This game hits just right. 6-8 hrs long, crisp clean gameplay and good puzzles, S tier world building through logs and tutorials, and yet I often found myself simply wanting a little more refinement in the way the game handles inventory management, backtracking, and the need to constantly run between the save rooms to get quest items. This game is not revolutionary in any way but I think it just happened to come around at the exact right time for it to be considered a hit.

Absolutely worth a playthrough if you like survival horror, cyberpunk, and zombies.

This game is fun. It is unfortunate to see the continued disneyfication of star wars seeping into all of the franchise these days but this game manages to stand on its own. There are a lot of "hell yeah" moments throguhout the story and customizing your light saber, clothes, and ship are a lot of fun to do. Btw, if you don't play it on higher difficulties enemy bullets and attacks are extremely slow. If this concerned you looking at gameplay footage I can assure you that playing it on hard difficulty makes the projectiles and enemy attacks look normal.

If you are like me and want to pick this game up to relive some memories. Don't. It has not aged well at all and despite at the time being pretty groundbreaking in terms of the level of freedom of movement (even having more speed/freedom than existing spider man games) these days it just doesn't hold up.

The biggest issues
- Movement is actually incredibly slow in this game if you've played any more recent open world games. It is also incredibly janky because there is now "flow" to the game. You are either jogging, sprinting, jumping, or gliding. Each movement "mode" is very blocky feeling and awkward to move between and the glide doesn't last long enough to really be satisfying.
- Combat... Again incredibly slow. Because each movement mode is so seperated from eachother combat also has the same issues. You get different movesets based on if you are sprinting, jogging, or jumping. And the ONLY time you can use your special powers (claws, hammer hands, etc.) is if you are in the jogging mode. That means that your most powerful combat abilities can only be used while you are moving as slow as a crawl which really removes a lot of the fun.

The best parts
- The world is really well done for a game from 2009. The city feels lived in and the zombie zones are an absolute blast to run around in because they are just pure chaos.
- The wealth of different abilities. Although the combat is still awful due to reasons listed above the game still has a ton of variety to the combat through upgrades to make progression feel powerful.

Overall, not worth the purchase price these days. I played it entirely on steam deck because my windows PC wouldn't run it. I got about 2/3 of the way through the story (From my memory playing it as a child) before I threw the towel in... On to bigger and better things.

THE CONCEPT OF LOVE

REAL LOVE

FEEL REAL LOVE

THE CONCEPT THE CONCEPT THE CONCEPT THE CONCEPT OF LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

It causes me great pain to not give this game 5 stars. Ralph and his team clearly have a lot of heart and a lot of talent but unfortunately they missed the mark with this game.

The pros?
This game has all the hallmarks of an immersive sim. As an example, One of the main story missions sends you to a mansion where a local "entrepreneur" is meeting with a local rancher and buying his ranch. You need information from him really badly but he is a stubborn old bastard and asks you to go steal the deed from a nearby ranch because they won't sell their ranch to him. I ofc said fuck that I am not doing that quest and meticulously K.O'd every single gaurd at his compound before finally K.Oing him in order to get his safe key and get the information myself. Took me like 40 minutes longer than it would have to steal the deed but it was incredibly satisfying when I finally got the telegram.

Unfortunately the game relies purely on these elements to be "good." The story sucks, the combat is simplistic and unsatisfying, and being forced to play through 4 different stories left me feeling unattached and uninterested in the main protagonists. It really does make me sad because I think that this team has a lot of heart. It just so happens that this game failed to properly capture that heart.

I just don't understand why Ralph decided to try to make a game as big as this. IMO it would have been better to make a 8-15 hour first person Immersive sim to prove that his team can do great work. I mean Gloomwood just came out and it is 3 hours long but 1000x more enjoyable than this AND Gloomwood has all the hallmarks of the genre.