This review contains spoilers
It took 10 hours for this game to properly click for me and make sense, and I think it was purely because the menus are a fucking mess like I haven't seen in a while.
I was getting some kind of sensory overload every time I had to browse them. It somehow looks so much more complicated than it actually is, and I'll never understand how this setup wasn't just the first prototype for a menu system. Also, still with the controller cursor for navigation? Come on.
The game is pretty fun when the loop (shut up) starts making sense, but the premise itself kinda reveals the whole thing to be much shallower than it initially appears. Treading the same few areas at different times of day and sometimes there's snow. Barely anything changing between these other than enemy placement and some doors being open/closed. It gets old fast.
You find documents and lore about the place, but all of it seems to hint to larger stuff that doesn't pay off. I fucked the ending of the game for myself because you've to approach someone at the end of a long bridge to have a chat, and I tapped R2 to draw my gun just in case, this is when I learned that drawing it this way also fires it, and I hit them right between the eyes. No chat for me. Just standing there now, expected to make a decision based on no info. Deflated, I picked one at random, and got a cutscene that I can't even glean whether it was a good or bad ending. So off to youtube I went to see what I missed, and wouldn't ya know it, I got the bad ending. They're both bad endings. Not that there is no good ending, it's just that what they consider to be good is also a bad ending. A shit ending. They fuck the game right up the wall at the end, pay nothing off, and roll credits on you.
You just get nothing here, man. A cowardly exit. Plenty of the middle of this thing is great fun when you've hit a good stride, but you can feel it start limping in the last third. It also doesn't help that on PS5 I was plagued with visual and menu bugs that often resulted in me having to quit out. I dunno. I've only played the Dishonored games, and Prey, but this is Arkane's weakest for me. Feels like I've wasted my time here, that includes typing all this out when I could have just written "cunt game" and went to bed.
I was getting some kind of sensory overload every time I had to browse them. It somehow looks so much more complicated than it actually is, and I'll never understand how this setup wasn't just the first prototype for a menu system. Also, still with the controller cursor for navigation? Come on.
The game is pretty fun when the loop (shut up) starts making sense, but the premise itself kinda reveals the whole thing to be much shallower than it initially appears. Treading the same few areas at different times of day and sometimes there's snow. Barely anything changing between these other than enemy placement and some doors being open/closed. It gets old fast.
You find documents and lore about the place, but all of it seems to hint to larger stuff that doesn't pay off. I fucked the ending of the game for myself because you've to approach someone at the end of a long bridge to have a chat, and I tapped R2 to draw my gun just in case, this is when I learned that drawing it this way also fires it, and I hit them right between the eyes. No chat for me. Just standing there now, expected to make a decision based on no info. Deflated, I picked one at random, and got a cutscene that I can't even glean whether it was a good or bad ending. So off to youtube I went to see what I missed, and wouldn't ya know it, I got the bad ending. They're both bad endings. Not that there is no good ending, it's just that what they consider to be good is also a bad ending. A shit ending. They fuck the game right up the wall at the end, pay nothing off, and roll credits on you.
You just get nothing here, man. A cowardly exit. Plenty of the middle of this thing is great fun when you've hit a good stride, but you can feel it start limping in the last third. It also doesn't help that on PS5 I was plagued with visual and menu bugs that often resulted in me having to quit out. I dunno. I've only played the Dishonored games, and Prey, but this is Arkane's weakest for me. Feels like I've wasted my time here, that includes typing all this out when I could have just written "cunt game" and went to bed.
Reviewed on Nov 03, 2021