Reviews from

in the past


la guerra, la guerra no cambia nunca

A narrative wolf hidden in the clothes of a generic modern military shooter. Unassuming, but hiding fangs and claws that, once shown, won't stop until you're ripped to shreds.

Shooting felt pretty satisfying at first with the slow-mo on headshot kills but by the end of the game it had become quite stale, paired with the clunky movement and bad down-sight aiming. Obviously the highlight of the game is its story, which while impactful it doesn't hit as hard this many video essays later.

Majestic, in the sense it's a seemingly whatever third-person bypassing the market only to trojan-horse a shellshock simulator. I would've given anything to have this game surprise me before having to hear about it online, but it's structural choice-making, seemingly mechanical gunplay for TPS cliches and sheer amounts of phantasmagoric curveballs of existential dread still felt amazing to devour. Terrifically rockstar, i wish we could see more of these hard-hitting type of videogame boldness.

This game is definitely worth checking out. The dated gameplay makes it a little difficult to wholeheartedly recommend, but the story is interesting. Although I would argue even that aspect is dated to some degree for reasons that would spoil the experience. It's better to view this game in the context of when it was released - 2012, at an enormous high point for other shooters such as CoD and Battlefield in their skyrocketing popularity, when it was still tons of fun to shoot through hordes of mindless NPCs in service of progressing the "help the good guys, stop the bad guys" plotlines. You do the exact same thing in this game, but this time the game makes it clear that your comrades really don't want to be doing it, which gives the story a layer of self-awareness that was sorely lacking in the AAA shooters of its time.

I understand this game has a somewhat small yet very dedicated fanbase who love this game for what it is, and that's great, but I do believe it was a tad overhyped for me as a result. As I said, it's still worth playing even if only because it won't demand much of your time. (On the lowest difficulty, it took me only 4.7 hours.) Overall, despite its dated factors, it is still an interesting case of a mid-budget game with some creative and risky choices in an oversaturated genre. I wish we got more like it.