This game comes from a new studio called Flying Wild Hog, made up from members of People Can Fly (Painkiller), CD Projekt RED (The Witcher 2), and City Interactive (Sniper: Ghost Warrior). If you're wondering why those screenshots look half good that would be because it's a PC exclusive. Here's a very new gameplay vid with pretty detailed analysis of the first part of the game: http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-hard-reset/17-4731/ It starts out kind of basic, but around mid way through the vid you can really see the potential in the game. It plays like Painkiller in a futuristic setting, so personally I think I'll have a lot of fun with this one.
I really like the setting, very blade runner inspired. I'm not sure about only having two weapons that you upgrade though, however cool that upgrading may be. The robotic enemies also look a bit dull in combat... but if painkiller is anything to go by, I'm sure they will get better (and possibly muuuuch bigger) further into the game. If the price is right I'll definitely give it a go on release.
Looks very Prey-ish. Love the Hud but after watching the video it's seems lacking. Maybe there is a story of some sort.
I've played about 8 hours of this game and I have to say I'm liking it for the most part. The gameplay is very intense and the AI quite good! They are robots and it's all scripted so that shouldn't be too hard, but just the way they attack is quite different to most shooters and very brutal at times. While it's an old school style shooter there are many new school things, like checkpoints (no quicksave) which can seem out of place for such a game but it does make perfect sense to me. The weapons system is pretty nice, with 5 modes (4 unlocked via upgrades) for each weapon (gun and energy). The weapon transformation animations are very nice, although it still seems like you are missing the variety of 10 weapons at times. The way the weapons fire and the enemy models reacting and being damaged by the impact is very satisfying. Explosive weapons are very intense in this game. As for weapon switching which is pretty vital in the game, Q and E change weapon types, and 1-5 change weapon mode with each mode having a secondary fire/function mode that can be added via upgrades. This is a pretty nice system once you get used to it, although many weapons have a cool down time after firing that also stops you from switching weapon modes - this can be very frustrating in the intense battles! The gameplay is as I said scripted but still quite satisfying for me. The game is pretty challenging at times, especially when there are a few big robots coupled with a horde of small robots in a small space. The bad side for me is the interaction with environments. While the particle physics are pretty cool, anything that involves you jumping on objects to get to a secret or just in general is pretty horrible. It's very hard to judge jumps and I just find that I always feel like I'm driving a car and it will continue to roll forward after a jump... onto a narrow object. Not fun. I also tend to easily get stuck in corners and the like. You often get backed into walls by enemies and this is fine, I understand I need to work to avoid that, but what isn't great is the obstacles that line those walls sort of snagging you and stopping you from getting out of a sandwich between a robot and a wall. Most of these objects look like they should be movable too, which is disjointing considering the amount of other objects which explode and fly around when you shoot them. Somehow with all these objects that go flying under fire barging into a flimsy hospital bed is like running into a wall - only worse because of the abstract collision detection box surrounding it. It just feels like the collision detection boxes for objects are oversimplified and don't follow the contours of the objects very well. They really gimped the whole 'platforming' side of the game in every way - you can't crouch, yet there are many small openings with things behind them you want to get to (why even have the obvious opening? Just to taunt us that we can't crouch?!) sprint is just a mindless charge that you cant combine with anything (just slow turning) and jumping seems stupidly detached and strange. This is all fine and I especially understand the more realistic sprinting, but trying to get to some secrets or general areas is just an exercise in futility. Graphics are pretty damn good with the highlight being the elemental and particle effects. Electricity and explosions are pretty awesome as well as just the impact of attacks on the robots, they get knocked back with sparks and shards of metal flying off them. It's really immersive. The overall feel of the graphics is like a sharper Bioshock, only that everything is a bit more mechanical due to the differing setting. The ingame "menu" system for upgrade terminals and the likes is very cool. Once you get used to it the whole system just makes sense. It took some adapting to stop myself from pressing 'E' on everything, which changed to your energy weapon in this game. I can't seem to follow the story of the game as the comic style animated cut scenes are rather underwhelming most of the time - they have their moments though. Regardless, the story seems both generic and confusing to me. 8/10 so far. The core gameplay while oldschool is top notch. Battles are intense, enemies react well and the feel of the weapons amazing. Story seems generic and confusing but good enough for this sub-genre. Graphics are very strong however anything to do with object-player interaction is frustrating.
I'm not sure how long the campaign is but so far it definitely seems pretty worth the ~$27(whatever $29USD converts to) I spent. At any cheaper this is an absolute must buy for anyone that loved games like Q1/2, Unreal, Serious Sam or Painkiller. Even people who enjoyed Bioshock will find a lot to like in this game.
Bad news, the game ended once I hit around 9hrs. Since I play very slow that means the campaign is probably around 8hrs. Not really bad for $30 but the price isn't so great now... I'd definitely pay $5 for a 4hr+ expansion though. On the plus side they released a patch today that fixed many of my gripes, the main ones being; - You can sprint before the sprint bar charges fully for a shorted period (obviously) - Sprint replenishes 20% faster - Cool down for weapons disabled so that you can switch weapons right after firing (yay!) - Can now disable game startup videos (this got annoying) - One button (F) switches weapon types. Having two buttons really didn't make sense when there was only two weapons, one switch button is far less confusing when in intense combat. - Far less restrictions for key bindings The other thing I'm interested in trying out is the AA options. I played the game with the recommended MLAA setting, but I know MLAA doesn't always look/perform as well as newer methods. They've replaced MLAA with FXAA which is a far better method for both quality and efficiency. I'll have to see if I notice the difference or if it works at all since I haven't used FXAA on my 5870 for any game yet. Maybe they've just been in Nvidia's pocket and the setting won't work for ATI cards.