jwheare Ok so I finally got round to playing it all the way through. The first time I tried it really did nothing for me. It was too dark and I couldn't make out any detail on my crappy TV. The world seemed uninteresting and very slow to give me any gratification for how awesome and deep it was supposed to be, as hammered in by the hype and grandiose teasing intro that I was completely unable to engage with.
But anyway, I got through that eventually and it turned into quite a fun and intriguing romp that held my attention for the most part. There are certainly some frustrating aspects to it, such as the "oh to complete the mission you just walk through that corridor and out the other side, oh wait the wall collapsed now you have to spend hours completing side missions for this maniac over here before you can proceed oh I NEVER SAW THAT COMING!" and the end was far too easy and anti-climactic given the rest of the game's pacing.
Another thing—and I think I'm just not well suited for this sort of RPG-*ish* game because I agonise over every decision and feel I need to explore every possible inch of a game that's put in front of me—there's too many damn crates and stuff to look in and half the time they're empty and unrewarding and all the "flavour" that's dotted around and painted on walls is pretty superficial. It's pretending to be a game that's incredibly deep and rich to explore but it doesn't really let you go there.
But yeah, you should probably play this, if only for cultural importance. It *is* really quite fun to hurl fire, ice and anything you can find around and I loved the radio snippets. It's certainly well crafted, The Twist™ *is* rather good, and sometimes the gameplay soars but it ended up leaving me with a good degree of post-coital emptiness.
Mon 12 Apr 2010 12:24pm