Beat
Control. Really good game. The ashtray maze with the metal song playing and fighting waves in moving cool environments was the highest point of the game and climax imo. Very awesome and would've liked more of that kinda moving environments gameplay in the game. The ending was kinda weak and after doing all the waves waiting for the cable car and then in the ashtray maze, doing them again at Hedron and then again at the final boss area got kinda tiring. It's weird how like 90% of the enemies can't even hit you in endgame and then like 2 enemy types can kill you in 2 hits (throwing shit enemies) so you can go waves and then they spawn and you die in 2 hits and do it again and watch out specifically for them.
Anyhow, liked the story, really liked the VA by the main gal who plays Jesse and Trench/Max Payne is great of course. Great art, great combat though could use some more useful weapons and powers (is there any reason to ever use the world's shittiest sniper rifle and the grenade launcher that doesn't do damage and just interrupts? When is shield/seize ever actually needed?) and more enemy variety. Also more gameplay variety too with puzzles and stuff could've mixed it up a bit.
I still have the new expeditions mode which is looong waves and dunno if I'll bother and a few of the tedious filler sidequests (go do a dozen different things through the whole map again!). Also the
spoiler (click to show/hide)
fake ending kinda ran on a bit long
but overall real good and very much worth full price and the time. Would give it like an A- in the end.
I very much appreciate how it's sorta Alan Wake 2 with very specific connections and overall settings/style is basically Alan Wake with better combat and less exploration. It's a better game than Alan Wake for sure.
Will definitely play the DLC expansions next year. Both sound interesting.
Oh and the diablo rng loot stuff was really pointless Never had to make mods since you get enough in combat and there's a lot of useless mods. Once I have my setup I pretty much just replaced them here and there with higher tier versions and was good. Would like more variety of useful mods in the expansions/sequel.
The levitation is a pretty drastic game changer in the combat, and you get it near the end.
My main problems with the game are a couple of audio visual choices that conflict with gameplay (everything is fucking red, you can't see shit sometimes, and too many things make too similar of a sound, to be used as cues for attacks), and, particularly, kind of underwhelming boss fights.
They gain their challenge entirely from the absurd damage dealt and the bullet spongyness, rather than interesting attack patterns or mechanics (except maybe the anchor?).
Didn't even bother beating end-game Tommasi, for this reason, it took forever to get his shield down, and he killed me in two hits, but since his attacks are brain dead stupid to avoid, they just drop a bunch of adds in the arena. Lame.
Levitation does change things up although it mostly just changes dashing around strafting and throwing shit to flying around strafing and throwing shit.
But since teleport float is not tied to energy usage and makes you harder to hit it does make things easier. Throw throw throw and then jump and float and shoot shoot shoot while air dashing to dodge stuff big guys throw.
The funny thing is that Tommasi fight is
exactly the same as the first boss in the game Tommasi fight. For me, even having beaten the game and done most/all the optional bosses, that first Tommasi fight was the hardest. I got stuck for 30-40 mins on it and had to cheat through it, but I did the endgame one fair and square and beat it. In that first fight he still kills you in 2 hits of things he throws, you have no powers against launch and he dodges your launch (although I learned later in the game that floating enemies only dodge your first launch and the second and third in a row hit, so I'm guessing I could've hit him but I assumed launch didn't work on him since he'd dodge when I threw stuff) and the only weapon you have is the starting one and the shotgun which doesn't help since he's so far away.
So since your options are severely limited and he kills you in 2 hits while spawning enemies and has a ton of HP and all you can do is get some pop pop pop shots in between reload times...that fight was fucking hard. It was the only part in the game I had to use a trainer for! The rest was fine when more options opened up.
On endgame one at least I could float up to the top level area so I avoid his spawns and can just launch shit at him non-stop and levitate dodge while energy recharged to repeat.