Qpo wrote:I hate to break it to you like this straight off the bat, but this game has respawn points everywhere. Yes, respawn points: All that happens when you die is that you respawn at the nearest one and have to run back to where you were, and soon you'll be pulling harder enemies towards them to save first aid kits and time. Since you can't lose any progress there's no sense of danger; the only real action segment in the whole game is the final boss, where dying means loading an auto-save placed right before it.
The areas are typically composed of a hub room or two, with corridors branching in a couple directions to other rooms. You're told by radio what to do, like killing someone or searching out some item or pulling a switch, and it all plays a bit metroidivan, having you run back and forth while opening up new passages. There's an arrow in your HUD pointing where you should go for most of the time, and if that's not enough you can get hints on the mapscreen — but this is needed, since you'll often miss what's said to you over the radio from being busy fighting enemies.
Every room is littered with items and containers — it feels like you hack five safes and pick up twenty items off the floor for every enemy you kill. But the hacking mini-game is actually pretty good, being based on Pipe Mania. The original is much better than this nerf, but for a mini-game it is still pretty good, and when you fail you lose health or get bots sent at you. The problem is how many times you'll be doing it: Most type of vending machines (shops) are cheaper if you first hack them, you want to hack cameras and turrets so they'll help you, we have the aforementioned safes, and some locks are also hackable. Even with the help of "auto-hack tools" it's just too much.
When I said "harder enemies" earlier I really meant "tankier enemies". Every weapon has standard ammo and two extra types, e.g. armor-piercing which are effective against armored enemies; when you use the ideal ammo enemies die at a somewhat OK pace, but when you don't mein gott are they tanky — some more than others, but all of them way too much. Ammo is scarce early on too, so to conserve it for when you need it you'll be using the wrench a lot. I upgraded so I'd get health and mana from dealing damage with it, and later I could even freeze enemies in place with it. I actually only enjoyed fighting in melee, moving in and out of range to strike and avoid being struck, as every shot fired had me worrying about ammo. (Confession: I killed 90% of all enemies with the wrench.)
"Lifesteal from your wrench?" Ok, so the setting is the '50s or so in an underwater city called Rapture built by a man called Ryan. This guy is pretty bad ass, telling all the world's nations to go fuck themselves while creating his own, doing genetic experiments essentially giving people superpowers, all the while being fiercely anti-parasite — but of course it all went to hell eventually. I like "Sci-Fi in the past" settings, and everything is integrated into it really well, from the different mad mutants a.k.a. "splicers" you're fighting against, to the respawn points a.k.a. "vita chambers". Corridors are often big pipes from which you can see fish and stuff outside. It's nice. They use lighting and shadows quite well, the effect when water pours over you from minor leaks in the plumbing is cool, the voice-acting is good, there's atmospheric propaganda being played in the PA system from time to time, and so on and so forth.
Magic is integrated well into the setting too, being "genetic mutations". You have a few different categories of passive abilities, e.g. more health from first aid kits or slowing down the slime when hacking, and one category of active abilities, i.e. weapons selected with F1-F6 that use mana. I found the "turn my hands into hornet nests from which I send swarms on my enemies" power interesting, as it made me feel like a mutated demon when looking down on my hands; it also turned many enemies into mere food, easily disabling them and whacking away to replenish health and mana. But the combat is overly centered around stats this, stats that, collect this to upgrade that, etc. etc., rather than the positions and movement of yourself, projectiles and enemies — stuff being tanky usually leads to this type of design, and it sucks.
Finally, the "Big Daddies" and the "Little Ones". The former are essentially scuba-gearish, terminator-armored, neutral-factioned mini-bosses to be found on each level, usually two or three; the latter are of the "possessed girl" archetype, walking around with big syringes, sucking out "Adam" (<-- boosts genes) of dead people while sniggering sadistically to themselves. You have to engage the biggies before you can exorcise and save the littlies. You can also choose to "harvest" them, whatever that's supposed to mean, and I'm guessing the plot has two endings, depending on what you do with them. I chose to save them, obviously, and towards the end things actually got a bit unsettling thanks to the first-person perspective being used quite well. (The ending cutscene was pretty stupid though.)
I can see why people like this game. The setting is good, all mechanics are integrated into it really well, the plot is pretty decent, etc., so there are a bunch of stuff to like — but only for those who have never experienced good action in first-person. In sum: The aesthetics are good but the mechanics are terrible.
★★☆☆☆
Here's a typical example of inferior attempt at criticism:
"But the combat is overly centered around stats this, stats that, collect this to upgrade that, etc. etc., rather than the positions and movement of yourself, projectiles and enemies — stuff being tanky usually leads to this type of design, and it sucks."
People make these sorts of claims all the time... and leave it at that. It's like someone reviewing Counter-Strike and saying "but combat is about positions and movement, and it all sucks". You can't leave it at that. Because if what you are saying is true, it means that ALL stat-heavy action games suck. And if what the other guy is saying is true, it means that ALL pure action games suck. If you are going to make such a sweeping claim you'll either have to go in depth on why you think this is so, OR STOP PLAYING AND THEREFORE REVIEWING THESE KINDS OF GAMES.
But you don't see the problem because... who knows. Maybe you've never played a stat-heavy action game before. Maybe you think BioShock is the only one. Maybe you can't be bothered to follow up to the immediate conclusions that your criticisms are leading to. Whatever the case may be, it's bad criticism. Anyone who plays these kinds of games will call your bullshit right away. You don't even seem to be aware that BioShock comes on the heels of several other 'Shock games. It's not even a matter of having played them -- you may not have played them but still know that they are also stat-heavy action games which, with the very same line you trashed BioShock, you also implicitly trashed them. (And all the Deus Exes, and so on and so forth.)
The worst of all is that you've no idea you've done any of the things I am telling you that you did... On top of which you are extremely insensitive to aesthetics (see e.g. your last two published reviews, in which the entire aesthetic component of the games is covered by the words "awesome setting"), and hence far from the right person to tackle a game which relies so heavily on them. How can you miss how dumb the whole "big brother" and "little sister" thing looks? But everyone missed it, not just you.
I am sure this isn't a very good game, but I doubt your review does a good job of explaining why. I am sure some of your comments are spot on, but I haven't even played the game yet and I can already see that plenty of them are bullshit -- or, in the best scenario, not sufficiently well substantiated.
Are stat-heavy FPSes really by definition bad games? Not in my experience.
