In an era where we moan about $10 for 2-hour DLC, here's a 1-hour one for the price of a chocolate bar. Yes it's short. Everything's too short if it's good. But it's also freaking pence on sale. PENNIES. Do you want more Jazzpunk? Did it make you smile? Here's a little bit more! Enjoy!
Skim this review section and you see how frustrating this game is. So I'll just describe what tipped me over the edge: - I needed to repair my lander, as it was nearly destroyed. Your lander is how you get resources to use/sell; it's the most important thing. To repair it, you need metal. To get metal, you need to mine with your lander... and take damage while mining (WHY?) Catch-22. Though I had something that repaired ship hull, but not lander hull (WHY?) - Ok, I'll trade for metal with other aliens... Nope, they only ever offer money in exchange for YOUR items. (WHY?) - Ok, I'll go to the starport. You can 'talk' too so I did some talking before buying/selling. But for no reason at all, you can only talk a certain amount, then they get bored of you. Talking doesn't have much benefit anyway and you usually get stock responses, so... (WHY?) - Since I 'talked too much' and the conversation ended, rather than allow me to then start trading and buying, the game forces my ship to leave the starport. (WHY?) - Ok, I go back into the starport and browse the wares. Turns out I don't have enough money for anything that might repair my lander. (Money is hard to come by.) So I leave to think up a new plan... and I get CHARGED A 'PYLON' FEE? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! (WHY?) - And because I don't have the money, I've automatically taken out a LOAN?!?! For 100 CREDITS?! WAIT WHAT'S GOING ON, there are LOANS? (WHY?) - So I looked this up, and it turns out in some starports, you get CHARGED if you don't buy AND sell something before you leave. (WHY?) - Now I'm even more screwed for no reason because I'm trying to buy a lander repair kit here! WHY wasn't I warned about this bizarre design choice? How was I expected to know this? - I jump to the next sector... and some ship intercepts me and demands the loan back already, when I've only just left the sector. (WHY?) - As above, I can't pay, so now he RAISES THE FEE TO 250. (WHY?) Game closed. This was on easiest difficulty
What this sequel has going for it better than Dishonored 2 are two things: 1) The shackles are off and you can kill and go Rambo without affecting the story / endings, giving more variety and options. 2) The locations are a bit more interesting and lived in. Dishonored 2's environments were kinda stale, but in this one you have a boxing club, a pub, a bank, plenty of apartments and homes to snoop around in. My other problem with Dishonored 2 was how one-dimensional it was. The original game had a party to mingle in for example, but D2 was just going in and incapacitating everyone. But this game sees more subtlety thanks to the ability to impersonate others, leading to some unique paths if you're clever. It's also more of a sandbox, with extra little missions you can do on the map, and you may even stumble on more crazy goings on yourself. But basically, when confronted with a big bad group of witches, it's much more fun having the choice of blowing them up with a good ol' grenade.
(Only contains spoilers for the first game.) The first game had its depressing moments, but that wasn't the focus, and you could reverse any bad stuff with Max's time-travel powers anyway! But in this prequel, you're just regular Chloe. A girl whose life is spiralling downward and who we already know by the end of this game will have a dead dad AND a dead friend-or-more in Rachel. Fun! And the game sadistically piles on the depression every step of the way. Even choices don't matter - we know by the first game that Rachel is long dead and Chloe's life is still in the gutter, so there's no real happy ending. You can guess the 'joyful' final scene... There's more! The bonus episode DLC even takes place on the fateful day where Chloe is hit with the double whammy of her best friend Max leaving and finding out her dad is dead. As you may figure, that means the final-final scene of the whole game has Chloe in the fetal position on her bedroom floor, crying in her funeral outfit. Gee, you think they overdid the melancholy in this one? It's still a great game, a great look, human characters... so maybe I don't NOT recommend... but I want to balance out the positives and drive home that they went overkill. The writers need to step back and calm the heck down with the sadomasochism. I can't even say I 'enjoyed' the game, more I interacted with a story that had barely any bright spots. So who do I NOT recommend to? Well don't play it if you want a game that has you smiling. And definitely don't if you're triggered by anything like being a dropout, failure, alone or having a dead parent or lover.
