This review contains spoilers
Both gameplay-wise and story-wise this pretty much continues what I thought about The Assignment, so read my review of that if you want.
There's one difference tho and that's the fact that the writting has nosedived and is pretty lame. More precisely Kidman's character. The game tries to give her kind of an arch of independence from Mobius, but it's so weird because:
1. Kidman has no stakes in what's happening outside letting his coworkers live. So the whole "I'm not gonna obey your orders of protecting Leslie" has no motivation other than trusting her instincts, and about that...
2. Kidman knew she was getting into some shady Illuminati shit. Why the surprise of finding out that she's expendable? Is she that dumb?
3. The cosification of Mobius' control of her life is so lame as an enemy design, and the way it's written clashes with the writting of the main game.
You can tell that this was written and directed by someone else, and it is. It's directed and written by John Johanas and I'm sorry to say this but this is weak. I'll give the man props for one thing: the whole "we start as a Clock Tower throwback and it evolves into an action game as Kidman gains trust in herself" is a neat directing idea, but it wasn't executed well and the whole vibe seems like it belongs to a complete different game. This should've been a standalone thing with no ties to the main game, it would've made for a more powerful independence arc than this tied-in mess.
It doesn't help that it heavily rehashes a lot of stuff from the main game and some things that it does new just don't hit. The paintings with the face of Rubik that possess Leslie and you have to burn? Very lackluster. The scary Slenderman-type suit with the corporative themes? Too sterile and vanilla in comparisson to the main game, it doesn't even feel like it exists in the same visual universe. The cool glowstick section? It doesn't build up to anything of importance. The whole structure of "taking separate unconnected scenes to make a Kidman: Abridged Series"? Very disjointed and has a very abrupt sense of pacing.
Nah, very weak stuff. I'll give props for trying to deliver a whole character arc in a two parter DLC but they bit more than you could chew and in the process they ruined some of the cool mystique of the main game for the sake of spoonfeeding info that was already there if you payed attention. And again, in the process of trying to portray this Kidman independance arc, they made her look dumb as hell.
I'm actually furstrated because I had a damn good time with The Evil Within and I had my fill already, but I had to play this in case it had anything of importance to the sequel or had something cool. But no.
There's one difference tho and that's the fact that the writting has nosedived and is pretty lame. More precisely Kidman's character. The game tries to give her kind of an arch of independence from Mobius, but it's so weird because:
1. Kidman has no stakes in what's happening outside letting his coworkers live. So the whole "I'm not gonna obey your orders of protecting Leslie" has no motivation other than trusting her instincts, and about that...
2. Kidman knew she was getting into some shady Illuminati shit. Why the surprise of finding out that she's expendable? Is she that dumb?
3. The cosification of Mobius' control of her life is so lame as an enemy design, and the way it's written clashes with the writting of the main game.
You can tell that this was written and directed by someone else, and it is. It's directed and written by John Johanas and I'm sorry to say this but this is weak. I'll give the man props for one thing: the whole "we start as a Clock Tower throwback and it evolves into an action game as Kidman gains trust in herself" is a neat directing idea, but it wasn't executed well and the whole vibe seems like it belongs to a complete different game. This should've been a standalone thing with no ties to the main game, it would've made for a more powerful independence arc than this tied-in mess.
It doesn't help that it heavily rehashes a lot of stuff from the main game and some things that it does new just don't hit. The paintings with the face of Rubik that possess Leslie and you have to burn? Very lackluster. The scary Slenderman-type suit with the corporative themes? Too sterile and vanilla in comparisson to the main game, it doesn't even feel like it exists in the same visual universe. The cool glowstick section? It doesn't build up to anything of importance. The whole structure of "taking separate unconnected scenes to make a Kidman: Abridged Series"? Very disjointed and has a very abrupt sense of pacing.
Nah, very weak stuff. I'll give props for trying to deliver a whole character arc in a two parter DLC but they bit more than you could chew and in the process they ruined some of the cool mystique of the main game for the sake of spoonfeeding info that was already there if you payed attention. And again, in the process of trying to portray this Kidman independance arc, they made her look dumb as hell.
I'm actually furstrated because I had a damn good time with The Evil Within and I had my fill already, but I had to play this in case it had anything of importance to the sequel or had something cool. But no.