So underwhelming. All of the trailers looked absolutely wonderful - unhinged, soviet BioShock with boss fights against giant robots, AND Mick Gordon is doing the soundtrack - sign me the fuck up.

The final product is the kind of thing you'd get if you got the son of the lead game designer to design the video game. A bunch of really cool ideas in a mixing pot with a bunch of stuff that really doesn't fit, as well as a bunch of stuff that just straight up sucks. It's BioShock, but it's also open world, but it's also an action movie with McGunShoot as the main character, but it's also Borderlands, but it's also an unreal engine tech demo. Pick a fucking lane, good god. So stretched thin in basically every single aspect, the writing is awful, the voice acting is awful, the UI is clunky as hell, the combat loop is this weird little ballet dance you have to do with an enemy that always leaves you feeling like you're on the backfoot. The level design and worldbuilding are, bizarrely (it's BioShock for fucks sake), missing the attention to detail that make games like this work in the first place. Every single corridor looks and feels the same, I don't get the feeling I'm exploring a real place, I get the feeling I'm running around the backrooms of an abandoned mall looking for the way out. Nothing is polished, everything has at least something wrong with it, the main guy keeps saying "crispy critters" over and over again like its an iconic catchphrase that will be remembered for years to come. Do you want to be a creepy atmospheric horror game or Yakuza? Pick one.

I was willing to push through with all of that to see if it got better somewhere down the line (and hey, music's still good, creature designs are still good, there's the occasional section that is slightly entertaining) but then I respawned after crashing my car and I was stuck, clipped into the car.

Nice effort lads. D-