I am so confused about this game.

On one hand, it's not what I wanted. My superficial expectations for the game were for it to be a photo sim set in a cyberpunk dystopia.

But on the other hand, what I ended up getting was a photo sim set in a cyberpunk dystopia using environmental storytelling from the perspective of a photographer... With arcade goals and a timer that lock a lot of the tools for photography.

It's this weird clash where the music is incredible, the art direction can be stunning, the details and on the nose commentary gel soooooo well together. The mission goals are a cool way to force you to go around and get creative taking pictures while exploring the levels. But that timer encourages to do all that as fast as possible. Which discouraged me from really settling in and taking everything in.

Not to mention the score system is fairly arbitrary. I had instances where taking a photo of a wall would earn me tons more than one that was significantly more detailed, complex and difficult. So I didn't have much reason to not take pics that just earned me the most points as opposed to what I thought looked better.

Also the game is big jank. I would get launched 400 feet up in the air just by climbing up the stairs, go at mach 5 by slightly touching a rail, clipping under the map just because i walked forward.

That said play it because the cool stuff IS REALLY COOL.

It's crazy that it took this long for someone other than the Clownporate Overlords from the Triple A underworld to get around to basically aping 1:1 the entire concept of the Call of Booty zombies mode. It's kinda of a shame that it isn't as potent of a hit that I would like it to be.

Up front, if you're coming in for that stuff and just plan on doing rounds, screw everything else, come in and have a ton of fun. It does a serviceable to decent job at scratching that itch if you want a different flavor.

I'm coming at this from the main story goals the game has. First impressions were like "Oh, these are cute, I sure hope these diversify". Those are the first impressions of a fool. All the goals in the game, and I do mean every single one involved a variation of the following:

- Stand in a stupidly small circle and kill enemies to fill a bar. (Some short, some that took rounds to fill. Also some which are in really awkward, claustrophobic positions)

- Kill enemies in a dumb stupid circle.

- Escort something to somewhere. (Mini-escort missions in this type of game are a choice.)

- Do something different for once... To then stand in a circle.

- Find object, charge object by standing in circle.

- Find object and shoot at it or put it somewhere.

There's so many of these per single map that they feel mind-numbingly repetitive even for a style of game that's already lobotomy inducing repetitive.

The mini-boss style enemies are just kinda an annoyance more than a drastic change in gameplay. They come around and you can just make quick work of them with your knife. Which is the opposite problem of something like Tall of Cutie Zombies, in this game, with the right upgrades even some of the bosses will disintegrate with your knife.

The bosses themselves could be super cool if they weren't just the same mini-bosses, but Super Ultra Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX versions of them. And most of them didn't really have enough mechanics going on which is probably why they're infested with a bunch of the normal goons you fight throughout the maps and for some of them that vast majority is compromised of the special goons that could send you crying straight to heaven in a blink of an eye.

What super sucks for that is that those strong gooners can also be absurd damage sponges even with a incredibly upgraded weapon. Which results every single boss fight having you do dumb little circles around the arena and putting your two index fingers together and going "🥺👉👈 pwease doon't hwit me" to the special gooners as you keep shooting at the boss until they're eventually dead.

The perks themselves are just variations of a lot of the stuff you see in Roll of Doobie. Elixir of Life is Juggernog, Stallion Juice is Stamin-Up, etc. But the main difference is that you start off with extremely butchered versions of these perks. And I mean butchered. So for example Elixir of Life starts off at 33% as opposed to Juggernog's more than double. The thing is that they don't stay at that, they have a way where you can actually go and upgrade them through this progression system where you basically get three different variations of skill points and the higher the upgrade tier, the different skill point variation you use.

This to me is a really shallow way to put progression into the game. Where it'd just be infinitely better to have the perks and that's it. Especially when you already have like five? different fake battle passes you can grind for fun if you wanted to go that route for progression and that unlocks a bunch of lil customization things.

The maps were too same-y and a lot of the in-map locations really blended together for me. I ended going around in circles over and over trying to find the single dumb thing that I needed to get. Definitely needed a lot more areas that were like "OH THAT PLACE." but its mostly tunnels and hallways that lead to big circles.

I don't know, it's neat that there's someone out there trying this formula, but other than a neat lil variation that's still fun enough to playthrough, it's kinda eh. If you're a dumb Wall of Nookie Zombies diehard like myself then sure, but if you're more of someone that's somewhat interested or has minimal experience with Paul of Booty, just get Blops the Third on steam with Zambambo Chronicles and rock the hell out of the steam workshop.