A good game, not a great game.
It's sad to see the franchise end on this note, since it wasn't exactly a strong entry. Suffering a lot from graphical enhancements bottle-necking design to fit a rather short, narrow game with linear levels, rather than returning to the formula that made Guerrilla such a stand-out classic. Basically, it looks prettier, but it feels much smaller. The story, which attempts to be dramatic in the phase of it's brevity, suffers from it, too.
I suppose it's WAAYY too easy to compare it to Guerrilla, since expectations were fairly high riding on the open-world aspect of that game, but since the company behind it, Volition, has made a killing on such open worlds.
The gameplay itself is solid enough, at least, and where they didn't exactly have a lot of room to make a large-expansive game, they honed the physics-focused gameplay to a high-quality of polish. The experimental weapons, including the Nano Forge tool, are all fun to mess around with, for sure! If anything, the gameplay shines through despite the shortcomings around the rest of the game.
As far as narrative goes, it's laughable. At the time, the GoW games were still in full swing, so you get the feeling that, even if unintentional, the story suffers from taking from those games' story beats. It really does not give you a reason to care about characters, even if some come off as likable by accident. The ending is just ... so... face-palming-ly stupid. It doesn't take any real thought to recognize the problem just from the beginning.
I'd say if you're someone who can ignore the story enough to enjoy the game, then you'll probably enjoy it. If you're like me and couldn't ignore it, then I'd probably either get it on the cheap at the very least.
13 gamers found this review helpful