Funny how little amount of stealth games I play, because it's one of my favorite types of games alongside survival horror. Don't worry about that tho because in a few weeks I'll be playing the shit out of Metal Gear Solid, but I digress.

While the greater issue with most of the games in the genre is that they give too many gameplay features, this one has the exact opposite problem. I know that it's an amateur project with an uneven price on Steam, and it does have a pretty fun art style for something of that pedestal, but it straight-up lacks some of the most fundamental aspects of what makes a stealth game good. For one, ammo is shockingly scarce. The classic trick of shooting light sources to hide in the shadows is very much present and NPCs are killed instantly with headshots, but you're generally given just 10 bullets from the beginning, and ammo boxes are almost nowhere to be found. In fact, there's just nothing to explore besides the main objective. Searching behind every nook and cranny doesn't offer any results besides finding your target, and all you have to do at that point is just killing them while they're already down. Guards can still be taken down by holding them hostage and then choking them, but for one, doing so doesn't grant you anything so you're better off sneaking further unless they get in the way, and two, this gets repetitive real quickly since the enemy AI seems to hardly spot you so it's not like getting to that point is all that difficult. When you do get spotted, it's pretty much game over from there on out because the guards have this weird sixth sense by which they always seem to know where you are hiding, I even had two of them stand still at a corner right next to me and start firing at the wall because they just hadn't reached the angle to hit me. Once you die, there is no save system to back you up so you have to do the whole mission all over again. It's not as infuriating as it sounds because each mission is relatively short, but doing the process all the way from scratch each time gets boring after the third attempt because the only major difference is the route you're taking. The gameplay just kinda boils down to the bare minimum of how these games work, and additional features to immerse yourself further into the stealth are severely lacking.

While I refunded this game within just 45 minutes, I learned a lot from its subpar design. I wouldn't be complaining if niche games like this dominated the home store page.

Nothing about this experience was fun. It's arbitrarily difficult to a point where you have to save every half a minute to load whenever you get hit by literally anything, which includes a bullet that's just 5 pixels shot from an enemy just a split second after he spawns in the middle of the screen (not from the side, but right in the middle). And trust me, I'm the first to enjoy a game that requires serious skill to beat, but when you deliberately program your game to not let you make it past one section without being blasted by 3 different objects being thrown at you all at once, all it really seems to do is trying to get a rise out of me. By the end, I didn't feel like I've accomplished anything, I felt like I was being gut punched by the prolonged passage of time.

When I look back at Half-Life 2's grandiose scale, it was in retrospect very much just the developers arrogantly showing off the technology without really considering pacing or atmosphere. When you take the amazing engine of that game and apply it to the simplicity and more well-rounded story of Half-Life 1... well, you'd get Half-Life Source, a remaster that absolutely no-one liked to a point where I didn't bother to play it. But if you actually put in the effort to entirely redo the set pieces, sound effects, combat, character models, visual effects, add in a kick-ass soundtrack, remove the annoying jumpscares, and ENTIRELY redesign the final act to something that's actually fun to play through, you get what I consider the quintessential Half-Life product.

Trust me, I'm the first to dismiss remakes but I am fully on-board for this one because let's face it, it's not like an amateur project that's not technically developed by Valve themselves with its own distinct title is going to replace the original the same way Capcom treats the Resident Evil remakes. Half-Life is still being sold on Steam, untouched by the passage of time, giving players the option to play either version as different packages. With all that, I have every right to confidently call this my favorite HL game of all time.

Ok, so I was VERY close to reaching the end, but then a glitch occurred in which (spoiler alert) after pushing Kaileena into the portal, I was unable to do the same. I couldn't find the solution, so I just decided to look up a playthrough to see how the story ends. On one hand: Thank God it was just the last few minutes. On the other hand: Why only the last few minutes????

So what's my overall opinion? Well, I'm honestly shocked to report that... I kinda love it! However, I wouldn't blame anyone if they hated it. I was originally really sceptical about its bizarre tone shift, and it took me a while to get used to the combat (if you couldn't tell by my original review), but after giving it a second chance, it ended up winning me over. The parkour platforming is more fun and exciting than ever before and the way the story interlays with its timeline makes me look forward to playing it again just so I can pick up the details. That's not to say the story itself is anything really that interesting. It's mostly just a constant series of loopholes with characters that aren't nearly as interesting as what came before. I still vastly prefer its predecessor for doing so well at the little amount it set for itself and just being generally more charming, but I see Warrior Within as more of an alternative to that game than a legitimate follow up.

Sands of Time is a platformer with an amazing story but basic combat.
Warrior Within is an action game with amazing platforming but a basic story.

Insanely repetitive with no narrative context to add any excitement. All it does is putting you in a locked room where all the enemies continuously keep spawning, and just having you mindlessly blast away with whatever weapon you have in your hand until the doors arbitrarily choose to open once they're all dead. When that's finally over with, you just run through linear paths and corridors until getting to the next enclosed room just to repeat the whole process of fighting the exact same enemies all over again. This is not strategic!

I REALLY wanted to give this thing a shot (no pun intended). I heard lots of great things and how interesting the dynamic between the brothers was.

Well, I guess it had its moments but for the most part, the shooting gameplay undernined it more than develope it. Speaking of which, for a late PS2 game it shockingly plays like shit. Every weapon feels like it has all the impact of a BB gun, but with slower reloading time than it takes an ant to move a stone across a football field, depth of view and sound design that often makes it difficult to tell where you're being shot from, and some of the absolute WORST hit detection I've ever come across!

I'm willing to play through a bad game if it has some elements of fascination or enjoyment, but here, that extent only goes as far as an arbitrary bullet time gimmick.