Especially after the very good Allied Assault. This game consists mostly of walking through jungle corridors, picking off enemy soldiers one by one by hugging cover like your life depends on it (because it literally does) as you slowly crawl forward, lest you get surprised from the side and die pretty much instantly to hitscan hell. If you do not utilize cover, you will die. Period. The game seems to be set up in a way that when you are ducking behind an object, enemies simply can't physically hit you. The moment your center mass is not in cover, you are hosed down nearly instantly with a hitscan storm from out of nowhere. Meaning most of the fights will have you hugging the rock/stump of your choosing, usually crouched and simply leaning out to the left and right to take potshots at the enemy, before immediately ducking into cover again. Leaning out is safe as your center mass remains in cover and is pretty much the only way to safely shoot the enemy without dying. As company, you have a squad of goons with pretty much braindead AI, whose only saving grace is that they are immortal and get up constantly from being downed. I am fairly convinced you could go through the game just camping behind something in a fight and wait for the goons to kill everything (it'd take a while though). Which is not a good thing. Commanding them is basically pointless and it doesn't really seem to do anything. What's worse, the game's healing is mostly depends on one of these goons, namely the medic. He has a limited number of heals per level for you (depending on difficulty) and can "attempt" to revive you if you are downed. I say attempt, because the AI is so braindead, he will fail to pathfind to where you are laying 99% of the time before you pass on. Normal medkits are extremely rare for some reason. The game is also filled with scripted sequences. Turret sections, flying sections, cinematic sections, you name it. Most of these are a chore. A painfully average 5.5/10.
First off, the core of the gameplay, which is the combat, is absolutely excellent. Extremely fast, brutal and unforgiving on the hardest difficulty. Dodges, blocks, dashes, guns, punches, the game has it all. The sheer amount of weapons and tools available to you to win over the vampire hordes in the game's 16 levels is staggering. You start off with a basic arsenal but constantly keep finding new toys as you play through the campaign and end up packing so much firepower it's actually nuts. Revolver, Rifle, Bombs, Gatling, Flamethrower, superpowered vampire slaying gauntlet and more. You name it, the game has it. Along with perk points, weapon upgrades, the whole package. If you are just looking for mindless 3rd person chaos, look no further. But once you leave the combat, that is where the weaker sides of the game come in. First, the levels are extremely linear and scripted. This helps keep the game flow, but the level design overall is quite simplistic. Basically just there to sprinkle collectibles into the occasional "secret" areas and to convey you to the next fight. I use the word "secret" loosely, because secrets in this game mostly consist of guessing the "wrong" path. If you follow the main path, chances are you will not be able to backtrack to explore the branches you missed. The levels are full of "point of no return" traversal actions so you better get everything on the first go. Missing anything means having to replay the entire level if you want the get the collectibles/money you missed. You can't just choose the checkpoint from which you want to start. This flows into another gripe, which is the saving. The game has just one save slot and saves pretty much constantly. So loading an earlier save is also not an option. There was also one annoying bug where the character got stuck after opening a chest, numerous times, forcing a reload. But as said, the core of the game is excellent. An easy 8.5/10 and can definitely recommend. Wouldn't mind a sequel.
Continuing the series, Trine 5 will please any and all Trine fans and puzzle game enjoyers alike. There are actually several new abilities never before seen in the series, leading to even more devious puzzles. Actually found myself stuck for a while a couple times, because with the sheer amount of options you have in the late game, it can take a bit to land on the one needed to solve the puzzle. However, they went a little overboard with the skill tree upgrades. Especially Amadeus, when fully upgraded, can easily cheese a very large portion of the game. The ability to join objects together, being able to lock their rotation, reverse gravity and the ability to have up to 6 objects conjured at the same time is outright ridiculous. It's nice that the upgrades are noticeable, but this one character becomes so powerful as far as puzzles go, I'd actually consider it too much. Found myself multiple times in the late game going "Damn, this puzzle has me stumped, do I try to find the intended solution or just attempt to somehow cheese it with Amadeus? The possibility of cheesing it being there was quite often simply too tempting, and not that difficult to do. But other than that, the game is still great. Charming art style, awesome music,, smooth controld, diverse levels and locations, passable story (although a slightly disappointing ending as far as the main villains go). One of the best puzzle/platformer games out there. Took me about 20 hours to finish and do all the achievements.
First off, the controls. I actually found them surprisingly fluid and spot on. Most reviews here are trashing them, but I've found zero issues, both in platforming and combat. Played though the game on a keyboard just fine, but I had to remap a lot of keys (movement to arrows, actions on A,S,D,F,E,Q,SHIFT). The gameplay is usual metroidvania with usual secrets and mandatory backtracking with new abilities. Make sure to mark the spots with hidden paths and unreachable collectibles on the map from the start, or you're going to miss a ton of stuff. Depending on the path you take, it can take VERY long until you get access to all of the navigational abilities. Combat is decent, but also the usual. Every enemy has specific moves and a clear way on how to best defeat them. Once you figure it out, that enemy will basically never touch you again in a 1v1. Dying is pretty punishing, because it reduces the XP you gain and max mana, until you recover your spirit where you died. You lose no XP on death and there can be multiple spirits, so you can always fully recover. If you don't want to go fetch it, there are a few areas where you can pay XP to recover it. The actual combat controls are pretty simple. There is just attack, parry and dodge. You can also unlock a ranged attack and cast spells, which both consume mana. As for the story, there are 3 possible endings. If you're going to be playing without a guide, you are pretty much guaranteed to get the bad ending as the other endings require you to do some arbitrary stuff with some random items and certain activities. NPCs move around randomly all over the map as you progress the side quests so unless you stumble upon them randomly again as you are wandering around, you aren't going to be completing a lot of the side quests either and some of the puzzles can be quite obscure. If you're going in blind, expect to miss a lot of stuff. Overall, a solid 8/10. Metroidvanias are not my usual cup of tea, but I liked this one.
