For the price and considering this is a downloadable game, it's quite good...but nonetheless, this game makes me ANGRY. You see, I'm the kindFor the price and considering this is a downloadable game, it's quite good...but nonetheless, this game makes me ANGRY. You see, I'm the kind of person who always plays games on the hardest difficulty, and in this case, you don't want to do that. The "extreme" difficulty brings to light all of the games flaws in the most glaring way possible...all of them in the combat system.
At first blush, the combat seems straightforward and responsive. You can hit, block, shoot, use powers and items (kinda like Batman or The Witcher 2). You can cancel any animation into a defensive roll or block, which I wish ALL melee-combat games did. It's great. So great, I bought this game for both PC and PS3 before getting very far into it. However, as you progress through the game, you will come across numerous situations that will leave you fumed (as in, pissed off).
Mostly, you will be in small areas with a large group of 5 enemies around you. YES, 5 enemies is a lot, considering this is a game where all enemies take multiple hits to kill. Imagine in real life you were surrounded by a gang of 5 people armed with pipes in an alleyway. Enemies will swarm you. They will dominate you. And most of all, they will kill you. And it's all thanks to this following list of things that can and will go wrong during a battle:
- The camera will screw you over. It will position itself at the worst possible angle. You will not see enemies rush up behind you and deliver the final blow. Even in open areas, the camera is too close and you will often get blindsided if you're not careful.
- The lock-on system will screw you over. When you are locked onto an enemy, using the right-stick to change the camera angle DOESN'T change the camera angle, it changes which enemy you're locked onto. Accidentally switching target in a heated battle often means swinging at thin air as the camera spins to face the new target, all the while giving an easy hit opportunity to the enemy right next to you who you were previously attacking. Just don't lock-on.
- You will get stuck on the environment. This is mostly prevalent in the underground cave levels. Nothing is worse than getting stuck on a little rock or a rod that is pointlessly sticking out into the pathway...especially when a pack of 5-7 enemies is chasing you. When they catch up to you, prepare to lose half of your health.
- The tactical pause menu will screw you over. During the battles, you can pause the game to use weapons and powers (kinda like in Mass Effect or Dragon Age). However, when you unpause the game, there is a small chance you will get a glich and NOT be able to move forward and backward for several seconds. During this time, if any enemies are nearby, they will kill you.
Also, sometimes, when you select a power from the pause menu, you may end up rolling forward instead of using the power. Not generally a good thing, especially when you roll straight into the pack of enemies you meant to throw a grenade at.
Luckily, instead of using the pause menu, you can map powers to L2, R1, and R2 for quick use in battle. HOWEVER, L2 and R2 only work like 25% of the time. LITERALLY. You will have to jam on them repeatedly to work. Either that or my controller is messed up (but since it works perfectly fine for all other games...no).
- Your squadmates will screw you over. Until very late in the game, your companions will usually go down within several seconds of starting a fight. Especially the character "Innocence." I thought he was a pretty good character until I saw him fight. Completely useless. Also, the commands you can give them are not very useful, especially "defend yourself."
Most of these issues seem like they could be fixed given more testing, but alas, they remain, and only serve to deliver you cheap-death after cheap-death. It's why I died...a lot. I hear this game takes 6-8 hours to finish on wimp difficulty, but my final playtime was 21.5 hrs. Probably 95% of the countless deaths I had were just from cheap garbage like what was listed above, which is a shame. As I mentioned, the other elements of this game are quite good considering the price and scope.
For the good, the game looks spectacular on console. The art design is hit or miss, depending on your tastes, but technically it looks sharp and runs great. Very impressive. The story...has potential, is quite good at times and quite bad at others. There love interests in the game, but the pacing is very rushed considering how late partners come into the game, and how quickly the game ends.
All in all, I would recommend this game to the kind of person who plays the demo and likes it. There were many, MANY times where I hated this game and wanted to come on here and give it "0 out of 10" since it pissed me off so bad, but I'm looking forward to the next game from this developer (Spiders) and hope they can refine the Action RPG formula they seem to be honing.
Finally...don't play this game on "Extreme" difficulty.… Expand