(Only contains spoilers for the first game.) The first game had its depressing moments, but that wasn't the focus, and you could reverse any bad stuff with Max's time-travel powers anyway! But in this prequel, you're just regular Chloe. A girl whose life is spiralling downward and who we already know by the end of this game will have a dead dad AND a dead friend-or-more in Rachel. Fun! And the game sadistically piles on the depression every step of the way. Even choices don't matter - we know by the first game that Rachel is long dead and Chloe's life is still in the gutter, so there's no real happy ending. You can guess the 'joyful' final scene... There's more! The bonus episode DLC even takes place on the fateful day where Chloe is hit with the double whammy of her best friend Max leaving and finding out her dad is dead. As you may figure, that means the final-final scene of the whole game has Chloe in the fetal position on her bedroom floor, crying in her funeral outfit. Gee, you think they overdid the melancholy in this one? It's still a great game, a great look, human characters... so maybe I don't NOT recommend... but I want to balance out the positives and drive home that they went overkill. The writers need to step back and calm the heck down with the sadomasochism. I can't even say I 'enjoyed' the game, more I interacted with a story that had barely any bright spots. So who do I NOT recommend to? Well don't play it if you want a game that has you smiling. And definitely don't if you're triggered by anything like being a dropout, failure, alone or having a dead parent or lover.
Other reviews are majorly exaggerating this game. It's good, but it's not that complex. It's simple: you have a database of clips of several police interviews and a search box. The videos have been transcribed, so you search words, and any videos that have this word spoken will appear (only a maximum of 5 clips per term, though). So the gameplay is: watch a short clip, go "ahhh!", search words that stood out in that clip that you think might get more clips, repeat. The old breadcrumbs shtick. I know I've played this sort of thing before. So this is an interactive movie really, thus the importance is on the story (or rather how well it unfolds) and acting, and both are done very well. You'll probably be able to predict some things, but not others. By recommending it, this is me telling you this is a very good film that isn't harmed by its interactivity and Tarantino-esque structure.
I've been playing space games since X Beyond The Frontier on Windows 95/98, and tried plenty more from the obscure Tachyon The Fringe, to the forgettable Darkstar One to the fun-enough Rebel Galaxy. I even played Everspace 1, which sucked. It was a tedious, grindy roguelike. But Everspace 2 is the first to bring me back to the awe of Freelancer and X. I don't want to oversell it - it's not humongous like X, and Freelancer is a classic. But this was fun, addictive and had great, pretty systems with effort made in the environments. Maybe it was because I'm playing in 4K these days, but no other game had me gazing at the horizon while inbetween the vast cloud shelves of a gas giant, or getting utterly blasted by a neutron star, since Freelancer or the old X series. I never was much for being a trader either, so basically swapping the Elite trading shtick most space games shoehorn in for the addictive Destiny loot shtick was perfect. There are tedious moments - some puzzles are lame. But it's optional, and you're doing it because you're addicted to that glorious loot. I just skipped the stuff I didn't enjoy, and I enjoyed nearly all of my 40-50 hours of this. Sometimes it pays to have faith in a develop getting it right with the sequel.
If you've played FTL, it follows a similar pattern - you have to get to the warp gate at the end of the map by jumping to new systems and dealing with whatever random issue that system throws up (if any). But here the gameplay is basically to loot the system by picking up / shooting everything / everyone, then the next one. The replayability comes from keeping most of your upgrades, when you die, so each time you play with a slightly stronger ship... slightly... Alas the process is tedious. After each 'run', you'll only have enough to really upgrade 1 or 2 things, say 15% more shields or another equipment slot... then do the whole thing again. And you can't just zoom to the end if you've got a good ship, because you need to collect fuel each system for each jump, meaning you have to scour the map every time. So there's a big grind here, especially as you have to go through the game 3 times to get the whole story and true ending. That's many hours slowly flying around a system picking up scrap and fuel.
