I don't remember which state of play this game was first announced in, but I definitely remember seeing this game getting unveiled and being curiously interested for both good and bad reasons. On one hand, I thought that color-based territory and movement mechanics were too cool of a concept to be only used by one particular game series, and I was intrigued to see how this game plays and potentially evolves from other titles of its ilk, especially given how this game has Square Enix backing it up. On the other hand, the CGI announce trailer and character designs definitely gave me very "overwatch SFM" vibes. The art direction and derivative game concept definitely made it incredibly easy to make low-blow jokes online over, that's for certain. And as everyone online continued to make jokes (myself honestly included at that point), this game still remained in the back of my mind until then. That's certainly not a quality most games announced at a State of Play possess.

Some months later, and another State of Play happens announcing an open beta network test to try the game out early, so naturally I had to give it a try and see what the fuck they were actually cooking, and I actually quite enjoyed it! Eventually they announced the full games release date and the game remains mostly untouched from the beta with the exception of a few new game modes being introduced (and season pass microtransactions being shoehorned into the game, gee thanks). They even made it free on PS plus this month, so I could just drop right back into the action when the game launched!

The game itself is actually surprisingly not as derivative as I thought it was going to be. Yes, you shoot blobs of color that cover the arenas and can use them for movement purposes, but there's no gamemodes where it's a contest on who can cover the most ground in their color. Rather, the main gamemode is more like the Light Vs. Dark mode in Kid Icarus Uprising, where each team has a life pool that, once depleted, turns a team member into a powered up "star" player, where defeating the opponents star player wins the game. There is also a 2v2-style game mode as well as a payload pushing tower defending mode to add some variety. It makes for a much more aggro-oriented game experience, especially considering the fact that in order to chill (not kill, DO NOT CONFUSE THE TWO) someone, not only do you need to blast them until their health runs out, but also run into their foam-balled up downed form with your surfboard. Running into downed teammates with your surfboard resurrects them from their soapy demise, so the game emphasizes huddling together and cooperating to succeed. The foam can't be used to cover walls and climb them, but rather it clumps up which can be used in various ways like making a wall, building a high ground, ensuring a spot doesn't get covered by the enemy as easily, etc. It's certainly unique. That being said, the bullets being slow bubbles definitely gives the guns less impact and the clumpy nature of the foam can kinda turn the large choke points in the maps into big uneven bumpy wastelands that can be hard to parse, so it's not like it's a flawless gameplay experience. There is a single player mode but its really more just like tutorial stuff so like PS plus is basically required to have any semblance of content out of this game, it sure as hell aint worth 30 bucks for some offline tutorials.

The biggest impression this game left on me though was its environmental design and general aesthetic. The dark blacks and blues of the night sky being contrasted with the glimmering golds of the city and bright pastel neon colors of the foam just gives the game this luxuriant appearance. Some real sophistifuture shit, where the hubworld is a high-rise penthouse, the giant neon LCD billboards play stylish ads for fictional brands, the menus are overseen by a mascot rave DJ, and EVERYTHING is a party of the most expensive caliber. The vibe is certainly strong, and Bath Vegas is certainly a video game place I would want to live in IRL. The game world feels like it is made out of money in such a pompously luxuriant fashion, and the modern game PS5-ass graphical rendering makes every golden handrail and illuminated bubble glow all the brighter. The character designs grew on me and I find their personalities endearing, the 2D CGI art from the story missions have a lot of personality in them. I even like the weird goofy mocapped animations that everyone has in the lobbies, every time I can get a full team of randos to do the doofiest synchronized dances always fills me with raw energy. There was certainly a huge amount of genuine care that went into the creation of this world and its inhabitants, and I appreciate it a lot. Did I also mention that this games OST absolutely slams way harder than it ever had the right to? Like holy shit man I am WAITING for this shit to get an OST release, like seriously dude this shit BUMPS.

