About 25ish hours into it at the moment, really enjoying it so far.

it's definitely more hack n slash compared to the first one, you can literally kill about 8 enemies with 1 move if you get the right positioning and timing. All classes and abilities are meaty as hell, the combat in general is awesome, much better than the original.

Story etc is good too, I was worried that having the game centered on 1 city would make it repetitive and to some extent that is true, but there is a lot of diversity in how you interact with various organisations and people in the city, that it stays fresh. I can already see im going to replay the game at least twice just to see what happens when you align with different people.

Some things do stick out however, all of the dungeon levels seem to be made of a very small amount of tile sets and get repetitive fairly quickly, from a visual standpoint.

Reading a few internet forums you would think that this was the worst game ever though, I don't really understand that, I'm having a real blast here and its definitely on an even footing with the original in terms of quality. I would say the demo doesn't help much as it showed a fairly bland portion of the game (ie, the beginning). It doe's take a while to get going and get you immersed into the world, but by the end of the first year I was hooked :)

From a performance standpoint, im running in dx11 on high settings with 4x antiailasing on a gtx460 and its a smooth 60fps for 90% of the time, dropping to perhaps 40 or so in the really hectic battles, perfectly fine in my book, though I have heard people having trouble in dx11 mode with freezes and poor frame rates.

So basicly, internet is over-reacting imo, this is a great game and I'm looking forward to replaying it many times probably! 

Never! 

I was unable to play the first F.E.A.R. expansion pack because my version of F.E.A.R. refuses to update, and the pack won't run unless it's an updated version. So it's a throwaway. However the second expansion pack for F.E.A.R., strangely titled Perseus Mandate, runs standalone so I could play it. That's not necessarily a good thing though. Clearly, I got the booby prize because Perseus Mandate received below average reviews, deservedly so.

There's very little story and what is there doesn't make much sense and gives you no reason to care at all about what's happening. This is action, pure and simple. And in this respect the action is just as good as the original game with some tough new enemies. But it is a fair bit more difficult, especially the last level. Not impossible by any means, but while I rarely used the bullettime feature in F.E.A.R., this time you need it for basically every single firefight. If not every single enemy even. So you do have to play much more meticulously and carefully. I did constantly have maximum health packs in my arsenal for almost all of the game, even at the end, so it's not frustratingly hard.

Where Perseus Mandate falls down, and I mean falls hard, is in it's presentation. Now the level design in F.E.A.R. was bland, boxy and very uninspiring. But Perseus Mandate takes this to a new level; this sort of design should never have gone past the 90's. Here we have box rooms littered with debris, box corridors littered with debris, large bland areas that look like they're only at the layout/concept stage. I don't understand how level designers this slack can be hired to work on a retail game. Even I, single handedly, could have made all the levels throughout this entire game at a much higher standard than what was released. What were these designers doing between F.E.A.R. being released in 2005 and this ugly box game in 2007. So, unfortunately, the game won't live up to 2007 standards at all. And the engine is looking dated with average models and lighting.

The game is still fun all the way through, but that's because Monolith already built a great set of enemies and gameplay structure. TimeGate haven't done much but fill their bland levels with this fun gameplay. Not really worth it unless you don't care what games look like, and sadly looking at the top review sites that make no mention of how bad these levels look, that's probably a large percentage of players. 

I was never able to patch F.E.A.R. with the installer either but you can open the installer with 7-zip and extract the files and patch it that way. It's a little confusing as there are duplicate files but I think I just used the larger of the duplicates and it worked fine and allowed EP to install. 

I don't understand how level designers this slack can be hired to work on a retail game


*waves*

Glad you thought it was fun at least :)

I will not argue that Perseus Mandate looks pretty bland in terms of the levels' art. I still think it has some of the funnest combat of any game I've made levels for.

While I don't want to make excuses for a bad looking game, there are reasons why it looks bad beyond just lack of talent or effort. The majority of good Quake SP maps probably have a longer development cycle than this entire game. :) 

Yeah totally Blitz... there's a number of reasons why the levels could have looked bland, it's definitely not always the level designers fault if they're simply not given the necessary amount of time to spend on the game. In fact 5-6 level designers surely wouldn't all be lacking. Or have an art director that doesn't value quality and detailed build and thinks all you need to do is fill it with prefabs. I mean, look at the amount of top review site that never make any mention of level design... they don't seem to differentiate between level design and the 'graphics'.

