I don't like the characters, almost all of them are flat, and/or poorly written... But damnit I can't stop replaying it, I think I'm on my 4th playthrough, it's a combination excellent gunplay and mechanics, when I return to it I never find myself struggling with navigating around the controls and in-game mechanics. On top of that it's fairly well optimized, looks really good.
I feel like the trailer has been tainted by the name, it kinda hints at a relation to the 2006 game. Reality is, it is it's own thing, heavily influenced by System Shock 2 and Dishonored, personally I'm not a big fan of Dishonored, but I can totally appreciate it's influence, and it definitely adds to this game. I love when the world around me seems real in a game like this. The game allows you to chose your own path, so they've made sure that whatever area you might find yourself in, feels like it's part of that world. You won't find some un-textured hidden area, and everywhere is full of "lore" you can usually find out exactly what happened with the people there, or get hints telling you where someone might have gone, without it being a part of a quest.
So far I really like the game, one rather glaring issue is the AI, even by a old-school shooter standards, it's a little too basic. Other than that it's a ton of fun. And it runs well on most hardware. I've tested it on a laptop with a Ryzen 4700U, and it doesn't quite hit 60fps at 1080p, but it has no problem hitting and staying above that at 720p. It's not complicated, it will remind you of Doom and Duke Nukem a lot, and that's not a bad thing.
I got this game at release because of how much I enjoyed Guerilla, and this game has one of my most favorite weapons in any game, namely the magnet gun, it's still satisfying to bring down a building on top of an enemy alien. I think as it's own game, this isn't too bad, a run of the mill action game with intereting mechanics. But as a sequel to Red Faction Guerilla, it's a step down for sure.
I really liked the first game, and overall I do think this game is slightly better, the introduction of Xcom like turn based combat was great, almost wish there was more instances of them, although they did take up a long time at times, so I can see it as being a bit much if they came every other day. I was sad to see poker gone, while there is a card game, it's just blackjack, I found poker to be really fun, and imo a good way to refresh yourself on poker if you haven't played it. The story was ok, I did like the ending, but I can't say I really understood why Lana was so angry with you, but Boyd going all "breaking bad" tying up loose ends by the end, it was satisfying, far more satisfying than the end of the first game. I think they could have done more with the basic management part of the game, it's pretty much copy pasted from the old game minus investigators, now they're just cops., after a while you can't hire new cops, and the dificulty starts spiking, where even a small dispute will require 2900XP groups of cops, and when you have like 4 of those within 30 seconds, you can't really do anything except try and see if some of them are fake. Then there's the dialogue, sometimes it felt a little overly written? Like when Lana shows up and keeps talking in metaphores in a long rehearsed speech, and I was just zoning out.. That kind of thing happens quite a lot in the cutscenes, sometimes it's funny, but mostly you just wait for them to finish their over long script.. In any case, never thought I would enjoy manager games, but these are really good.
This game will often be criticized for being less a Mafia game than Mafia II, however except for small details like physics, particles and such, Mafia II didn't offer anything better than this, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't a masterpiece either, neither is Mafia III of course, but it's far more focused on it's narrative and characters. I'm currently doing my second playthrough of the game, and yeah it's fine, I'm not a fan of the more repetitive sidequests. But yeah if you can get it at a deal, and you're looking for a game to complete with a somewhat interesting story, go for it, plus it's nice seeing an open world game going on in the US outside New York or LA. I'm always glad when I see a semi-recent AAA game get on GOG, especially if it's worth getting.
The story isn't actually all bad, the game just gives up on telling it half way through. But I liked the game, it's very good at doing it's own thing, and it has good minigames as well, the poker game had me playing all night, and that's despite me not being much of a poker player in real life. Definitely recommend if you want to try something quite unusual that's still interesting.
![Event[0]](https://images.gog-statics.com/d4896b846c2d4ce873108363f48b2cd1496dc5abf27e35dbcd16e1d0d4e746f2.jpg)
This was somewhat an impulsive buy by me, and yet I ended up really liking this game, the aesthetics are those great 60-80's Sci-fi, the AI you deal with in my case at least worked surprisingly well, I mean you can tell it's like a conversation bot, but it still worked far better than the AI you talk to in The Talos Principle, simply because I could write my questions my way, and for the most part get the response I sought, it gave it a much more real feel imo. I really hope this will be taken further, because this game is entirely too short, and I'd love to see something like this implemented in a longer game, with an even better AI, and more stuff to do, they need to revise controls too, I mean it was simple and you kind of need to be able to use the keyboard on the run, but I think it could work fine if you simply had a toggle to start typing. The ending is kind of bleh, I mean I love the build up, you'll slowly realize things are not as they seem, and what you're being promised likely won't happen, and I liked that part, but the end was still bleh, that's about how well I can explain it without spoiling anything major.
The best Fallout made to date, I will never forget my first time playing this game, I liked Fallout 3, but after New Vegas, I learned just how good RPG's could become, this game gives you the true RPG experience, and not the linear, you-only-choose-what-to-say-"RPG's" If you haven't picked this up yet because Fallout 3 disappointing you, I hear you, this is nothing like Fallout 3, and actually respects the source material(Super Mutants aren't just angry orcs, for instance), I'm definitely buying it on GOG, not only to support this masterpiece, but also get access to the DLC's.
The best Fallout made to date, I will never forget my first time playing this game, I liked Fallout 3, but after New Vegas, I learned just how good RPG's could become, this game gives you the true RPG experience, and not the linear, you-only-choose-what-to-say-"RPG's" If you haven't picked this up yet because Fallout 3 disappointing you, I hear you, this is nothing like Fallout 3, and actually respects the source material(Super Mutants aren't just angry orcs, for instance), I'm definitely buying it on GOG, not only to support this masterpiece, but also get access to the DLC's.
