If you liked the base game then this is more of the same. A change in scenery, texturing differences and story but otherwise identical. IIf you liked the base game then this is more of the same. A change in scenery, texturing differences and story but otherwise identical. I liked the story as much as the base game. It is far shorter but there is nothing wrong with that. The writers did a great job. The interactions between the characters is more believable than the base game.
Where this DLC just completely breaks down is with the horrific puzzles. Either they are poorly implemented or this is some really bad design. These are worse than anything in the base game and given that there are basically the same types of puzzles that's saying a lot. The puzzles alone completely destroy what is otherwise a good DLC.
The first issue is that the camera zooms in and out so badly given the textures that on many occasions I couldn't see anything but a textured wall while I was trying to do something. It is just plain broken.
The second issue is the timed sequences. These all involve you getting from point A to B under a given timeframe, just like the base game. But the times are so short, even if you switch to Story mode, that requires either extreme accuracy or luck to hit it. You will spend countless times redoing the same puzzle over and over until you finally get it within the short time constraint. Read: up the play time by making puzzles so tight that even average players on the easiest setting won't succeed. This is just bad design.
The problems are compounded by the fact that you get stuck on the terrain a lot more in the DLC for some reason. In some cases it is because of the geometry but in other cases you just get stuck for no reason. I was gliding through a puzzle and hit a wall because I was too low. I immediately tried to climb and couldn't. There was nothing above to block me but I couldn't move. Left, right or down. I ended up having to fall and then grab the wall again to be able to climb. This happens a lot.
Even worse is that there are quite a few puzzles that require gliding and then running. The puzzles don't quite give you enough to get to the next air gust so you have to land, run to the next one and then glide again. Rinse and repeat for each new elevation. It's like they purposefully did this because - actually I cannot think of any reason why this would be a good idea. You end up button mashing as fast as possible to get to the next section. And if you try to take a shortcut then you insta-fail the puzzle. See a faster way to skip a section? Too bad if you don't go the exact path they expect you fail immediately. One of the frustrating parts of all this is that puzzles don't even provide very good indicators of where to go. You might need to go right but there are options to go left and right, choose the wrong path and fail.
Some of the puzzles are more traditional moving of the object from one place to another. But even here it seems like the devs found the things that didn't work well in the base game and reused them on purpose. Case in point, there are several puzzles where you need to juggle moving several objects around. The problem is that they are all grouped together, you have no control over the object that the selector will pick by default and if you select one by accident they may move ever so slightly and knock other things out of the way. I wasted countless time trying to move a simple ball across 2 blocks but couldn't get the selector to select the ball consistently. Time wasted on a poor game mechanic.
The air rings are new and don't really add any value outside the vaults. They could have been more interesting but the devs just decided to create convoluted puzzles around them instead. Glide from one place to another using the rings to slingshot as needed. Nothing special but what makes this frustrating is they tend to be off screen so you cannot even see them and if you aren't facing them it doesn't work. So you have to use your arrows to scout ahead to where they are before you even try the puzzle. Fail and you start over.
Overall the DLC story is great, as good as the base game. The puzzles are garbage either by design or bad optimizations. They really need to be reworked.… Expand
