A game that I wanted to like, and was willing to give the benefit of the doubt - despite its reputation as another greedy reboot of an already successful franchise desperate to cash in on a new user base at the expense of its core audience - but ultimately had to stop playing out of sheer frustration.

If you ever want a better understanding of why Dark Souls exploded in popularity as much as it did, play this game first, because for every 5 seconds of combat (which while shallow and of questionable quality is at the very least fun, and the main aspect of the game) you will be forced to spend 30x as much time watching pointless mid-level cutscenes (almost every new zone or room has at least one 10 second cutscene zooming in on an enemy or aspect of the environment), dealing with boring new gimmicks, experiencing dull uninspired set-pieces or traversing boring environments that serve no purpose other than as filler and are utterly unengaging.

I was so shocked by how indicative this game was of how dire early 2010s AAA actions were, that whatever quality the game might have been possessed with theme and art direction (even if the writing itself was poor), was utterly drowned out by the soulless and mind numbing execution of the gameplay.