Let's not beat around the bush anymore though, nobody else really cares about all of that. Despite the beta being loudly announced in a large playstation announcement video I had a hard time finding ANYONE else who even knew about its existence, yet alone was actually PLAYING it. Whenever I would bring it up in various servers I was in, I would mostly get ridiculed for wanting to play "the shitty splatoon for straight people", and to "just play actual splatoon instead", dismissing me the same way they dismissed the game. It reminded me of trying to talk about Yo-Kai Watch back in the day with friends of mine only into Pokemon, they just don't care and only made the same low-effort jokes about something I genuinely liked just because it was similar in the most surface-level aspects. I did manage to convince some of my friends to give it a shot during the beta, and the gameplay left them unimpressed. They likely won't ever play the full game. While the game being free on PS plus certainly gives it solid publicity and a decent starting playerbase, I can't help but feel like a lot of the players trying the game out are going to bounce off of it after only a few hours of playing. In fact, I already have seen plenty of reviews here that are from people that have done exactly that. At least they gave it a try instead of just outright making fun of it without even playing it, i guess... Normally I don't really take very much into account what a games general reputation is, but in something that's trying to be a more multiplayer focused live-service type beat, having the game be such a huge punching bag is a huge problem that's entirely outside the developers control. I've seen more people online compare this game to fucking Morbius than actually talk about the game itself. Searching the game up on youtube brings more videos with shocked clickbait thumbnails titled "will it die?" or "is it ACTUALLY good?" than not. Mainstream gamers don't know the game even exists, and it's a laughingstock to the more core gaming crowd. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist; I can't see this game gaining a large enough playerbase to last more than a year because of its reputation.

And that really sucks!!! Because this game is actually really cool and it feels like a lot of work and passion went into this game! It really reminds me of stuff like Survival Quiz City, where much like how for that game the small team of Gyaar studio was able to make it under the funding and publishing of Bandai Namco, ToyLogic was able to make this game with the backing of Square Enix. It has that solid AA feeling that a lot of modern games these days don't have, ironically something clamored by most of the same core gaming audience that dismisses this game in the first place aaaaAAAAA!!! I've been having a lot of fun with it though, and will continue to do so. I put like 5-6 hours into the beta, and have pretty much spent all of my fleeting free time just playing the full game constantly since it dropped, which is saying something, considering the fact one of my favorite games of all time got remade quite recently and yet I play this instead. If you have PS plus to be able to play online, I highly recommend giving this game an earnest shot. It's certainly not perfect, but the game is fun! The vibes are cool! What use would a giant golden festive city be if nobody wants to party in it?

oh my GODDDD this game was frustrating, and not in a fun way. shitty controls and combat made this a slog to get through. there were WAY too many levels with the same enemies over and over and the combat was repetitive as hell. however, this game has incredible artistic value for both its character design and environments. we simply do not see games like this or vampire: bloodlines anymore, and it made me miss 2000s goth culture. i would recommend watching a playthrough for anyone wanting to experience this game.

First things first I really like the artstyle, and the first hour of the game... but everything after that is just not really that great.

The story of the game is pretty generic, and you know all the secrets after like 10 minutes or so, so there is not a lot to uncover here. The game also tells you it has a lot of endings and all your decisions matter... which is false because in reality it has only like... 3, and they don't even differ from each other that much.

The game has a lot of problems with it's design. In the first half you follow a certain goal... but it doesn't really matter that much, because you achieve that goal anyway even if you do nothing. So what was the point of figuring out stuff, in the first half of the game, in the first place? Maybe the game should punish me somehow if I DIDN'T do that... but no... the same thing happens everytime. And here we get to another problem; if you die, you get one bad ending... and get thrown to the beginning of the game... and to get back to the point where you died you need to run around for another 15 to 20 minutes. This is not fun or scary, this is annoying.

Another problem is that the game tells you shit about one of the mechanics that is important in the second half of the game, which is hiding from the enemies. You can only figure it out by pure luck, no hints whatsoever.

