This one really hurts, and I mean that. I was pleasantly surprised when I began this game by the quality of its writing. It's genuinely very impressive, and the premise is very interesting. I would've loved to see where the plot was going.

However, I literally could not. This is possibly the most broken game I have ever played (and I played Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 day 1). This isn't just glitchy, it is progress haltingly broken. The amount of times levels would entirely break, with things not spawning, level triggers not going off, collision with terrain completely breaking, and being killed for reasons I cannot see or understand. It happened constantly, but the worst thing is that every single time it happened, something about my save would corrupt. Numerous times I was booted back to the very beginning of the level, because something near the end would break and I would insta-die to nothing. I suffered through this far beyond where I would for anything else, because I really wanted to keep playing and to see where the plot went, but there's only so many set backs I can endure.

The game feel is quite terrible. The movement is clunky and the gunplay feels strange. I had attributed this strange feeling to Jack Joyce, the character you play, being relatively unfamiliar with firearms, but that fact can only excuse so much.

Graphically, the game is quite nice, albeit bogged down by massive amounts of motions blur, and also a 30fps cap. This isn't something I normally complain about, but there's something about games from this era that are so close to looking like they do in 2024, but technically just missing the mark. The graphics and animations are great, but the system can't cope with it well enough. At least, that's my unknowledgeable stance on the matter. See also 'Ryse: Son of Rome' and ' The Order 1866' for more of what I mean.

The strongest part of this game to me was, very ironically, the TV episodes that you are sometimes obliged to watch. I can't say it's the greatest show ever produced, but it sure beats playing the game; the story can shine without the game bogging it down. I'd a mind to watch the rest of this game on YouTube, from the perspective of someone who presumably didn't have so many game breaking issues, but ultimately I'll probably just move on. I will lament what could've been though, it really saddens me that something so promising was attached to a game this badly made.

Reviewed on Feb 06, 2024


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