There was some decent looking stuff in Perseus... it definitely wasn't as mazey as the original game. But what I preferred were the underground bits, the part with the old underground subway (was it a subway? can't remember now), actually any section that wasn't warehouse or buildings like FEAR. The spooky bits were decent.

What other games have you worked on Blitz? 

> I mean, look at the amount of top review site that never make any mention of level design... they don't seem to differentiate between level design and the 'graphics'.

This. 

at most companies the level designer doesn't do environment art anyway -- that's a separate job. Not sure how monolith did it but something to consider when saying the "level design looked bland." 

An art director does not manage level designers. 

I couldn't remember what they call the lead level designer. maybe just lead level designer? 

yay or nay? 

I got it on sale for $20 or so. Still haven't played it. SO I can't help you. Dunno why I'm even typing this. 

 

My point is that gibbing isn't constant. You can barely go a single fight without some monster losing its organs in GoW. Which completely takes the satisfaction out of it.

Freaky, I was thinking about this very thing today. One of the things I like about Quake's gibletudinality is the fact that it almost feels like a sort of skill-based finishing move - i.e. you can't gib corpses - that would completely cheapen the whole experience; you have to hit a live monster with just the right amount of damage at the right time to get those crisp, chunky treats. I mean, the feeling of gibbing a Hellknight with the double-barrelled shotgun is a wonderful, precious thing for me. 

It also stops you from picking up anything the enemy drops on death as a downside. Managing to gib a Shambler is awesome. 

i often find myself setting up opportunities to gib. 3 rockets will kill a fiend, but 2 rockets, some shells and one more rocket is just particle spray fun! 

yeah... it's easy to gib grunts with the SSG, i find the skill is in making sure you don't gib, therefore get the backpack :)

But a game where you got extra bonus for gibbing would be cool, and create a nice incentive across all enemies to do the more "skillful" death. 

It also stops you from picking up anything the enemy drops on death as a downside.

Find that annoy tbh. Given that a lot of Quake maps (especially on skill 2) try to be really tight with ammo, it makes accidentally gibbing something rather annoying.

Same goes for Doom's random health chances. It screws up ammo balance, so whilst it might be neat for atmosphere, mechanically it isn't so great. 

yeah, the damage in doom is REALLY random. like... 5 - 60 damage random. :P 

Yeah it's pretty insane. Clip from a projectile can be bugger all to insane :(

But even small differences can be infuriating. If you vary health or damage just slightly then try to have a highly tuned bit of combat you get screwed over, because neither you nor the player can 100% rely on time/shots taken to kill something, which throws things off. You could say random is more exciting or tense but in this case it just means you've no idea if a given area would even be possible.

Speaking of randomness in games, ever played the original Robotron? That game is a text book example of being an insanely hard unpredictable bitch. But in a good way most of the time :P 

wait, are you talking about player weapons? iirc, they are pretty consistent. the RL has some random element to it, but shotguns and such always seemed to take the same number of shots to kill things. 

Either really, but in doom it's mainly incoming damage, but your own weapons can be somewhat random too, though happily not nearly as much :) 

you do suck. It's $10 on Steam so I would like you to play it now and tell me please. Now. 

For $10 I'm sure it's a good deal. 

Bloody fantastic game. Thoroughly enjoyed it. My biggest complaints were :

1.) The bad clipping all over the place. As previously said, it sucks running into an invisible wall or something. Felt they could have/should have done a better job with that.

2.) Ishi is a dick. I hated him more than Sarrano. Such a jerk, how come I got stuck with him instead of either of the other start guys?

Other than that, I didn't find it bad that I could gib people easily, because for me the hard part was getting the trick shots. Gibbing in Quake became trick shots in Bulletstorm. There were several I didn't get in my playthrough of the sp.

Felt some enemies weren't used enough (the giant mutant dudes you push towards some enviro hazard) and the mutated spider things were used ... for like 5 minutes.

Weapons + alt fire were pretty refreshing from the normal weapons imo. Some of them are kind of normal, but the rest are fairly innovative and change up the normal weapon progression pistol -> shotgun -> machine gun -> grenade -> rocket or whatever. They feel pretty good.

All in all, totally worth the $49 I got it for from the D2D sale. Maybe worth $60, depends on the mp which I haven't played. Would really like to see a UDK for it though, please please please!