When I first saw this game, I was entranced, really, I was drawn in by the sort of polished edge and art direction of the game, it would be the perfect AMV bait, you can see a GIF of Alex Mercer as someone’s forum avatar, it’s a piece of work, really.

However, upon opening the game and getting into the mush of it, I really don’t have that same avid feeling I get from the very start. The start of the game is a bombastic start, a fantastic intro, then over time it flat-lines.

There are good parts of the core game play, and the not great, the horrible even. The difference between the two is clear, obviously clear. The non-combat movement and actions taken by the player is great, I could run across the map, up the walls, over the buildings and glide across, now the combat, yeah, it’s not great. I have seen the combat been noted as hard, but that’s not really the case, it’s clunky, in fact its two buttons and at times 3 buttons but that’s just not the case. Having abilities is fun, but they can feel like you’re getting the enemy with a wet paper towel at times, looks cool at least. Combat is mostly integral to solving missions within the game but the entire time I just used stealth or sabotaging to solve the issues unless I had to go non stealth. The missions themselves will begin to feel somewhat the same and blend together.

There isn’t much to the story, it’s a government plot that drives the player character down a rabbit hole of misery and suffering, while I described it as interesting, how its portrayed out to you isn’t. The characters feel one sided, but the pacing of the plot isn’t bad, shockingly, it really does remind me of the American comics written at the time, or even the movie, using the plot to get the main character to cool set one through eighteen. Alex is so cool though…
I also don’t really have much to say about the music, man, this game would be a lot better if it had some grunge to it, make it really feel like you’re playing an AMV from 2009 and not generic hero music. I really cannot remember anything from this game music wise, didn’t really help that there was always some loud sound ringing about.

In earnest, I wanted to like this game, it really seemed like my things, but the uncooked combat and lackluster story isn’t for me, there is a lot of appeal in this game and if it interests you, you should play it, just know that its flawed in a few manners. To leave you off, as a reward for reading this review all the way through, here’s a cool AMV I found on YouTube, dating back to 2009.

https://youtu.be/5X4tJ0NXC4Q?si=JjoQSM_b77iRxyt3