aggressivelly so-so
this is a game that wishes it was a movie, and i wish it was a movie too.
never have i realized how much some games wanna be other medium while trying their hardest to milk the platform they are in, here is a game that wants to tell a story with all its strenght but is so ashamed to be a ''game'' that it only does the bare minimun a game should have in order to sell it as one, i was wondering why i wasn't liking the open world in this game for a while, even if its small and rather thematically pleasing, the reason is that its padding, the entire open world is just padding, its so they can get away with making you spend a total of 12 to 17 hours driving from A to B and call it a game at the end of your experience, ocasionally you'll participate in the barebones shootout (around 6 to 8 times max) if you took off the padding of the driving, all you'd have is a bunch of cutscenes and very few shooting sections, its like it doesn't wanna be a game and it had to be one.
its not the map padding either, the game asks itself ''what do open worlds have ??'' then add small things to fill the quota.
open world has clothing ? add 6 or 7 clothing styles max
open world has car customization ? let them change the tires and the car number.
it also legitimatelly punishes you if you just wanna fuck around too, unlike other open worlds that know they are basically theme based toyboxes, this one will only allow you to stay in the mission path and if you try to have some weird fun, it will punish you by forcing you to go change clothes or change car because you can't just avoid the police, you gotta do a boring stealth drive to change everything then go back to doing missions like a very good boy player of gameTM that you are, compare it to something like yakuza 2 which didn't had half the budget this had yet knew how to be a compelling story AND a great game and you see where i'm coming from.
yet despite all that i was greatly invested in the characters and the story, even if it boils down to a mafia slice of life with really dumb protags. overall i don't know what to think so i think it sucks but i would watch the cutscenes on youtube anytime
this is a game that wishes it was a movie, and i wish it was a movie too.
never have i realized how much some games wanna be other medium while trying their hardest to milk the platform they are in, here is a game that wants to tell a story with all its strenght but is so ashamed to be a ''game'' that it only does the bare minimun a game should have in order to sell it as one, i was wondering why i wasn't liking the open world in this game for a while, even if its small and rather thematically pleasing, the reason is that its padding, the entire open world is just padding, its so they can get away with making you spend a total of 12 to 17 hours driving from A to B and call it a game at the end of your experience, ocasionally you'll participate in the barebones shootout (around 6 to 8 times max) if you took off the padding of the driving, all you'd have is a bunch of cutscenes and very few shooting sections, its like it doesn't wanna be a game and it had to be one.
its not the map padding either, the game asks itself ''what do open worlds have ??'' then add small things to fill the quota.
open world has clothing ? add 6 or 7 clothing styles max
open world has car customization ? let them change the tires and the car number.
it also legitimatelly punishes you if you just wanna fuck around too, unlike other open worlds that know they are basically theme based toyboxes, this one will only allow you to stay in the mission path and if you try to have some weird fun, it will punish you by forcing you to go change clothes or change car because you can't just avoid the police, you gotta do a boring stealth drive to change everything then go back to doing missions like a very good boy player of gameTM that you are, compare it to something like yakuza 2 which didn't had half the budget this had yet knew how to be a compelling story AND a great game and you see where i'm coming from.
yet despite all that i was greatly invested in the characters and the story, even if it boils down to a mafia slice of life with really dumb protags. overall i don't know what to think so i think it sucks but i would watch the cutscenes on youtube anytime