"Uncanny Valley" is a game with a lot of potential and great looking artstyle... but the generic mystery and bad design really bring it down for me.

This is tough to rate. I am enamored with the wuxia-inspired, non-specific Asian fantasy setting, with its striking landscapes and architecture. It's evocative without being a caricature or cliche. On the other hand, the game doesn't have much time for expansive worldbuilding and lore.

The graphics are great showcase for the PS3, but there are some baaad slowdowns and screen tearing occasionally. The mo-capped facial animations were truly next-gen at the time, though.

The writing is pretty good, but the superb voice acting takes it to a whole other level. The heroines Nariko and Kai, as well as the main villain Bohan (played by Andy Serkis), all have fantastic performances.

On the other hand, everybody is just a little bit nuts.

The villains come off as grotesquely buffoonish. Serkis’s Bohan walks the fine line between menacing villain and pathetic narcissist, a Trump-like figure, but the sub-bosses (Flying Fox, Whiptail, and Roach) are just cartoons that feel out of place against the seriousness of the rest of the story.

Nariko herself is a wonderful lead, a powerful, magnetic presence in the game, but the splash art on the title and loading screens make her look like a pornstar. Surprisingly, the sweet, crazy little Kai is not annoying at all thanks to good character design and outstanding voice acting (TWING TWANG).

The QTEs suck. They come up quite suddenly, can be hard to spot in the moment, distract from the cinematic action, and are quite strict. The ones that require directional input are the worst, because half the time you'll be a little too diagonal on the analog stick (down-left instead of pure left, for example) and the input will fail.

The battle system, focusing on predefined combos and a color-coded counter system, is enjoyable. In this game, you block automatically by waiting in the correct stance and not attacking, and then hitting the counterattack button at the right time. This is clever because it discourages button mashing. Either way, I suck at this type of game generally and there is no easy difficulty option, only a “Hell Mode” that unlocks after you complete the game once. That said, I only died during the boss fights, so the game isn’t too hard overall.

The main points of frustration are the QTEs and the energy beams you have to counter from the last boss, which are really strict timing-wise.

The sixaxis motion controls are terrible and make the game so much harder, but thankfully you can turn them all off. Once I turned off the gyro controls, I really started to enjoy the archery and artillery sections of the game. The game peaks in the 3rd chapter, when you have quick alternating scenes between Nariko and Kai.

I liked the game at first, then I started to hate it, but then I started to like it again towards the end... except for the frustrating final boss fight.

Incidentally, this game also spawned an animated feature film, but it was terrible. The main characters were fairly detailed, but the animations were stiff and lifeless, the non-main characters looked like NPCs from a PS2 game, and the backgrounds were just low-poly mounds with a simple texture applied. It looked more like machinima than theatrical-level animation.

The writing also took a huge nosedive. Boring, wooden dialogue. All the subtle characterizations from the game are gone, whether it’s Kai’s nuttiness, Bohan’s manic narcissim, the sad and tortured relationship between Bohan and his son Roach, or even the little rivalry between Flying Fox and Whiptail. Nariko’s voice actor reprises the role, but her fiercely impassioned delivery from the game is gone, and now she spends the entire movie sounding only lightly chuffed. Kai goes from twing twang in the game to I like blood in the movie. Just garbage screenwriting.

We do get a little extra backstory. Bohan was always a backstabbing jerk who never can get the respect he thinks he deserves. Nariko and Kai are actually biological sisters, because apparently their father Shen went on a big raping spree after Nariko was born, desperately trying to sire a son as the Chosen One. And in fact there is a son, named Loki, but he’s just a blacksmith who is literally stabbed in the back after spouting some contradictory dialogue. That's one way to subvert a trope, I guess, but the whole plotline is just a stupid waste of 1/3 of the screen time.

The whole thing (the movie, not the game) is just awful. A simple compilation of the cutscenes from the game would have been better. Apparently Andy Serkis not only voiced game-Bohan, but also helped write the dialogue and direct the cutscenes. His presence is sorely missed from the movie.