Overall a great game. I'm giving it 4 stars because it's not quite what I wanted, but I think what I wanted out of the game would have been beyond the scope of 5 Lives to do in both budget and skill set. For the price it's really worth it. Pros: + atmosphere is fantastic + music is excellent + I run an older computer and it plays relatively well, which is impressive + One single open world with a series of missions to undergo, no load times or levels or anything. You can complete them however you choose, or not complete them if you choose. + Many different options on how you approach a given mission, all of which is heavily based on how you upgrade and outfit your team. You can go in hard with guns blazing or sneak in any number of ways. + Lots of character customization options Cons: again most of these I think are beyond the scope of the project but it really is what I wanted out of the game. All of my issues relate to the AI of the opposing factions. - The factions are essentially stationary targets with no personalities. When your threat level goes to zero, they go back to doing whatever they were doing. A guy you were just unloading bullets into and killed half of his teammates you can walk by 2 minutes later and he ignores you because your threat level went down. That seems a bit... odd. Given the mechanics of cloning and swapping bodies, I would think a given face might be flagged for arrest or something, forcing you to change your face to run around incognito. - the corps personalities are solely in the data messages you hack and slight variations in equipment but not much else. - There should be some sort of global threat level and a chance where the corps come and hunt you down for causing so much ruckus. - I was hoping for a dynamic world that adjusted based on the missions you undertake, sadly that wasn't the case. It's a really fun game for the price and it's essentially a sandbox cyberpunk world to play in; I just wanted more.
I had fooled around with the King's Quest games at a friend's house, but got my first adventure game with Space Quest IV, thinking it'd be a space version of King's Quest. Boy was I wrong and in all the right ways. With the quirky humor and fantastic story line, SQ IV and V remain some of my absolute favorite games of all time, and I cannot recommend them enough. "It tastes like something you never want to put your tongue on again." Not these games, you definitely want to play them.
