Coming hot off the heels off playing F.E.A.R.'s expansion packs - Extraction Point & Perseus Mandate - I had some higher hopes for this. I knew it wasn't terribly well received but the reception was better than F.E.A.R. 3 so surely that meant something? Not really.
- Story & Characters -
Characters have even less depth than the first game, and some of the dialogue is just painfully stupid & corny. Story is... there, I guess. Nothing to really say about it. The ending was flat out dumb and massively threw off the game's pacing.
- Gameplay -
Gunplay and the combat dynamic have taken a big step down from the first game. Most guns sound very weak, with bizarre changes in their look and feel. They did the shotgun horrendously dirty in this, it feels and sounds like a peashooter compared to the god-tier VK-12.
Enemy AI also feels like a big step down. They seem outright dumb at times, standing still and eating shots without ever returning fire. There were a few glimpse of what could've been with them: flipping over cover, crashing through windows and the various voice lines indicating they had a clue of what was going on, but generally not very interesting to fight.
All they really had to do was copy over the gunplay & AI from the first game and the rest would've taken care of itself, but they felt the need to so drastically alter the core formula to what every 7th gen console shooter felt like at that time.
- Visuals & Performance -
Environmental variety is much greater than the first game, which is about the only positive thing I can say about the visual design. Levels are very linear with not much in the way of exploration. The entire game's art style has changed to this ugly semi sci-fi look, with bright lights and dull color palettes stuck onto enemies, which makes visibility even worse amongst the abundance of post-process effects on screen at any given time. It's aged the game horribly.
Performance on a Ryzen 7 3700x and GTX 1660 SUPER running Windows 11 wasn't great either. While I never ran into stuttering or unplayable framerates, it would still often drop frames down to below 70 at times, which is odd for a game this old. Not a huge deal but something worth noting if your PC is on the weaker side.
- Conclusion -
The two positives this game managed to gain from me:
- Greater environmental variety
- Alma's hot now, I guess? Not sure how to feel about that since you could classify it as necrophilia
Pretty disappointing overall, cannot see myself coming back to this ever. I don't understand how some people think this is better than Perseus Mandate. That expansion, for all it's faults, is much more fun than this.
- Story & Characters -
Characters have even less depth than the first game, and some of the dialogue is just painfully stupid & corny. Story is... there, I guess. Nothing to really say about it. The ending was flat out dumb and massively threw off the game's pacing.
- Gameplay -
Gunplay and the combat dynamic have taken a big step down from the first game. Most guns sound very weak, with bizarre changes in their look and feel. They did the shotgun horrendously dirty in this, it feels and sounds like a peashooter compared to the god-tier VK-12.
Enemy AI also feels like a big step down. They seem outright dumb at times, standing still and eating shots without ever returning fire. There were a few glimpse of what could've been with them: flipping over cover, crashing through windows and the various voice lines indicating they had a clue of what was going on, but generally not very interesting to fight.
All they really had to do was copy over the gunplay & AI from the first game and the rest would've taken care of itself, but they felt the need to so drastically alter the core formula to what every 7th gen console shooter felt like at that time.
- Visuals & Performance -
Environmental variety is much greater than the first game, which is about the only positive thing I can say about the visual design. Levels are very linear with not much in the way of exploration. The entire game's art style has changed to this ugly semi sci-fi look, with bright lights and dull color palettes stuck onto enemies, which makes visibility even worse amongst the abundance of post-process effects on screen at any given time. It's aged the game horribly.
Performance on a Ryzen 7 3700x and GTX 1660 SUPER running Windows 11 wasn't great either. While I never ran into stuttering or unplayable framerates, it would still often drop frames down to below 70 at times, which is odd for a game this old. Not a huge deal but something worth noting if your PC is on the weaker side.
- Conclusion -
The two positives this game managed to gain from me:
- Greater environmental variety
- Alma's hot now, I guess? Not sure how to feel about that since you could classify it as necrophilia
Pretty disappointing overall, cannot see myself coming back to this ever. I don't understand how some people think this is better than Perseus Mandate. That expansion, for all it's faults, is much more fun than this.