Full disclosure: couldn't play through the game because of constant crashes. Will probably give it another try sometime in the future. Still, I felt justified in rating it based on my limited experience.

I quickly realized I didn't like the story and began skipping the cutscenes, so I figured I might as well download a save file and jump through most of the missions to avoid the crashes.

Shortly before the game's release I played the demo of it and was so impressed that I couldn't wait for the full game to come out. But I remember when I finally gave it a try, the early sections of the game got me so bored that I just kinda moved onto other games.

And it is true that the beginning of the game is kinda slow. You start off with a quick jetpack tutorial and a dogfight, which is pretty fun, but then it kinda drags you into this very slow and mediocre cover-based shooter with a lot of cutscenes, dialogues and walking sections.

Once they give you the jetpack again, there's strangely another dogfight tutorial that is exactly the same. But you also get to do some cover-based shooting with the jetpack, and I gotta say, this is kinda where the game's potential lies, and what impressed me so much with the demo. Imagine a cover-based shooter where you can fly over enemies and ambush them from behind or attack from the air. In addition there is vertical cover that totally shifts the plane of combat. The possibilities here were insane: fully three-dimensional combat and fully three-dimensional exploration of open levels. That's what it could've been.

In reality though, I feel like the systems don't really interact with each other, and often undermine each other. The levels are pretty linear and often wouldn't let you switch between hovering and boosting because you'd immediately start hitting walls and lose control. The floors and ceilings are also quite noticeable. In more open locations you'd see mountains and wanna climb on top of them, but the game just wouldn't let you. But when the game does give you some open-space combat arenas, you quickly realize that you kinda have to get close to your enemies in order to deal any decent damage, and once you do get close, you kinda have to take cover because you're extremely fragile. Not to mention there are very few locations that give you vertical cover.

In fact, I feel like this game is too short and spends way too much time locking you in linear sections and depriving you of the jetpack, the main attraction of the game. Without it, this is just a poor man's Gears of War.

But the dogfights are really the star of the show here. It's very fun to do maneuvers and outsmart enemies. On top of that, the coolest feature is how you can hijack an enemy aircraft and fully utilize it throughout the battle. Like it's not just a gimmick, they don't break in 5 seconds or limit your movement, they're a decent combat option.

Honestly, instead of crafting a story-driven campaign, they should've just given us procedurally-generated open levels with both ground and air combat happening simultaneously like in Battlefront and Battlefield games, except give us better weapons, higher accuracy, more melee options and maybe some special powers to make us feel like a superhero. Let us dive from the air to the ground with an AOE attack or pluck enemies from the ground like an eagle. Let us kamikaze-attack airships or use a hook to zip towards them. Now that would've been a really fun game. But instead this kinda makes you feel like a dog on a leash in a park. There seems to be so much fun to be had here, but they just don't let you do any of it.

played the demo back on PS3 and had my fill of this with it at the time but at some point i think i grabbed this through the BC program on Xbox for really cheap. kinda wish i just left it be lmao.

interesting but finicky jetpack mechanics are really all the game has going for it. the intro starts you off with being able to fly around at will while tackling some combat and it's passable enough for 15 minutes (as it was in the demo) but then the rest of the game happens. enemies are way too spongy and the mid-air combat takes a turn for the worst when the other flying ships and enemies put strain on the wonky flight controls.

also wasn't into the story but that was a given at this point. didn't realize this was going to be a time travel type thing or that it was going to have Nolan North showing up to do the most blatant/annoying case of Nolan Northing that i've ever seen so it had that going for it too.

will try the metroidvania side game someday.

This game absolutely rocks. Other than a kind of slow and boring turret escort mission and an abrupt ending, the game moves so quickly, helped by its 5-6 hour campaign. The story is serviceable.

Gun selection is small, but there's some really cool ones, especially the designs of them. I especially like how some of them seem to alter their appearance with upgrades. The cover based gameplay is given a little shakeup too compared to normal Gears of War type combat with hiding vertically on ledges and shooting up or downward. The small shift in gravity and perspective leads to some creative enemy disposal methods like tossing a grenade up, or just climbing over the ledge and punching the guys in the face.

The star of the show though is the jetpack which is so cool. After being given the ability to fly, levels open up and let you boost around freely in the skies and land on the ground to just take in the landscapes. While I wish more levels took advantage of this, I think the novelty of some large scale base siege set pieces is neat. Taking out turrets around and then flying into the base to wreck it and its forces from the inside is such a huge power fantasy. I like this one a lot, might not go back to it anytime soon, but I'll definitely be thinking about it for a while.