This is borderline a 3. I did actually enjoy the game despite its flaws: even though the animations are janky and the controls are clunky, there is a real level of finesse here required to get good at the game. You slowly learn to get into a groove in how you approach and deal with rooms. And it feels good to clear levels without taking a single point in damage. It's a pretty interesting system overall, with the time mechanic. It makes you consider how to approach each room. Each weapon feels somewhat useful. The machine guns are total garbage, but the shotgun and carbine are powerful and have excellent range. But the pistol is generally good too because it's fast and accurate.
I also gotta highlight the soundtrack, it is pretty dope. That's the same guy who composed games like Journey and the incredible Banner Saga Trilogy. Austin Withory (might be spelling that wrong) is just such a talent.
Ok so here's where the game is total bullshit. First of all the presentation of the story is absolute garbage. These "cutscenes" are just still images of the character models standing in rooms and posing. It's clear they just refused to apply any kind of budget towards the cutscene. You know what game told its story like this? Aquaman Battle for Atlantis, and if you know how that game turned out... what's very likely here is that they spent most of their budget getting the actors from the film back (not counting Keanu) and then also paying for Troy Baker for his 54954th role in a game. The "story" that's here is not even worth mentioning, but I do need to highlight how the ending in particular is terrible, both of the final cutscenes are not even a minute long COMBINED. What??? Feels absurdly anticlimatic and hollow once you beat the game.
This game feels really restrictive and frustrating in many ways. You get to apply upgrades before a level begins: each level is a gauntlet of stages where your health and weapons carry over. So you can buy upgrades like getting more health or more accuracy before the level begins. But you can also leave yourself items in specific stages, like a full assault rifle with an extra clip, or an extra bandaid. But you're given such little tokens to actually get these and buying either takes the same currency. At most you're allowed maybe 2 upgrades max and it feels too restrictive. I would have preferred if these were upgrades we could have permanently once we buy them.
Because my goodness the enemy placement in this game is so dickish. There are literal "spawn" doors just littered throughout the map. And in the last few levels it borderlines on spawning infinite enemies. And it happens at the worst time. I'm talking when you have to deal with 3 at once and then as soon as you take down one another one just pops out immediately: this gets even worse when the enemy coming out of the door is a guy with a gun. There are many, many instances where you are just in an unwinnable position no matter how well you play, if you move too much to the left you'll get shot. Too much to the right and you'll get punched.
The difficulty curve is so bad too. You have some of the hardest levels in the game, then the boss at the end of the levels are a total joke. You just do a takedown like twice and shoot them and they die. They are ALL the same type of boss. The final boss in particular was a total joke. And the level before that was the most bullshit and tough out of them all.
This is a very rough game. It is unpolished and could have used more dev time. But what's here isn't that bad. Theres a lot of potential for this to be great.
As it is now, I have now beaten it, and will never come back to it again, a one and done experience.
I also gotta highlight the soundtrack, it is pretty dope. That's the same guy who composed games like Journey and the incredible Banner Saga Trilogy. Austin Withory (might be spelling that wrong) is just such a talent.
Ok so here's where the game is total bullshit. First of all the presentation of the story is absolute garbage. These "cutscenes" are just still images of the character models standing in rooms and posing. It's clear they just refused to apply any kind of budget towards the cutscene. You know what game told its story like this? Aquaman Battle for Atlantis, and if you know how that game turned out... what's very likely here is that they spent most of their budget getting the actors from the film back (not counting Keanu) and then also paying for Troy Baker for his 54954th role in a game. The "story" that's here is not even worth mentioning, but I do need to highlight how the ending in particular is terrible, both of the final cutscenes are not even a minute long COMBINED. What??? Feels absurdly anticlimatic and hollow once you beat the game.
This game feels really restrictive and frustrating in many ways. You get to apply upgrades before a level begins: each level is a gauntlet of stages where your health and weapons carry over. So you can buy upgrades like getting more health or more accuracy before the level begins. But you can also leave yourself items in specific stages, like a full assault rifle with an extra clip, or an extra bandaid. But you're given such little tokens to actually get these and buying either takes the same currency. At most you're allowed maybe 2 upgrades max and it feels too restrictive. I would have preferred if these were upgrades we could have permanently once we buy them.
Because my goodness the enemy placement in this game is so dickish. There are literal "spawn" doors just littered throughout the map. And in the last few levels it borderlines on spawning infinite enemies. And it happens at the worst time. I'm talking when you have to deal with 3 at once and then as soon as you take down one another one just pops out immediately: this gets even worse when the enemy coming out of the door is a guy with a gun. There are many, many instances where you are just in an unwinnable position no matter how well you play, if you move too much to the left you'll get shot. Too much to the right and you'll get punched.
The difficulty curve is so bad too. You have some of the hardest levels in the game, then the boss at the end of the levels are a total joke. You just do a takedown like twice and shoot them and they die. They are ALL the same type of boss. The final boss in particular was a total joke. And the level before that was the most bullshit and tough out of them all.
This is a very rough game. It is unpolished and could have used more dev time. But what's here isn't that bad. Theres a lot of potential for this to be great.
As it is now, I have now beaten it, and will never come back to it again, a one and done experience.