I really really wanted to love this. It has so many things going for it that normally I'm all for: letting the player explore freely without holding their hand; allowing the player to encounter difficult and punishing scenarios right off the bat; a serious exploration of the morality of different factions and moral quandaries that go beyond 'good' and 'evil' choices... but unfortunately the frustration and the bugginess of it all proved too much for me. There is so much that doesn't get explained to you- I died so many times in the first cave to literal rats because I straight-up couldn't figure out how to attack or access my inventory. Later on, it turns out the way to resupply your companions' ammunition or change their weapons is to use the "steal" function and place those items in their inventories. You frequently end up in combat situations that you are almost impossible to survive, but instead of feeling immersed in a dangerous world full of death and hard choices, the meaningfulness of death just dissipates as you learn to save scum before any challenging encounter.

All of these are difficult game design choices that balance player freedom and frustration, which are all understandable. But what really drove me over the edge was the simple fact that your companions block your path. How many times do you walk into a small room, only for fucking Ian to follow you in and then just stand unmoving in the doorway, blocking you from ever leaving? The final straw was when I got finished talking to the Gunrunners, went to leave the island, and found the guy just standing at the other end of the bridge, blocking the path. Nothing you say to him can get him to move, and what's worse is my party members had followed me onto the narrow bridge, blocking my way back onto the island. Sure, I could always load an earlier save from a couple hours earlier, but the thought of it just fills me with dread. I think canonically my character is just forever stuck on a thin bridge over a pit of toxic waste, blocked in by two idiots who won't get out of the way.

This game is fun. I like it. It has its problems though.

The driving is good, which is most of the game. Can be a little finnicky though. Naturally the graphics are good, no complaints there. I liked getting the collectables, that was fairly enjoyable even if I needed a guide to complete it. The story mode is decent, has its moments but it also kind of felt unfinished in a way. I got addicted to the game and played over 20 hours so it definitely hooked onto me.

As for the negatives, the game gets really same-y and you fall into the same day/night cycle over and over again. You get money in the day and reputation points in the night so you basically have to do races over and over again. The nights specifically are really annoying since you have to deal with limited repairs while you drive around and getting damaged can be really easy. You need rep points to get better car parts and to push the story forward so it can get extremely tedious. There were drift races but I found those to be really really boring, so I barely touched them. Also fuck the cops in this game holy shit are they annoying.

Overall it was good. Never pushes past that though.

Would really only recommend to racing game fans.

This game is good. Really good.

The gameplay is fun and exciting. From the gunplay, to riding in cars, and of course the wingsuit, this game hits the nail almost perfectly on all of them. The story is fairly interesting, with characters that are enjoyable to be around. The scenery is beautiful, with graphics that have aged very well to boot. Plus, this game is great if you just want to blow shit up.

The only real negative I have is the controls. At times they can just feel really off, sometimes annoyingly so. Like sometimes placing down the sticky bombs or turning with the bavarium wingsuit can just feel wrong. When things like that cause me die it can get under my skin. Oh, and also the DLC doesn't tell you what order to play them in (or that they have any connection at all) so some of the dialogue is kind of confusing if you don't play them right (like I did). Fairly tiny nitpicks because other wise this game is great.

Would recommend to most gamers (especially those who like FPS / GTA type games).

This game was okay. Good at times, uninspired at others.

Let's start with the good. I liked the PVE aspect of this game quite a bit. Deciding to go guns blazing or trying to sneak around and take out people one by one was one of the more interesting parts of this game. This is helped by the fact that the game plays pretty good as well. The gun play is largely enjoyable and the driving mechanics are quality. I also appreciated the times when you took control of characters who had unique gimmicks. It opened up new ways of playing the game. It only happened two or three times, but I liked them. I won't spoil any of them, but you will know them when you see them.

Now moving on to the bad. The writing, the characters, and the story are all dogshit. The characters are uninteresting at best and flat out cringe at worst. Looking at you, Wrench. The story rarely enthralled me. It wasn't bad per se, but I never really cared. And despite my general enjoyment of the gameplay, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just playing a worse version of GTA V with a hacking gimmick. They play fairly similarly, at least in concept, except GTA V does it way better in just about every category.

I do also want to quickly mention the games performance. It might be a small nitpick since the game ran fine for most of my playtime, but I had this issue two times where the game would become unplayable with its lag. I'd have to relaunch to fix it. Minor annoyance but it was okay.

I also also want to shoutout the Paint Job side mission, as it was one of the most boring, monotonous quests I have ever played.

Anyways I probably wouldn't recommend this game to most gamers. Maybe those who enjoy GTA-like games.