Bought this at a used games store going "You know what I could go for? A forgettable 7th gen AAA game campaign." I got what I asked for!
It's not like it has nothing going for it, while it has that gray and blue filter everyone loves from this era, some of the environments manage to be quite striking, mostly when it leans more into its horror elements. This isn't a team that doesn't know what its doing, and obviously they would go on to develop a very popular game that proves this. There are bones of interesting ideas, but it's just the bones. I was broken when after beating a really boring boss that uses the exact same mechanic to fight it over and over again, I watched a cutscene and then had to fight a different boring boss that used the exact same mechanic over and over again. There's really nothing here to keep me going, so I have to just stop. In my canon, Hayden Tenno died in the middle of that Russian zombie island, never heard from again.
It's not like it has nothing going for it, while it has that gray and blue filter everyone loves from this era, some of the environments manage to be quite striking, mostly when it leans more into its horror elements. This isn't a team that doesn't know what its doing, and obviously they would go on to develop a very popular game that proves this. There are bones of interesting ideas, but it's just the bones. I was broken when after beating a really boring boss that uses the exact same mechanic to fight it over and over again, I watched a cutscene and then had to fight a different boring boss that used the exact same mechanic over and over again. There's really nothing here to keep me going, so I have to just stop. In my canon, Hayden Tenno died in the middle of that Russian zombie island, never heard from again.