Finally played this game after borrowing it from a friend.
Overall, it's really solid, with a few really great combat scenarios and a few parts that are complete garbage. The writing was a lot better and more varied in tone than what the promo materials showed, so I now understand people's positive impressions of the dialog and delivery.
Aiming seemed to be kind of janky at certain ranges and even near the end of the game I was missing shots that looked like they should have hit when I was really close to enemies. Otherwise the shooting and bullet impact felt great. My favorite part of the game is the combat, which brings me to why I'll never play it again...
Tons of unskippable mini-cutscenes and full cutscenes, long load times when you die, and "exploration" is perfunctory for the most part. The parts where I'm not shooting dudes are parts I do not need to experience again. The
were visually interesting for about 30 seconds and then boring as fuck. They feel like shit, they play like shit, they are half-assed and pointless.
were kind of shitty, but not because I'm fundamentally opposed to the idea of instant death trial and error gameplay. It's just that when the load times exceed the playtimes between them (as they did in the last of these sequences) I was instantly having less than zero fun. The fact that the game can't reload a small area instantly after you die is a testament to somebody's lack of talent or effort.
The
sequences are another one people had problems with, but I thought those were fine. It was pretty satisfying to headshot those big dudes from a distance, and it didn't take me too many attempts to complete it.
At first I was thinking the graphics were better than I had been lead to believe by promo materials, but by the end I was pretty much over brick walls and colored lights. There were some standout areas in terms of visual design, but a lot of blends together in my memory now.
Oh, and the music was excellent.
Overall I really respect the game for having its own coherent vision and aesthetic, even if I didn't always like it. Glad I played it, but also glad I didn't buy it.