TL;DR: not a bad game, but couldn’t vibe with it on a personal level.
Synopsis: Asian is recruited to their family tech business to work on their research team. During the hiring process, he is knocked out and wakes up on a space station.
On a technical level, this game is impressive. The graphics are highly optimized, and can run at 144 fps consistently on max settings, even with a mediocre (8 GB graphics card). There are a few annoying bugs and crashes here and there, but not enough to nearly ruin the experience. The story is well done, especially by the standards of a video game, and the start of the game was incredible. The gameplay and mechanics (particularly the glue gun), are very innovative and can’t really be compared to any other game.
The game also makes it easy to keep your suspension of disbelief - in lots of other games (e.g. Skyrim) you can sneak in front of people and not have them see you, or hide mid-battle and watch your enemies go back to normal in 5 minutes. In this game, if you do that your enemies will stay in the area for hours waiting for you to come out (trust me, I know they do). Realism was definitely a goal when this game was being developed.
That said, personally I had mixed feelings about the game. The gunplay is bad as it rewards spamming and not aiming. The effects/soundtrack are high quality from a technical perspective, but some of them sound unpleasant to the human ear. My general impression is that the developers of either the game are highly intelligent and competent, but lack artistic vision, so they are unable to design great gameplay or art.
I.
I was recommended this game by a commenter on the blog, thought it had good summary and marketing physiognomy, and gave it a go. The original game (which I have not played before) was made by 2k games, who are responsible for creating Bioshock and Borderlands, which I would consider top tier shooters; the remake was made by Bethesda, a studio which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, they have done some very ambitious work (e.g. Oblivion, Skyrim) which I feel did not live up its potential , but was nevertheless decent. The other titles they have made are either irrelevant or overrated, personally I thought Fallout New Vegas was one of the worst games I have ever played. In fact, my favorite title from Bethesda is Dishonored.
My first thought upon playing the game for the first time was “wait, I’m an Asian guy?”; normally studios have their protagonists be White people or DEI minorities, but having an Asian guy (or girl, for that matter) be the protagonist is quite avant garde. On that note, I think there is a notable absence of White people in this game. I’m pretty sure (without checking) that there are more Black characters than White characters, which is not realistic for a tech company.
The start of the game is… unusual, but in a good way. You wake up in your apartment (system shock style), go to the helicopter, and go to a facility. Then, you are administered some simple psychological and physical employment tests where you are monitored by 3 people. This combination of social observation and simple tasks is surprisngly effective at making you feel anxious and on edge. Then, the proctors are complaining about some technical difficulty and then… Shit hits the fan.
Then, you wake up (again!) in your apartment and shit happens. I’m not going to spoil the rest of the story, but I will say that things did not happen for the reasons I expected them to, and the baseline narrative is innovative and solid. After the initial 2-5 hours or so, I found myself dreading the gameplay more than anything (very hard to stay full health/ammo, which is very annoying).
Scoring:
Design (16/20):
Atmosphere: (5/5)
Graphics: (5/5)
UI: (2/2)
Bugs: (1/2) - several crashes and bugs
Sound: (1/2) - high quality, but ugly
OST: (1/2) - not appealing
Character designs: (1/2)
Script (21/25):
Character Investment: (4/5)
Character Realism: (2/2)
Character Complexity: (2/3)
Writing: (9/10)
Ending: (4/5) (didn’t finish)
Gameplay (19/30):
Skill expression: (7/10) - guns are too inaccurate
RNG: (3/5) - crits, random explosions/enemies
Satisfaction: (5/10) - too little ammo, guns don’t do enough damage, can’t kill anything. even with good aim most enemies will melt you if you don’t have HP or upgrades.
Optionality: (2/3)
Novelty: (2/2)
Value (12/15):
Skill: (4/5)
Originality: (5/5)
Thematic elements: (3/5) - some technological/philosophical exploration
Enjoyment (6/10):
Did I like it: (6/10) - was exciting at first, but the gameplay wore on me. Please add more healthpacks/ammo.