Sorry, have only negative things to say: strangest and worst mouse based controls ever , extremely too dark, graphics covering more then showing, bugs everywhere ( collision not working for enemies in shotgun level, disappearing rivet gun, levitating "time-tool" staying directly in the air while using ), unexplained controls in the climbing level, even easy action mode did not allow to win the shotgun level as collision only worked against me but not enemies (I easily survive in serious sam, unreal tournament and co.), irrational solution for killing the "unkillable" thing in the reactor cooling level, uneplained health system, extremely long loading times for tiny rooms. Save your nerves and your time, Finally you only will be following the online walkthroughs just to formally finish it. I had to stop it in the shotgun level, as the enemies simply could not be beaten even on easy because of the strange controls and collision bugs.
I really wanted to love this game, it seem sinnovative and has good music, but somewhere in the 2nd half after 200th death it simply became a not more playable grinder for me and I uninstalled it. I know there are 5 stars reviewes for it and much people like it, but I just want to honestly describe some aspects breaking the gameplay: 1.) at the beginning you choose the control style, which can NOT be changed later anymore; you choose either isometric orientation or vertical/horizontal orienation of character movement for the whole game. 2.) diagonal jumps need pressing 2 direction keys and 1 jump key; not every keyboard can do every 3 key combination (e.g. I could not jump to the lower left direction with 3 keys). 3.) you see a 3D constructed game in an isometrical 2D perspective and you cannot change the view, extremely often you just dont see the complete area; MORE than extremely often the riddles contain a 3rd dimension: DEPTH. For flotating objects you simply can not determine the depth of it in the open space, it is just try and error, hundreds of times. Such riddles just become a grinder with random deaths. 4.) Navigation: you have to search maps at first, even IF you find them, they are completely useless, as all rooms are shown as empty rectangulars and..... the position of the player is NOT shown on the map (here must be said, that the game is not linear at all and you can miss a lot of interesting minigames because of incomplete orientation ). So after getting lost lost so bad, that I did not even know which objective I had, what I was searching for, after a 100th death at the same place (trapped between 2 deadly riddles), I decided not to grind anymore. If the developers one day update a game with a standard 3rd person view and working dynamic map, I will give this game a second chance. I simply refuse to understand, why the place WHERE I WILL LAND AFTER A JUMP is not marked with any simbol, like it is solved in "Alice (by American McGee))"
The game is the second game ever, that caused a motion sickness for me (first was Alone in the dark 5), and I can even read books and play handhelds in trains and cars. It was really an EXTREME motion sickness, as I realized later due to continious random head wobbling of the child, even when not moving at all. Also the game is much too dark, I had to increase the gamma highly over the advised value to see anything in some areas. Also V-synch somehow did not work at all. As much I liked the demo of the game (no motion sickness observed), as much I was diasspointed by the final product. From my point of view, there was no "horror gaming" at all, but an artistically visualized psychological terror story. Also it must be mentioned, that the game contains the "Prologue DLC" which can only be started from the "chapter selection" menue, if you KNOW, that it is already integrated in the main game (now you know it).
There & That was a short but very good classic adventure. And it was solveable. However, I just was disappointed from Time gentlemen, as the dialogues almoust all the time were in the colours of the background, and after the second half of the game (tower of london).... it just became unsolvable without using a walkthough. The rigid menue mechanic did not allow to quickly test what can be combined with what. It feeled very tough to check object or use it, as the wrong click sometimes started an endless dialogue about it. Logic was also not very helpful sometimes, as the descriptions of the environment and inventory did not always mention the most important properties of it.
At first : it is not like other true Daedalic games (like Deponia), it just makes no fun play. Forget any logic, it will not help you to solve the problems. At least after the second half of the game (the comic convention) the logic will more block your fast progress than help. There always is one way to solve a problem and it is always the most irrational one. The gameflow simply does not work: extremely often you dont even know WHAT your goal is, to reach it now just becomes the problem of the second order. I felt not playing, but just following the built in solution..... and this is not a purpose of a game. Just small example describing logic problems (!) without spoiler: 1.) if your at certain event in the game REALLY dont know what to do, and tryed everything, go the bar and drink untill you must vomit.... 2.) Randal says for one specific action, that he wont do it, but he DOES it - it is the only solution in a special situation..... and at this moment you have actually heared so often NOT to use one specific item for this purpose, that you will not even try it. 3.) And you MUST always visit ALL main locations because of minor changes ... but the old-woman-in-the-window location seen once at the beginnig of the game is only useful at the end of the game, when you actually forgot about it. So as I said: gameflow doesnot work - stop and go all the time, logic doesnot work, I used too often the buit-in help system, NOT to find out how to solve the problem, but WHAT the actual problem from Randal's point of view is. Technical problems: dialogues not equalized, often too loud, but sometimes just whispering. Optics are good, story OK, but the gameplay just destroys everything.
The gameplay has nothing to do with dynamic, original Anomaly. Everything feels very static. It is just a tower defence game using unit models from Anomaly universe, which seems simple at the beginning, but suddently becomes much more complicated after the level 12. Pros: - As a tower defence it is actually good, you cannot survive without good strategy - you have to understand the weaknesses of towers, just outnumbering the humans will not work. Cons: - no cutscenes, no real story (no story at all if you did not play Anomaly), no characters to identify with, you don't even know who you are - not really inspiring music (I think 2 soundtracks only all the time) - Strong assymetry: towers are much more weaker than in Anomaly series, but attackers usually strong. And you can't play as a tower boss yourself. - not all tower units from the original series implemented - one enemy type -self exploding tank- was introduced, but not observed anywhere in game.
