I honestly don't get why this is such a well reviewed game. Formulaic, simplistic, unimaginative gameplay. Derivative story and characters. The world is just basically the negative connotation of Americana on steroids, not exactly original. And its basically just linear checkpoint game to little voice acted cutscenes. The only positives I can think of is that it really does look beautiful and the voice acting is pretty good. But why you'd want to slog through boring and repetitive shooting galleries just to hear a voice acted checkpoint cutscene, with vacuous dialogue is beyond me. If you liked the other bioshock games and you want more of that, you'll probably like this one. But really don't expect much more than what was done before.
For reference, I did not like WL2. I tried playing it twice, managed to get through it the second time, but overall did not really enjoy WL2. It had some glaring issues with writing, narrative flow and encounter design. WL3 is a huge improvement over WL2, with decent writing, much better encounter design and so far the narrative flow is much more enjoyable. On top of that, the combat mechanics, the best part of WL2 just feels so much better. It's tight and punchy, with not too much going on, but enough to feel deep. Graphics: - Don't expect much here, far from current gen, but the aesthetic is done justice quite well. Looks good enough to keep you immersed, but its not impressive by today's standards. Writing and dialogue - there's a bit of American hokiness in the dialogue but otherwise the dialogue and writing manages to be heavy and thoughtful and tinged with the occasional levity. It feels alot more mature than WL2 while also feeling more fun (for me at least). Tough dialogue choices from time to time, there were many instances where I stopped and seriously pondered what the best choice was for me. But the game never slapped my hand as if I made the "wrong" choice, only had the world react realistically to it. RPG mechanics - weapons are balance quite a bit more, with pistols having an interesting niche as the fastest "strike meter filling" weapons. - character progression and skills is pretty much the same as WL2, with some much needed skill consolidation and the elimination of skill rolls (which I will contend is a good change) Combat - combat feel faster and punchier. - There seems to be more cover to utilize without having so much that you can just abuse it. - I'm not sure what to think of the revive mechanic. It softens the hard edges of combat, but seems a bit much when you can revive your squaddies 7 times in a combat. Overall a very solid RPG and well worth it. I'd give it a 4.5 star if I could because its not groundbreaking, but very good.
First up, I'm gonna say that if you like CRPGs, and/or you like post-apocalyptica, you it's worth the money. I picked it up for $20 on sale and maybe even that is a bit much, but its worth a buy. The visuals are good. It's surprisingly colourful for a post-apocalyptic wasteland and things pop up and are well defined. That and the art direction is coherent and cool looking, even with the dated graphics that doesn't give you the detail you might be used to if you play current day PC games. There's alot of good writing. There's gobs of characterizations and narratives that will make you feel very well immersed. Its all well written and I never felt like the story or the characters were uninteresting. The combat is a bit mixed. The core mechanic is solid and polished. UI, animations and sounds are all well-streamlined and punchy. It feels like there's alot of lost opportunity for variety in the combat however, and the combat does get old after a while. It would be nice to have had a good stealth mechanic to setup more intricate ambushes, or maybe even avoid some combats all together. Whats lacking in the combat feels like its a result of poor level design as well. Most combat boils down to taking the first shot and then gunning the enemy down as fast as possible before they get too close. Cover isn't a huge consideration and there aren't alot of options for it most of the time. Having some special abilities tied to non-combat skills might also spice up the combat a little bit - like using the brute force skill to break down enemy cover or knock them prone. My biggest complaint is non combat skills. They feel useless except for looting containers with junk and they're frustrating with their binary failures. I hate to sound trite, but there's a reason modern RPGs are contextualizing non-combat skills into minigames. Overall though, I hope the devs continue the franchise and improve upon it. They have great ideas and there's alot of room to improve.
