For about three-ish hours; I felt like this was a game of the year contender. It has some of the best, most viscerally satisfying shooting of any FPS I've played in a decade. The guns look and sound incredible, the feedback you get as enemies flail backwards because you've slide-tackled them before unloading dual pistols into their chest -- incredible. The bullet time, the cloak, the slick enemy A.I. - it all rocks.

While the story and nuts-and-bolts of the campaign aren't super important; I really can't overstate how bad the third act of this game is. It deviates from everything great in the first half, and indulges in some really terrible impulses.

There's an incredibly hokey, shoe-horned level that I won't spoil here, that basically tries to play off a popular internet horror trend, then there's two poor boss fights, followed by a cringey cutscene, and one more insane boss fight where half of the game's cool abilities are taken from you. It's a real shame, but it sapped my desire to replay the many many replayable sections.

Reviewed on Sep 10, 2023


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