler, instead it could use another chapter or two, perhaps focusing on supporting characters. The story doesn't branch enough (i.e. doesn't have enough game elements). This is probably just a reflection of the developer(s) not having enough time and money to build out more gaming features. The good: I played this more than a year ago and I still remember it with a sort of fond sadness. Very well delivered story that cleverly references ELIZA, one of the very first chatbots developed at MIT back in the late 1960's. If you are into philosophy, psychology, or any field that tries to understand what makes humans tick, this little game is definitely worth your time. It's certainly not Disco Elysium, but it fits pretty nicely into that same headspace -- exploring a sort of cold loneliness that, nonetheless, contains threads of optimism and mystery. We really could benefit from more games like this one!
It's a wonderful game and well reviewed elsewhere. I only gave it 4-out-of-5 because it still has jank, urgent quests seem patient, quests with no deadline seem urgent, the camera often sucks, the world is full of empty containers, and there are forced "gray area" choices even where obvious kinder (or more cruel) choices should exist. So, sadly, it is not perfect. Still, it's the closest thing to perfect I've seen since KOTOR, and the sound and graphics are sumptuously modern and gorgeous.
Glad I tried the demo. This is super-frustrating. The music is always awesome, and the graphics are very slick too. The environments all seem to have exactly one correct way through, run-slide-jump-repeat and move from wall to wall. Doors are meaningless. Side-paths (though obvious) are also meaningless and inaccessible. Everything is run-slide-jump. Even that could be cool, but there are sequences in which a series of unlikely jumps must be made in sequence and, if you fail, you start again at the beginning. If you're the kind of person who likes precision-jump platformers, then this slick 3D version of the same will be great for you. But if you want to do anything other than the pre-determined run-slide-jump with perfect timing, then this will be nothing but frustration. It might have been easier, if the demo allowed changes to settings like mouse sensitivity but, although you can change these in the interface, they won't be saved. They'll be immediately overriden with the defaults.
Apparently this game started life as a Skyrim mod but I've never tried it in that form. Aside from the well-handled, first person point of view, WSAD-style movement, and pretty graphics, I didn't notice many other similarities between Skyrim and The Forgotten City. Instead of months of journeying around a vast, open world, the player spends the entire game in one day's events within a very richly detailed (though comparatively small) city populated with a dozen or two well fleshed out non-player characters. Without spoilers, a potential world-ending event occurs at the end of the day unless the player can figure out how to avoid it (and earlier if the player bumbles into it), with a few exceptions, the player must flee, the world is completely reset, and the same day begins again. Those exceptions make things really interesting -- the player keeps his/her inventory and knowledge, some plot points resolved on the previous day remain resolved, etc. The game is smartly written enough to avoid almost all feeling of repetition, though, by letting the player save time by delegating known tasks to NPCs, skip though dialog trees with oracular comments like "...yes, we've had this discussion before..." etc. There are four possible endings, each of which can eventually be explored via save files, and all of which are probably worth checking out. I recall three primary mysteries (among dozens of cleverly interrelated sidequests), there was an abduction, an election, and a religio-philosophical puzzle. I'm sure this would vary based on play style and quest order. The plot held criminals both petty and mastermind, but I never encountered anything real-world-sinister. There is a bit of combat (mostly archery), but, by far, exploration and witty discussion is how to progress. There were a few things that bugged me, the occasional invisible walls, catchall inventory, etc., but these were minor gripes that didn't really hurt gameplay. More games like this, please!
This game has definitely earned all its 5-star ratings. Paradoxically, it has probably earned all the lower ones just as well. On its face and in its most literal interpretation, it's a pixelated railroad of minigames with just three branching lines. However, once you spend even one hour with it, it's very likely that you will become hooked on the story. No spoilers but, the end of the story is essentially revealed at the beginning of the game in a sort of "act 0" foreshadowing. Still, thanks to brilliant writing, you won't be able to guess how you make it from act 1 to the end. You'll be blindsided by important revelations that turn out not to change the plot but only underscore it, and seemingly inconsequential decisions which alter the final outcome noticeably. The gameplay is very narrative -- lots of reading, and no voice acting and plenty of abstract drink mixing and cyber-pottery -- but this detracts nothing and, if possible, adds some charm and arguably another layer of surreality. The soundtrack (by Fingerspit, I think) is superb and modern, although I repeatedly had flashbacks to the Blade Runner soundtrack as well as to the excellent soundtrack of the original SNES Shadowrun game. Great! The writing, which forms the true core of the game, is superb. I was confronted on multiple occasions with extremely heavy philosophical questions and, while NOT forced into hackneyed "gray area" choices, was instead asked to select, among many sensible outcomes, which would be the most sensible. Awesome!! This is exactly what all serious games should be making us do. We, on being confronted with a false reality, are forced to reflect on our own true reality, but can enact our decisions within the comparatively safe framework of the game. If you need to shoot some nazi-zombie-shark-aliens, look elsewhere for now and come back later, but If you're in the mood for something cerebral, good-hearted, but pulling no punches, this is it!
