Frustrating feelings here.
When I first launched the game the arresting visuals immediately drew me in, and was really entirely the appeal that had me signed up for this months back. The pseudo-cyberpunk like vibes that bled into decaying architecture and brutal imagery is definitely the strongest hold together the game has, at first. To the point where I said enough was enough, that was still somewhat of a constant.
Unfortunately, this game happens to be a labor of love that borrows more from Hunt Down the Freeman and low polished source mods than I could reasonably be comfortable with. That doesn't have to do with the story and VA, those are fine if a bit tiring (there's a lot of dense visuals that initially make no sense to the story alongside extremely blunt dystopian themes with not a hint of subtlety, and the dissonance makes me think negatively of what it's handling... tacky body imagery included). It has to do with the level design and generally what you're accomplishing from a moment to moment basis. At first it evokes an oppressive vibe with how you have to scout through buildings looking for the next way forward but after the 20th spot of completely lost bullshit the frame of the painting comes loose. And then it's absolutely exploded when the combat is so trashy and taking the worst parts of HL2's mechanics while infusing it with some extremely questionable decisions.
For example, there was a sniper section, and at first it was fine cuz the first one was very obviously telegraphed as it shot a robot. Then you head right to kill them, and along the way on the right there's grenades for you to do so. You throw one in, but when you keep going in that direction, it's actually a dead end with 2 not-combine who (if your luck is bad, it seems random) immediately fire at you taking off 30 hp with each shot. And off a tunnel very close to that is ANOTHER dead end but with robots instead. So you actually have to go LEFT, away from the sniper you could kill, but then there's a mine that just immediately drops on a robot as a scripted event. But you're so close when the event triggers that the mine does a shitton of damage in a way that, after testing, seems to only be avoidable if you anticipate the mine dropping on the robot ahead of time (the mine does 80 damage, it's not something you just want to take)! Then you blow up some explosive barrels and just as you walk out a sniper immediately spawns on your left and you bet your ass that it's hard to see the blue line that is their line of sight and it shoots fast and nearly unavoidable. But it's not over! After you take out the sniper in this new somewhat open area, you find that it's sort of a dead end but on the other side of the open area, not-combine will immediately fire down from where you came from with no audio cue and you just have to hope you were moving fast enough to avoid the fire. And god help you if you tried to climb the car there, because a sniper actually spawns a line of sight from the nearby window if you do and it's on the opposite direction of the not-combine, so if your fire is focused on them you're FUCKED.
This entire sequence of events was so mindnumbingly dull and pointlessly obfuscating to me that I just decided "I think I no longer have the patience for source mod crap". Which is such a shame, as I only see great things in visuals and maybe even its story coming later into the fold. But I choose not to whip myself any further. If I wanted an intentionally awful time with arresting visuals that complemented that if not gave you a headache, K&L2 seems to be the resurgent appeal for that and it's right there!!
When I first launched the game the arresting visuals immediately drew me in, and was really entirely the appeal that had me signed up for this months back. The pseudo-cyberpunk like vibes that bled into decaying architecture and brutal imagery is definitely the strongest hold together the game has, at first. To the point where I said enough was enough, that was still somewhat of a constant.
Unfortunately, this game happens to be a labor of love that borrows more from Hunt Down the Freeman and low polished source mods than I could reasonably be comfortable with. That doesn't have to do with the story and VA, those are fine if a bit tiring (there's a lot of dense visuals that initially make no sense to the story alongside extremely blunt dystopian themes with not a hint of subtlety, and the dissonance makes me think negatively of what it's handling... tacky body imagery included). It has to do with the level design and generally what you're accomplishing from a moment to moment basis. At first it evokes an oppressive vibe with how you have to scout through buildings looking for the next way forward but after the 20th spot of completely lost bullshit the frame of the painting comes loose. And then it's absolutely exploded when the combat is so trashy and taking the worst parts of HL2's mechanics while infusing it with some extremely questionable decisions.
For example, there was a sniper section, and at first it was fine cuz the first one was very obviously telegraphed as it shot a robot. Then you head right to kill them, and along the way on the right there's grenades for you to do so. You throw one in, but when you keep going in that direction, it's actually a dead end with 2 not-combine who (if your luck is bad, it seems random) immediately fire at you taking off 30 hp with each shot. And off a tunnel very close to that is ANOTHER dead end but with robots instead. So you actually have to go LEFT, away from the sniper you could kill, but then there's a mine that just immediately drops on a robot as a scripted event. But you're so close when the event triggers that the mine does a shitton of damage in a way that, after testing, seems to only be avoidable if you anticipate the mine dropping on the robot ahead of time (the mine does 80 damage, it's not something you just want to take)! Then you blow up some explosive barrels and just as you walk out a sniper immediately spawns on your left and you bet your ass that it's hard to see the blue line that is their line of sight and it shoots fast and nearly unavoidable. But it's not over! After you take out the sniper in this new somewhat open area, you find that it's sort of a dead end but on the other side of the open area, not-combine will immediately fire down from where you came from with no audio cue and you just have to hope you were moving fast enough to avoid the fire. And god help you if you tried to climb the car there, because a sniper actually spawns a line of sight from the nearby window if you do and it's on the opposite direction of the not-combine, so if your fire is focused on them you're FUCKED.
This entire sequence of events was so mindnumbingly dull and pointlessly obfuscating to me that I just decided "I think I no longer have the patience for source mod crap". Which is such a shame, as I only see great things in visuals and maybe even its story coming later into the fold. But I choose not to whip myself any further. If I wanted an intentionally awful time with arresting visuals that complemented that if not gave you a headache, K&L2 seems to be the resurgent appeal for that and it's right there!!