Didn't get very far until I decided the shooting itself felt so underwhelming that I couldn't possibly keep playing this for any prolonged period of time. There's no feedback, weapons don't feel impactful, movement is imprecise, there's no dodging... so all you do is walk in circles while shooting your bee bee gun at the enemy. Amazing.
- Honestly, I simply can't get into the combat system. I know it's the "original", but it doesn't feel like I am controlling Batman, rather like I'm giving him suggestions as to what he might want to do once he's finished doing what he's currently in the process of doing. Very unresponsive, with unsatisfying animations and very floaty movement. - Story is rather boring so far, but 15% in doesn't really give me any authority to critique it. Let's say it feels more like a vehicle to parade characters around than characters doing things to move the plot forward, i.e. very fanservice-y. - Traversal of the city feels good, I like flying, and even the driving isn't half as bad as people make it out to be. Just prepare for dreadfully long and frantic tank battles. - The game simply doesn't feel like an organic word, frankly, but an assortment of half-baked minigames. Most abilities and gadgets have only very specific use-cases, making me wonder whether the only reason for their inclusion is the fact that Batman is all about gadgets, yet the devs didn't know how to incorporate them in any engaging way. Let's just say this game never truly makes you turn on your brain, which would be fine, if it at least felt good to play, which it also doesn't. - Performance is actually quite good, so apparently they fixed that. -The absolute best thing about this game is the atmosphere and level design. Gorgeous.
The game shows promising ideas, with loads of different ammunition for you to play around with, stealth components, melee, platforming, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, it has no idea how to make use of them with some extremely boring and useless level-design. Many encounters can only be solved in rather sloppy ways, making you feel less like a witty gunslinger and more like a bumbling idiot. Stealth can be used very rarely, if ever, ammo can not be applied effectively, making them all blur together into different stats with the same basic effects. Does it knock down the enemy and do damage? I'll take it. The same applies to the world. It may appear fresh and interesting at the beginning, but quickly boils down to Dumb and Dumber humor mixed with the blandest Western stereotypes imaginable. Cutscenes are nice, but voice work is atrocious. The world is full of geese that all have the same grating, high-pitched Southern Drawl voice that will make your ears bleed after a few hours, and they are everywhere, making up for probably 90% of NPCs you interact with. Horrible game with great, stunningly squandered potential.
The game absolutely needs to be lauded for its innovatively interactive use of space, toying with the player's perception of reality by manipulating objects and rooms outside of view, thus creating a sense of a claustrophobic kafkaesque nightmare. However, this is also what hinders the game's effectiveness. If you give up on the expectations of reality, any subversion of reality becomes expected and thus no longer shocking. Even worse, due to on-the-dot pacing of said space-manipulation, not only are these subversions expected, but become ever more predictable, nullifying any attempts at horror the more you progress. I found myself walking directly into "danger" and "monsters" simply because I wasn't afraid of dying, since it was all a dream anyway. The game tells you early on that you can make impactful choices, and when I figured out that "dying" progressed the story in a satisfying and interesting way, I started seeking out the horror rather than avoiding it. When the writing on a wall told me not to look back, I immediately - and consciously - turned around, got eaten, and was happy about the new progress I'd made. This is not the kind of behavior that a game called "Layers of Fear" should entice. As a substitute for the lack of shock and surprise, the game instead employs a bucketload of visually stunning, but auditorily annoying and overly frequent jump scares. Puzzles are implemented infrequently and feel out-of-place most of the time. In a world where record players can bend space and time, why do safes still need codes to open? If reality changes when turning around, why do I need keys to open doors? While the narrative is told through some great environmental storytelling, the tropes are rather ancient. If you like Pickman's Model or the The Picture of Dorian Gray, the atmosphere and characters will be right up your alley, but for a game with minimal interaction, I would have expected a slightly more intriguing take on the insane artist story.
If shooting is your only interaction with a game, it better be good. Unfortunately, it isn't, immediately laid bare by the fact that the Y-axis mouse sensitivity is lower than the X-axis, an absolutely unforgivable error left in from the console port and unfortunately equally unfixable. So if the gunplay sucks, what is left? Is the story good? The lore may have been interesting back when, but nowadays it represents the barebones basic apocalyptic stereotype. The writing itself is cringe-worthy. It's a coming-of-age story with the manly man father and master figure, and a hero that needs to prove he has the guts to show no emotions in order to be a real man. Been there, done that. So if gameplay and story suck, what's here to love? Atmosphere, maybe, but if that is all you want to get this game for, I pity you. You might as well watch a movie, as this is basically what this game's "gameplay" amounts to anyway: Follow the guy, go through the door that he opens for you, wait till the monsters come, stand still and shoot the monsters, pick up ammo, repeat. Oh, sometimes you have the option to be stealthy, in which case the game implicitly lays out a clear path on how to stealth about the place, so you don't have to worry about having to turn on your precious brain anyway. At least it runs well, looks great and may be a fun romp for people that love the setting.
And I thought Risen 1's combat was bad. How come Gothic 2 still has the best combat of all of this dev's games? As soon as they discovered people play games with a mouse, they ditched the keyboard and completely forgot how to make combat rewarding.
Too many problems to fix first to make it run flawlessly, only to be hit by the next onslaught of issues when modding. First it stutters, then it freezes, all of a sudden the menu won't load, forcing you to restart your entire pc by force. Not a fun experience. The game itself may be amazing, but considering the graphics really haven't aged well, I found myself turning to modding, only to be met with a lot more problems than my years and years of skyrim modding experience ever put me through.
