First of all, it's true what they say: this choose-your-own-adventure-book is masquerading as a game. That being said - I actually *like* a good choose-your-own-adventure-book. Planescape Torment and to some extent Arcanum and the original Fallouts come to mind. So why is this one very very very bad? :-) Someone without a post-sovjet + historical + literary background would have no way knowing what this game actually is. This is, unashamedly, a cannibalistic and chauvinistic pamphlet, masquerading as a late-sovjet sci-fi book mixed with Colombian magic realism of the 60s. The message? Mother Graad'sha is the greatest, brutally awesome (think Pladymyr Vutin - on a horse) [ahaha game - see! I can has artsy "fake" names too!!!] mono-ethnic civilization, its neighbors are all techno-fascist, or not-real and the duopoli of the Moralintern are invaders and colonizers (I'm not even going to bother looking up the "artsy" pseudo-Slavic and/or pseudo-Spanish names the author got from randomnamegenerator,com for the EU and the US) This all is structured in a frighteningly professional way and does a terrifyingly good job distracting from it's agenda and targeting multiple audiences simultaneously. It's brilliant this way: it adjusts the SAME message to different audiences without tipping-off the others. How do I even know, if this is so brilliantly done? A blunt reference to the two Ichkerian wars, described (of course) from the official Kremlin perspective tipped me off: it was so pointlessly full of very personal hatred it shattered the illusion, so I started going back and re-reading dialog options. I don't even know what to do with this. As I said.. a very specific background.. and luck.. Thank god not many people will play this.
Boring, tedious, samey, monotonous, unfunny, low effort from the creators. This is basically one of those trashy "free mobile" games compiled and sold for PC (thank god - without the adds)
I might be too old for having a valid opinion, but IMHO - if THIS was released back in the day, together with the random crashes of this extent, the game would flop as hard as did Arcanum and of Troika Games. One would think with these budgets - you would invest in some professional QA. And pleeease, don't tell yourself - oh I will patch the configs manually and do some hacks and patches from da forums. This is not a community mod or an open source engine playing some old WAD files. This is as AAA as it gets. Oh well. At least I got a free copy of the classic game with it.
So, on the plus side: this does provides entertainment value, in the respect, that you can point and laugh at how bad it is. Now to the actual review: Banking on nostalgia, half baked, lazy cash grab. Not living up to a game released (!)two decades(!) ago in graphics, design or game-play. DRM locked garbage, selling you HALF of a crappy, lazy MOO2 remake and shipping the rest in separate DLCs (I kid you not - the only thing they could've done worse, would be cutting everything after the plasma cannons and leaving you battling with lasers only, before you buy an extra game pack) Oh, and don't forget: it's called MOO. Not MOO4 or Master of Andromeda or whatever. Just MOO. Lol. AND the DLCs are of course named MOO: Origins, MOO: Revelations, MOO: Revolutions, MOO: Armageddon, MOO: Shadow of Meklon, MOO: Rise of Sol, etc. ROFL. Subtitles are so rad. :facepalm: This game is a perfect illustration on EVERYTHING that is wrong with the industry, step by step. Oh. And it has "achievements", because of course it does, we all are in kindergarten and in need of a golden star for every click we make, right? LMAO.
Like selling the Zergs for extra cash in StarCraft. Shipping unfinished crap. GoG - take this crap down.
The second part clearly has been "product managed" to death. Which is a pity, because the developers actually did a nice job improving the chunky physics. Still has bugs and dead-end scripts thou. The team added redundant amount of gore and Game of Thrones style "shock content", yaawn, probably to appeal to that 11-13 year old "edgy"-boy audience. The tutorial is looong and the AI dummed down. When you get to some content that actually is good you'll ask yourself, if it was worth it and the answer will come easy. No.
This game strikes me as a isometric, pseudo 80s version of Madness Interactive. The soundtrack is good, the first part of the game is pretty entertaining and can even be challenging at times, but the authors clearly did not think the concept through and the second part(they call a part of it "bonus" for some reason) + ending is very disappointing. Admittedly it is basically a gore shooter, so the "story" is as important as it is in porn (I think Romero said that), but I would not call this "cult" material by any means - it is more reminiscent of gory comics we drew in 9th grade. All in all the game is worth its few bucks, has the effect of 5-6 drinks without the liver damage and a morning after. It can help you to waste a few hours during a long weekend, but don't play it, if you can't afford to kill a few brain cells.
