This game is a MASSIVE improvement over the abysmal control scheme of the first one. The devs have fixed almost everything that made the control of the first game a disgusting experience, except for a couple of items: -The force throw targeting is still a bit off, as the character will inexplicably toss stuff aside at random when you're clearly trying to target a specific direction (same as in the first game). -The awkward fixed camera angles are still present in some boss battles, which feels unnecessarily restrictive, like a console game. Only this console game is from 2010, when no such antiquated tactics have an excuse for being used in a full 3D game like this. -Game still uses awful Quicktime mechanics, which manage to be worse this time around because they're not very well disclosed to the player, with really small button prompts that are barely noticeable, and a narrower window to execute them in. -Too many of the boss battles hinge on poorly-disclosed quicktime sequences that can only be completed by fulfilling the dogmatically EXACT actions that the developers concocted to bring down the enemy. If you miss even one vaguely-prompted aspect of the expected action, you have to go through the whole scripted process over again. It's the worst part of the game, and a testament to how bad an idea quicktime events and overly scripted sequences have always been in video games. This alone drops the game down in rating. If they had not relied so much on these antiquated quicktime mechanics, this might have been a much better game. Aside from these gripes, kudos to the developers for ironing our the absolutely awful control/combat from the last game to make for a much smoother and enjoyable experience this time around. Shame you have to play the terribly done first game to make sense of the plot for the second one.
This isn't a bad game, but I don't understand where all the excess hype for it comes from. I know from experience how tempting it is to get excited for this game when you look at screenshots and videos, and read all the glowing reviews. ...But actually playing it reveals a more anemic experience than it should be, with highly derivative and repetitive quests, boring characters, dodgy camera limitations, and shallow world interactivity for a game of its ilk. So despite the generous size of the world and numerous quests, everything quickly starts to feel 'samey' and derivative, leaving you fatigued with boredom before you get anywhere near done with the campaign. The combat is also more shallow and repetitive than it at first seems to be, and gets old just as quickly as everything else. On top of this, the game commits the unforgivable sin of enabling every enemy attack with a very fast 'home in' effect on the player. This creates a ridiculously frustrating experience of constantly being stun-juggled out of combos all the freaking time. Yes, you can block, but that means you're always playing a tedious turtle game rather than justifying the more exciting combo options provided. A lot of the above complaints are probably due to the fact that the original framework of the game was purportedly built to be an MMO, but got converted to a single-player experience at some point in development. But that knowledge doesn't negate the diminished enjoyment these issues bring against the overall experience.
Ok game, overall, but there are some glaring issues that make it far more frustrating to play than it ever should have been. The biggest issue is that the control scheme is terrible, both for movement and for combat. The 30 FPS cap allegedly contributes to this problem, but from what I can tell it's based more on insensible development decisions. There's something unpleasantly janky about general movement controls. Your character gets rapidly sucked down from his jump apex like he's suddenly magnetized to the ground. It's really off-putting. The game makes you rely on an auto-targeting system that only works some of the time. The force pull controls are horrendous, making you constantly lift and swipe your mouse, since that's the only control recognized to actually move things around. And the object throw controls rarely throw things in the direction you're trying to aim them. Many of your combat animations are overly dragged out, with an awkward stance-lock effect, and no flow or overlap between them, leaving odd pauses as you switch from one type of attack to another, which gives heavy enemies enormous opportunity to stun you out of a combo. And man, does this game like taking advantage of that badly designed attack flow by throwing hordes of enemies with homing projectiles at you, to repeatedly stun juggle your character! The cycle of waiting for your character to come out of his rag doll physics knock-back, just in time to get hit by another unavoidable projectile is the pinnacle of aggravation. And the inexplicable fixed-camera boss battles just showcase all these bad design decisions even more. This game came out in 2009, alongside games like Arkham Asylum, Bayonetta and Borderlands, all of which prove that decent character control was very achievable at the time. So the issue here seems to be lack of developer expertise more than anything else. It's a shame how much that ruins what would otherwise have been a much better game.
