This review contains spoilers
A slow, dark, humorless Uncharted.
The graphics are stunning, with expert management of the polygon budget. You have to look hard to find where the geometry is simplified. The textures, colors, lighting, and reflections are marvelous. The frame rate is terrible though, and panning the camera is nauseating.
The premise of the game is not bad: you have steampunk London, you have an Order of semi-immortal knights of the round table who survive by drinking the "blackwater" from the holy grail, and you have "half-breeds" of werewolves and vampires lifted straight out of the Underworld movies. The surface conflict involves the megacorporation of the United India Company and a band of leftist rebels led by a pair of Indian women.
Which is all perfectly fine. I like the main characters Galahad, Isi, Lafayette, and Percival, and the voice acting is really good. I was impressed with the writing at first. It was adapted to the period, and it didn’t dumb things down for the player. It forces you to listen and pay attention as you understand the rules and circumstances of the world. But later in the game the dialogue turns into the same old cheese, only slightly dressed up with Victorian verbiage.
About midway through the game, there’s a big confrontation between Galahad and Lakshmi the rebel leader, and the dialogue is just lame cliche after cliche, in a painfully obvious attempt to hide information from the player and save it for a dramatic reveal later.
The game is short, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that the story is unfinished. The relationship between werewolves and lycans is unclear and the UIC's motivation for secretly shipping vampires all over the world is equally unclear. The ending sucks, frankly. There's no resolution between Galahad and Isi, only a tense truce between Galahad and Lafayette, and the climax has you rescuing young Nikola Tesla, because of course Tesla has to be in every freaking steampunk story. Tesla hands you this awesome-looking steampunky lightning Gatling gun, only to have it knocked away from you to start a QTE-a-thon with the final boss. Were they actively trying to piss the players off?
So you defeat Lucan the Lycan, your former Knight Commander, and then his dad walks in moaning about how he's alwas known about Lucan and has been covering it up. But if that were to come out, the Order would be doomed (sentencing you, Galahad, to death as a traitor is no problem, but me and my son are just tooooo important, you see).
So Galahad goes along with it, kills Lucan and goes to stand on a rooftop like some Blimey Batman, letting the old shit get away, letting Lord Hastings the evil vampire get away, and never getting any resolution with Isabeault. Just a terrible, terrible ending.
Oh, and I swear the mysterious hooded figure who fished Galahad out of the river was Percival back from the dead, another loose end.
The other thing is that Galahad, our pure knight, just straight up murders everyone who gets in his way. Crazy bedlamites terrorizing innocent people? OK. Rebels shooting at you? Fine. UIC guards on the zeppelin, some of whom may be rebels in disguise? Including the pilots? Umm... UIC guards at the UIC headquarters, just doing their jobs? Knife 'em in the back. Her Majesty's guards, doing their duty to protect the realm? KILL THEM ALL. The moral dimensions are disturbing, and at the end I find myself siding with Isi. This is the story of a latent psychopath who goes on a rampage.
On the gameplay side, things are serviceable, but there’s a clear lack of consideration for the player. The default walking speed is slow. You can jump back into any chapter, but there is no way to skip cinematics. There is no list of collectibles or indication of what you’ve missed. You can’t listen to the collectible sound files as you’re walking around in-game; you have to stop and listen to them within the menu. There’s no way to replay gunfights with different weaponry (like the oh-so-satisfying thermite gun). No challenge mode. No multiplayer.
The graphics are stunning, with expert management of the polygon budget. You have to look hard to find where the geometry is simplified. The textures, colors, lighting, and reflections are marvelous. The frame rate is terrible though, and panning the camera is nauseating.
The premise of the game is not bad: you have steampunk London, you have an Order of semi-immortal knights of the round table who survive by drinking the "blackwater" from the holy grail, and you have "half-breeds" of werewolves and vampires lifted straight out of the Underworld movies. The surface conflict involves the megacorporation of the United India Company and a band of leftist rebels led by a pair of Indian women.
Which is all perfectly fine. I like the main characters Galahad, Isi, Lafayette, and Percival, and the voice acting is really good. I was impressed with the writing at first. It was adapted to the period, and it didn’t dumb things down for the player. It forces you to listen and pay attention as you understand the rules and circumstances of the world. But later in the game the dialogue turns into the same old cheese, only slightly dressed up with Victorian verbiage.
About midway through the game, there’s a big confrontation between Galahad and Lakshmi the rebel leader, and the dialogue is just lame cliche after cliche, in a painfully obvious attempt to hide information from the player and save it for a dramatic reveal later.
The game is short, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that the story is unfinished. The relationship between werewolves and lycans is unclear and the UIC's motivation for secretly shipping vampires all over the world is equally unclear. The ending sucks, frankly. There's no resolution between Galahad and Isi, only a tense truce between Galahad and Lafayette, and the climax has you rescuing young Nikola Tesla, because of course Tesla has to be in every freaking steampunk story. Tesla hands you this awesome-looking steampunky lightning Gatling gun, only to have it knocked away from you to start a QTE-a-thon with the final boss. Were they actively trying to piss the players off?
So you defeat Lucan the Lycan, your former Knight Commander, and then his dad walks in moaning about how he's alwas known about Lucan and has been covering it up. But if that were to come out, the Order would be doomed (sentencing you, Galahad, to death as a traitor is no problem, but me and my son are just tooooo important, you see).
So Galahad goes along with it, kills Lucan and goes to stand on a rooftop like some Blimey Batman, letting the old shit get away, letting Lord Hastings the evil vampire get away, and never getting any resolution with Isabeault. Just a terrible, terrible ending.
Oh, and I swear the mysterious hooded figure who fished Galahad out of the river was Percival back from the dead, another loose end.
The other thing is that Galahad, our pure knight, just straight up murders everyone who gets in his way. Crazy bedlamites terrorizing innocent people? OK. Rebels shooting at you? Fine. UIC guards on the zeppelin, some of whom may be rebels in disguise? Including the pilots? Umm... UIC guards at the UIC headquarters, just doing their jobs? Knife 'em in the back. Her Majesty's guards, doing their duty to protect the realm? KILL THEM ALL. The moral dimensions are disturbing, and at the end I find myself siding with Isi. This is the story of a latent psychopath who goes on a rampage.
On the gameplay side, things are serviceable, but there’s a clear lack of consideration for the player. The default walking speed is slow. You can jump back into any chapter, but there is no way to skip cinematics. There is no list of collectibles or indication of what you’ve missed. You can’t listen to the collectible sound files as you’re walking around in-game; you have to stop and listen to them within the menu. There’s no way to replay gunfights with different weaponry (like the oh-so-satisfying thermite gun). No challenge mode. No multiplayer.