feels just a teensy bit phony to have a definitive opinion on this without having done at least half (or a quarter, really) of what you can do in every level, but for what it's worth, i played through every map at least twice.
it's fun! it reminds me of the olden days of newgrounds, it scratches a very similar itch - the havoc you can cause, the plethora of minor interactions , the casual misanthropy and very silly ways you can go about offing people. if anything, i have to deduct stars just because two of the six maps — colorado and marrakesh — are absolutely miserable. four targets and only 6 mission stories? fuck off!!
on that note, colorado and marrakesh (particularly colorado) represent what i would call some glaring, suspicious issues with this game's politics, something i'm willing to ignore otherwise. where, say, paris and hokkaido, perhaps the best two maps, deal with very very bond-level supervillains, these other two seem to delve a little too hard into a weird sort of centrism, where the ICA is sent to prevent any kind of shake-up to the world order as is. it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. colorado is like, as if the devs watched one episode of mr. robot and decided to just go with that. i really don't need this game to set up these strawmen for me to then go annihilate, i'd rather it just be contemptible french fashion designers and tattoo'd yakuza lawyers with severe a-line bobs.
this game works best when it's playing off its camp factor. when it goes for this gutterbucket rainbow six bullshit, i have to jump off the train, i'm sorry.
i'm sure much has been said about this, but the levels are only as good as the amount of things you can do. you can't create your own scenario, all of them have been predicted and inserted in the game such that each npc has their own little cycle of movements and dialogue that feel nigh doll-like. i think this is why the methods of assassination that feel the best are often the ones that require the most amount of steps - the more convoluted and esoteric they are, the more satisfying. i found myself getting really bored of "impersonate a model, kill the target," "impersonate a masseuse, kill the target," "impersonate a bellhop, kill the target" and such. i think in part this is because of how achingly passive agent 47 can be; there are times when i wish you could more actively participate as a character than as a weapon, but in doing so it would kind of transgress the blank slate agent 47 is. he is a weapon, sexless, without any sort of desire or pathos attributed to his mission - some of the kills, then, feel quite hollow after they're completed. i shot vanessa graves in the head, potentially one of the most interesting targets; she's empathetic to a fault and, having potentially gone a different route, could have perhaps been your handler instead of diana. but there is no soul to her death, no way to make this feel like any kind of arc, because of the deep impersonal twinge of 47.
i think this is definitely more a me problem than an issue on the game's part. this game lacks, in some ways, any kind of emergence because i cannot infer any sort of reaction on 47's part, and kind of logic to why he decides to kill in the particular way that i choose. there are flashes of this - the intensely aggressive and vindictive "one last time, mr. soders" assassination, for example - but not enough to leave me feeling like i'm chewing on anything but delicious fat. i need something more nutritious.
looking forward to the next two, however, which i hear are far and away much better than the first entry!
it's fun! it reminds me of the olden days of newgrounds, it scratches a very similar itch - the havoc you can cause, the plethora of minor interactions , the casual misanthropy and very silly ways you can go about offing people. if anything, i have to deduct stars just because two of the six maps — colorado and marrakesh — are absolutely miserable. four targets and only 6 mission stories? fuck off!!
on that note, colorado and marrakesh (particularly colorado) represent what i would call some glaring, suspicious issues with this game's politics, something i'm willing to ignore otherwise. where, say, paris and hokkaido, perhaps the best two maps, deal with very very bond-level supervillains, these other two seem to delve a little too hard into a weird sort of centrism, where the ICA is sent to prevent any kind of shake-up to the world order as is. it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. colorado is like, as if the devs watched one episode of mr. robot and decided to just go with that. i really don't need this game to set up these strawmen for me to then go annihilate, i'd rather it just be contemptible french fashion designers and tattoo'd yakuza lawyers with severe a-line bobs.
this game works best when it's playing off its camp factor. when it goes for this gutterbucket rainbow six bullshit, i have to jump off the train, i'm sorry.
i'm sure much has been said about this, but the levels are only as good as the amount of things you can do. you can't create your own scenario, all of them have been predicted and inserted in the game such that each npc has their own little cycle of movements and dialogue that feel nigh doll-like. i think this is why the methods of assassination that feel the best are often the ones that require the most amount of steps - the more convoluted and esoteric they are, the more satisfying. i found myself getting really bored of "impersonate a model, kill the target," "impersonate a masseuse, kill the target," "impersonate a bellhop, kill the target" and such. i think in part this is because of how achingly passive agent 47 can be; there are times when i wish you could more actively participate as a character than as a weapon, but in doing so it would kind of transgress the blank slate agent 47 is. he is a weapon, sexless, without any sort of desire or pathos attributed to his mission - some of the kills, then, feel quite hollow after they're completed. i shot vanessa graves in the head, potentially one of the most interesting targets; she's empathetic to a fault and, having potentially gone a different route, could have perhaps been your handler instead of diana. but there is no soul to her death, no way to make this feel like any kind of arc, because of the deep impersonal twinge of 47.
i think this is definitely more a me problem than an issue on the game's part. this game lacks, in some ways, any kind of emergence because i cannot infer any sort of reaction on 47's part, and kind of logic to why he decides to kill in the particular way that i choose. there are flashes of this - the intensely aggressive and vindictive "one last time, mr. soders" assassination, for example - but not enough to leave me feeling like i'm chewing on anything but delicious fat. i need something more nutritious.
looking forward to the next two, however, which i hear are far and away much better than the first entry!
ghost_girl
2 years ago