One of the most stylish and most high energy games you'll ever play with probably the best opening 30 minutes you'll find in an action game. Doesn't take itself seriously and is very tongue in cheek most of the time but still makes real comments on the idea of justice and the military industrial complex. And simply put, cutting goons into ribbons in this game is a singular experience that no game since has been able to come close to, very well done.
However, the decision to make parry and attack the same button (where parry is the same button as attack only pushing your analog stick towards the enemy) was a terrible one and I will not listen to anyone who tries to defend it. Because of the fast paced nature of the game when you are attacking an enemy, most of the time you are pushing your analog stick towards said enemy already anyway. This creates situations where you will parry/block when not meaning to and even worse, the opposite where you will try to parry an attack only to swing your weapon at the incoming threat like a doofus and take unnecessary damage. This being a fast paced frantic action game, you need clearly defined and distinct commands in order to get in the flow of combat and this game misses the mark in this regard which is a shame because some of those boss fights would have been truly amazing if not for the clunky controls. The game also doesn't tell you how to perform any of the new skills you unlock at the end of each level, choosing instead to hide it deep down some awful help menu somewhere. Some of said skills require pressing two buttons at the same time which on their own may have a totally different effects meaning even more unintended consequences by not pressing them at the exact same time. Creating a control scheme in which one could attempt to perform a dodge step and instead perform a light attack or just jump in the air is simply put, not a good one.
Another issue is that the timing of the game seems a little off at times and could have used more work. What I mean by this is for example when you finish a fight it takes a little too long for the invisible walls to disappear so you have to stop the action to wait for them the be lifted, killing the pace of the game. A similar thing happens with the intermittent phone calls. You often finish a section and while moving to the next section you get a phone call with the next chunk of dialogue being fed to you. This dialogue should last as long as it takes to get to the next section but it doesn't, I often ran out of real estate before the call was up and had to just wait for the dialogue to finish before I could jump into the next section. This is most blatant when it happens on an elevator: why not just make the elevator ride take as long as the dialogue? But instead the elevator reaches its stop, it lets you out, you slowly walk 20 steps or so and are blocked by a ledge that you have to jump off... But you can't jump while on the phone so you have to wait for 30 seconds for the dialogue to stop before you can continue. This isn't game breaking, but it does negatively effect the pacing of the game... And for a game that is at it's best when you are hopscotching off missiles before cutting a mech's face into a thousand pieces in bullet time while heavy metal roars in the background, this is all the more noticeable.
However, the decision to make parry and attack the same button (where parry is the same button as attack only pushing your analog stick towards the enemy) was a terrible one and I will not listen to anyone who tries to defend it. Because of the fast paced nature of the game when you are attacking an enemy, most of the time you are pushing your analog stick towards said enemy already anyway. This creates situations where you will parry/block when not meaning to and even worse, the opposite where you will try to parry an attack only to swing your weapon at the incoming threat like a doofus and take unnecessary damage. This being a fast paced frantic action game, you need clearly defined and distinct commands in order to get in the flow of combat and this game misses the mark in this regard which is a shame because some of those boss fights would have been truly amazing if not for the clunky controls. The game also doesn't tell you how to perform any of the new skills you unlock at the end of each level, choosing instead to hide it deep down some awful help menu somewhere. Some of said skills require pressing two buttons at the same time which on their own may have a totally different effects meaning even more unintended consequences by not pressing them at the exact same time. Creating a control scheme in which one could attempt to perform a dodge step and instead perform a light attack or just jump in the air is simply put, not a good one.
Another issue is that the timing of the game seems a little off at times and could have used more work. What I mean by this is for example when you finish a fight it takes a little too long for the invisible walls to disappear so you have to stop the action to wait for them the be lifted, killing the pace of the game. A similar thing happens with the intermittent phone calls. You often finish a section and while moving to the next section you get a phone call with the next chunk of dialogue being fed to you. This dialogue should last as long as it takes to get to the next section but it doesn't, I often ran out of real estate before the call was up and had to just wait for the dialogue to finish before I could jump into the next section. This is most blatant when it happens on an elevator: why not just make the elevator ride take as long as the dialogue? But instead the elevator reaches its stop, it lets you out, you slowly walk 20 steps or so and are blocked by a ledge that you have to jump off... But you can't jump while on the phone so you have to wait for 30 seconds for the dialogue to stop before you can continue. This isn't game breaking, but it does negatively effect the pacing of the game... And for a game that is at it's best when you are hopscotching off missiles before cutting a mech's face into a thousand pieces in bullet time while heavy metal roars in the background, this is all the more noticeable.