....Karl Flodin went ham on this soundtrack. Yeah, the game was too hard for me to enjoy, but I've gotten many hours out of the soundtrack. The 5 stars come with a major caveat though: DO NOT BUY THIS HERE. If you buy this on Bandcamp, it includes 3 more songs (total of 16). So don't miss those.
I understand if asking for subtitles is unreasonable for old games, but just because they forgot about accessibility then doesn't mean we can't have it now. Same thing that prevented me from playing Assassin's Creed. More importantly--for the gameplay that feels fairly tight even now in 2024, my game came to a smashing halt when trying to lower the submarine continually led to the submarine exploding. If this is a known bug, why does it still have it? I don't want to have to mod the game or download some fix from a 3rd-party website to continue.
While it's not exactly Cyberpunk 2077 levels of visuals, I do think this is a game that does the general cyberpunk aesthetic well. It's generally fast-paced, has secrets (just opportunities for extra upgrade points), and has one of my favorite game features: permanent upgrades. If you played/like Shadow Warrior (2013), this has several similarities. The weapon system is also somewhat novel--depending how you count, it's 11 weapons (a sword, and then 2 weapons that each have 5 distinct modes, and most also have alternate fire modes to be purchased). The 2 main weapons (conventional rifle and plasma rifle) draw from separate ammo banks that are shared among each of the 5 configurations of that rifle. They're pleasant to look at, and I could probably watch the conventional rifle switching modes continuously and have fun on its own. There are some differences from Hard Reset: Extended on Steam, but nothing that would make me go back to that and its DRM. As others have pointed out, if you beat that version on Normal, you can tackle this one on Hard. The music slaps (or at least is setting-appropriate) throughout, but especially "Final Fight." The worst thing I can honestly say about this game also applies to Shadow Warrior (2013)--there are certain places, generally going down stairs or ramps, where if you sprint/dodge, you will fall enough to die instantly, while thinking "I could have survived that fall in *real* life!" If that's the worst thing I can say about it, I think it's done pretty damn well.
Had this on Steam, haven't repurchased here. If you like micromanagement, you'll have a good time, probably. I did. The mechanics are a mild step up from "Soldiers: Heroes of WW2" but not quite as refined as "Men of War". (For example, in Men of War, you can drive a tank next to another tank, and freely transfer their inventory back and forth. Here, you still need to get someone out of the vehicles, and only can transfer as much as a person can carry at a time.) Unfortunately, I think it's a bit buggy at times. My biggest beef is with a mission where you infiltrate a base in disguise. If you get "made", you get a voice line that I've heard 1,000 times: "Alarm! Saboteur on the base!" and the mission fails. (The rest of this review is just about this particular mission as an example. Again, the game is probably 3 or 4 stars overall, but depends heavily on how you feel about this kind of micromanagement.) The overall arc of the mission is to plant four explosives at key points, set them off and take over the base, and then defend the base from a counterattack. Anyway, to live up to my usual "no guards to find the bodies" method, I carefully isolated and eliminated every single person on the base except for the barracks, where there's simply too many in close proximity. This makes taking over the base a cakewalk. Unfortunately, somewhere during the counterattack I'd get the "Alarm! Saboteur on the base!" message and fail the mission...despite the fact that anyone who could be saying that is dead. I did beat the mission once playing "as intended", but I was very saddened that I couldn't have it this way, especially since I was able to spend *hours* save-scumming to get everything just-so.
