This is a rough game made even more difficult by the jank of a single developer but it is still a decent play. I'm ranking it with 5 stars because it was a colossal project for a small dev team. The art style fits the 90's aesthetic but the anime is a bit jarring and I also thought this would be a little more risque from a playthrough I watched earlier. The weapons are fun to use and imaginative except for the "SMG." The secondary is made horrible by the horrifically long/ugly reload animation and should be thrown away and its ammo sold off once the "Chaingun" is found. Enemies are... enemies. They fit the 90's aesthetic in variety, deployment and AI. The S'Pht Compilers were a nice nod to Marathon. The inclusion of enemy mechas also reminded me of the Juggernauts in Marathon and were always a terrifying shock whenever encountered. The Flamers, like the "SMG", can go to hell. Finally, level design was extremely fun with many varieties between open cityscapes and outdoor guerilla warfare to clausterphobic indoor facilities and CQB. The Jank/Gameplay can be extremely fiddly. The forced manual reloading itself is inconsistent and makes combat with small ammunition capacities rough and having to manually initiate reloads is inconvenient. Reloading is made worse because belt fed ammo is DISCARDED when the reload button is spammed. Discarded ammo can be picked up again with the USE button. All this attention to reloading hearkens back to Marathon's reloading when everyone else ignored it. And had me habitually reloading my battleaxe. Money for supplies is easily farmed with a possibly intentional exploit. Ammo you are topping off, with map pickups, will not remove that pickup and any level with the merchant can be sold for a substantial amount relative to farming off of minions. The 2nd and 6th boss maps have ammo pickups next to the merchant and are good farming spots. This little trick is also good for conserving ammo and maining a weapon.
Classic Neo Geo and old school gaming at its finest.
...it is just aggravating. I know this will be an unpopular opinion BUT, I am going to dump on this entry. Before starting a first playthrough, its obvious that this game is going to screw with you from the simple mouse cursor movement. The very obvious cursor lag is slow and lagged and predictably foreshadows UI design choices that were meant to immerse the player in the game, but ironically remove the player from the gameplay. 4 submenus to reach the subdivided control assignment is the best example of the irritating UI design and Isaac's menus continue this. Gameplay itself is handicapped by many things but the 3rd person perspective is the best example of bad in-game design choices. 3rd person physically removes the view point from the focal point of the PC and lowers turn speed even further beyond the already artificially lowered turn speed of the camera. 3rd person also focuses on the PC instead of the environment which decreases the field of view and, unfortunately, a substantial chunk of that small FOV is taken up by Isaac and his ugly, nonsensical uniform. I'm sure there is a decent story and characters underneath the bad interfaces and schlock but it should be obvious from this review that I am not invested at all in this highly acclaimed game.
I sense echos of Inscryption in this game, from the unnecessary and clunky dragging mechanics, to the needless CPU chewing, 3d rendered introduction and environments. Its done a lot to distance itself from Inscryption but it is still obvious that Leshy's cabin was copied here. I had so many problems with the other game and Cardaclysm brings a lot of those back for me. I am not doing that again. There are better card games out there, that have more variety in mechanics, card art, strategy, etc...
Really captures the spirit of Metroidvania, but how could we have expected anything less with its creator?
This DLC is locked behind internet activation. Don't bother buying if you do not want to use GoG Galaxy. Otherwise, as per GoG critique guidelines, I rate purely on content and it is great. The new maps and missions on the Caestius(sp?) Metalicus add some much required difficulty. The new gear greatly improve on the somewhat bland arsenal and I welcome the new Xenarite skill pool. The new armor on the other hand still seems to follow the same extremely restrictive guidelines that I can not fathom.
I admit that I have never played anything Warhammer or Games Workshop but it has always piqued my interest whenever I see it and after spotting Mechanicus on Youtube and perusing other Warhammer games on GOG, I can say Mechanicus is Quality. I also finished it and included a small treat at the end of this review. The graphics were phenomenal though I rarely checked out the obligatory game-pieces display view during combat. It all created the atmosphere WH40k wants to create, I assume. I loved the story, characters and the diverging story arcs of Videx and Scaevola. The music was top notch and downloaded before I even bought Mechanicus. Children of the Omnissiah is my favorite and usually on repeat when ever I am being creative. Like right now. The gameplay was functional although the cognitive system was strange. I mean, why does learning the Necrons like Nutella on their biscuits instead of butter allow me to move or fire my gun. That's what I imagine whenever the Tech-Priests say, "Fascinating." The game is easy as hell. Other's remarking about terrible difficulty did not read the descriptions of the Discipline abilities. Hint: get some of the basic abilities but specialize in Tech-Auxilium for those Canticles and the ability to complete missions in ZERO turns. Bugs/Features -Any ability with a "Use" submenu can be used infinitely, as long as you have the Cognition for it, like Overcharged Cognition. This requires 2 abilities with the submenu and that one remains unused and selectable. Simply use the ability you want to overpower, tap the unused or dummy ability and QUICKLY mouse over the OP ability. If it worked, the description for the used one should be displayed. If not, cancel, try again. I spotted the bug early but only learned to replicate it as a feature in the late game. -Dom/Exp give discounts for each others Amps for -2 Cognition. 4th time beating Szaregon https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrhv6e8cfbu5pct/Screenshot%20%2818%29.png?dl=0
