Am I looking at a Waterworld sequel, or Tomb Raider? What about this game makes it Tomb Raider? Would love to know. Because I don't think the creators of this game ever thought about that.
This game's premise completely misses what RoboCop stands for. The whole point of RoboCop is that he stands for law and order against extreme, violent crime. He does not shoot to kill. He shoots with high precision to disable the perpetrators. He aims to clear each area with minimal casualties and damage to property. Did the makers of this game even watch RoboCop?
Controls are clunky, and the game movement/design is unintuitive. The aesthetics are very dark, and almost grotesque. The voice feedback from the guards, their reactions, are almost satirical -- they break the realistic immersion during the stealth sequences. It seems this game doesn't know if it wants to be realistic, or take its subject matter lightly. Instead of taking an original approach, and focusing on fine-tuning gameplay, Shadwen decided to become a cheap Assassin's Creed clone, essentially. I had high hopes for this title. Quite disappointed. A mediocre game at best. Not sure who the target audience is, as it makes for a poor stealth game, and a very dark and clumsy game for the average player coming into this genre. Not sure who I would recommend it to, honestly. Oh, and gotta love tombstones you can walk through like a ghost, and the inconsistency with the fall height/outcomes. A little additional testing wouldn't have hurt, either.
Terrible experience -- the worst experience I've had yet with a video game. Almost completely counter-intuitive controls, and you'll spending the vast majority of your time watching a movie, and fighting with the game over controlling the character. And I'm used to playing story-driven games. This video game claims to support free choice and movement, but in reality it runs on rails, with little meaningful interaction. Things that may make sense for you to want to do in a scene, the game will prevent you from doing so, and dictate its own forced storyline and logic. Not once did I find my hand being forced by the game to do something I didn't want to do in order to continue playing. And then it forced character relationships onto me that I showed no interest in, and actively discouraged -- even breaking the illusion that I had any choice in the events unfolding. Nothing can be worth putting yourself through this torture -- not the excellent actors, nor the impressive visual experience and decent soundtrack, nor the plot-hole-filled, mediocre story. All-in-all, this video game is a failed experiment. The funny thing is, that if you take one element from this game, like the horse-riding segment, and expand that into a full game, you'll have a much better game than what this game is trying to do. But the aim of this game is not for it to be enjoyable, is it? It's a complete design fail from me. Only recommended if you're curious to see a high-budget, failed video game experiment in storytelling. It's a very good example in what NOT to do with video game design.
This is not a working copy of the game. It should not even be sold. It fails to even launch on any recent edition of Windows (compatibility settings don't help). It asks for a CD drive. How GOG thinks selling a game with DRM still implemented in it is okay is beyond me. Don't waste your time and money with this. Even if you manage to get past the "Insert CD1" screen, you still have a million other bugs to deal with to get this game to work on your computer. This is no longer a production-quality, sellable game. It's an old, buggy mess that hardly even works. Worst quality product I've purchased so far on GOG. Definitely not something that should be sold. If I'm paying for something that I then need to spend many hours on just getting to work right, then that's not a product that should be sold.
