A new FPS from Raven. They've decided to avoid using nazis and space mutants and have gone for a much more original, less cliched villain... Communist Russians!
Basic plot: an abandoned island with a research facility on it studying a mysterious new substance (Macguffinisium!) that is a general catch all wonder substance that can manipulate time, make super powered weapons and turn people into mutants! Arriving on the island you get sent back in time and accidentally change history, causing the whole world to be taken over by the Russians.
Gameplay:
Standard 2 weapon swapping system. However there are weapon lockers scattered around that let you choose between any weapon you've picked up at any point and there are plenty of generic 'every ammo type' pickups to ensure that you can keep the same two weapons for most of the game with no need to ever really switch from your favourites (except for the incredibly fun to use seeker which lets you control the bullets)
You have access to plasmi... sorry the 'TMD' which give you the access to various time control abilities (slow down time, age enemies or scenery, repair scenery, gravity gun clone and so on. As usual you can find hidden objects which give you access to various upgrades for weapons and abilities where, as in most games, you'll utterly fail to notice their effect.
There is a bit of time travel but it's heavily underused, only popping up on a few occasions.
Opinion:
The game lacks any real identity, it copies left right and center from other, better games, there are two completely different plots merged together: high tech commies and people turning into mutants and they just don't fit. At times it feels like Bioshock, at other times HL2 and it even borrows heavily from Halo's flood.
It's also worth noting that the PC version is a shockingly poor conversion. No quicksaving, you can only have a single save (which is done at automatic checkpoints). The only graphical options are resolution, brightness and v-sync. The textures are horribly low resolution, the texture filtering is awful. For some reason the volume is incredibly low, especially for speech which gets drowned out by everything (naturally there are no subtitles). The controls are also designed for a joypad, with it requiring you to map far far too many keys.
It's fun to play but everything this game does has been done better elsewhere. It offers little new.
Basic plot: an abandoned island with a research facility on it studying a mysterious new substance (Macguffinisium!) that is a general catch all wonder substance that can manipulate time, make super powered weapons and turn people into mutants! Arriving on the island you get sent back in time and accidentally change history, causing the whole world to be taken over by the Russians.
Gameplay:
Standard 2 weapon swapping system. However there are weapon lockers scattered around that let you choose between any weapon you've picked up at any point and there are plenty of generic 'every ammo type' pickups to ensure that you can keep the same two weapons for most of the game with no need to ever really switch from your favourites (except for the incredibly fun to use seeker which lets you control the bullets)
You have access to plasmi... sorry the 'TMD' which give you the access to various time control abilities (slow down time, age enemies or scenery, repair scenery, gravity gun clone and so on. As usual you can find hidden objects which give you access to various upgrades for weapons and abilities where, as in most games, you'll utterly fail to notice their effect.
There is a bit of time travel but it's heavily underused, only popping up on a few occasions.
Opinion:
The game lacks any real identity, it copies left right and center from other, better games, there are two completely different plots merged together: high tech commies and people turning into mutants and they just don't fit. At times it feels like Bioshock, at other times HL2 and it even borrows heavily from Halo's flood.
It's also worth noting that the PC version is a shockingly poor conversion. No quicksaving, you can only have a single save (which is done at automatic checkpoints). The only graphical options are resolution, brightness and v-sync. The textures are horribly low resolution, the texture filtering is awful. For some reason the volume is incredibly low, especially for speech which gets drowned out by everything (naturally there are no subtitles). The controls are also designed for a joypad, with it requiring you to map far far too many keys.
It's fun to play but everything this game does has been done better elsewhere. It offers little new.
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