Finished! Short, but pretty sweet. Pros and cons.
PROS:
- Solid gunplay as usual from Raven. Pretty satisfied with all of the weapons. Taking down enemies is a pleasure, and there was a pretty good variety
- The whole TMD and time element is pretty cool.
- The BioShock-esque upgrading, world design with some exploration, etc, works really well even if it is a shameless rip off. The combat is exactly what I wanted from BioShock.
- Story is pretty cool and stays interesting for the whole thing, with a fun 'choice' at the end.
- Great atmosphere.
CONS:
- As good as the gunplay is its really unbalanced, in your favour, and the placement of weapons around the levels is really forgiving. For example there's no point equipping yourself with the sniper rifle, as whenever you're actually going to need the sniper rifle they throw one at you. Same for the heavy weapons. Might as well stick with the basics and just pick up the specialised weapons when you need them, as the game will give them to you.
- The TMD and time element, while cool, is terribly underused. Really seems like they ran out of time or hit development hurdles. Its always fun to play with but isnt really used beyond really basic stuff.
- Upgrading system is neat but broken, and quickly makes the game extremely easy. I should have played in hard because I breezed through it on normal. You get SO much 'cash' that you can quickly make yourself a tank. There's also a lot of totally useless perks not worth buying, which makes saving money for the good stuff even easier.
- I saw the 'good' story ending, in what you'd have to do, coming from a mile away
. Typical time related sci-fi stuff.
- Fucking hell I had bad texture streaming problems. I had and still have them in BioShock, but they're a 100 times worse here. I can max out the game at 1920x1080 and play it smooth as silk, but some scenarios had textures not load at all, and even when things did load there would be the occasional prop or object stuck on a bland, basic texure.
I really, really enjoyed it. Wolfenstein was a better game, but Raven still did an outstanding job here. Its short, enjoyable, has great gunplay and an interesting story, even if it shamelessly rips off BioShock left and right.
The biggest complaint I have is that the game feels under-realised. Like Raven had a vision and a bunch of ideas they wanted to impliment, from the TMD and time shifts to the weapons and progression of story, and just ran out of time or hit too many development hurdles to truly match their ambition.
I was hoping for more scripted time shifts and not always between 1955 and 2010. I was hoping for more crazy time related plot stuff. I would have liked some more interesting and deeper puzzle solving with the TMD related to its time shifitng, as well as its interaction with the world, which in the game doesnt really extend far beyond melting people and building/destroying barrels, crates, and electrical switches.
There's also a problem with the equipment. Its all fun, but again feels underused, and handed to the player whenever they need it which makes the game too easy. I would have liked them to ditch the standard weapons and instead focus more on crazy interesting weapons, like the rollerball mine launcher and the gun where you can control the bullets. Had the levels, puzzles, and combat been designed around more interesting and unique weapons like these it would have spiced up the variety, but as it stands they seem more like a cool toy that never really needs to be used. The rollerball mine launcher, for example, only has two unique situations to use it for the entire game, despite being such a cool little gadget.
So yeah. If you're a fan of shooters and enjoyed the BioShock formula its definitely worth a look, mostly thanks to Raven's typical high quality in gunplay and level design. Its not perfect, but its a lot of fun.