Ok, finished it. Overall I thought it was a great action game. The core swinging mechanics were a lot of fun and the combat was mostly alright though it was broken as hell since grab w/arm -> throw instant killed any grunt and took out others as well. I liked the robot dudes with different patterns though the snipers could have been dropped all together.
The mini-games were GORGEOUS LOOKING and fun (jet part, final boss); would have liked to see more of them to give more variety between swinging -> stop kill everyone -> swinging -> repeat. I do like that in about half the firefights you can just swing through them and avoid them altogether.
The weapons were cool and the weapon specific challenges and challenges in general kept the combat fresh since were always playing different to unlock that achievement/trophy and get a character upgrade.
Length was pretty good; must've been about 9-10 hours. Story was lol, but it never got in the way. I liked that it was told mainly through dialogue while you were just playing the level. Not watching cutscenes ftw.
Once you got out of the starting city the graphics were good and sometimes REALLY GOOD. The art direction is real nice. The one part where you swing out of the caves through dual waterfalls to trees with the sun glare in your eyes is stunning. The final boss part is amazing looking and other parts were striking as well. I really didn't like the effect of blurring all the textures until you STOP and focus for a 1/2 second. The game looks good, so blurring stuff out of focus kinda detracts.
The music is awesome. Soooo good. Very heroic.
Now the problems I had:
-I had read the game was challenging/difficult/frustrating. I actually don't think it is 85% of the time. Especially since it's so easy to kill enemies with throwing things around and the swinging is easy since even if you mess up there's usually SOMETHING to grab to pull yourself back together without falling. That being said there were a few parts that got me cursing and very mad:
1) WORM BOSS; first of all it has way too much HP, 2nd of all when it did the shockwave parts in the 2nd half sometimes when I jumped I would RANDOMLY STUMBLE upon landing which delayed my 2nd jump causing me to get hit and then because of the timing you get hit again and die then have to do the entire first part of the boss again. Luckily on my 3rd attempt I found the cheat where you just hang on the trees during the shockwave part and skip it entirely. Although then I killed the worm and he fell in the middle and by the time I got there he woke back up and recovered 30% of his life back....@_@
2) Sniper part early on (not first part, but 2nd with 8-10 snipers on you at once) was annoying.
3) The Oil Rig level just sucked in terms of combat. Fighting two hadouken throwing robots while being shot at by snipers and every type of normal grunt is a bit overkill. Ended up just going straight for the snipers and taking them out first, then get away from the normal grunts and take out the two robots and then leaving
Then there were just a few times where I wasn't sure where it wanted me to swing, so I swing to the wrong place and die from radiation and my last checkpoint is far, far, far ago and I have to redo all the combat again.
Otherwise the difficulty seemed good.
-Then it's just the stupid way they handled achievements/collectables. Not being able to jump to any level and get the ones you are missing is so dumb. Not being able to have multiple saves to get the combat ones without redoing the entire game is dumb too. I
love collecting useless crap in games that is hard to get. I really wanted to try to get all the collectables. But I wasn't going to scour every area bit by bit to make sure I get them all and meanwhile everytime I die I have to do it all again. That would ruin the pacing of the game. Another way they could have made collectables fun would be to give achievements like Batman; 10%, 20%, 50%, etc... then even if you're not going to get them all, at least you have an incentive to grab the ones you find along the way. The whole "all or nothing" achievement/trophy for collectables is terrible without being able to use level select.
-The loading when you die. I dunno how it is on X360 when installed, but on PS3 after you die it takes about 20 seconds to load the area again. Even though I think the difficulty is fine, I died A LOT at parts in BC and I was fine with that cause I'd just keep trying and try different strategies and win. But the 20 second load between each 1 min attempt (since you die VERY QUICKLY) was annoying.
Still those aren't a lot of complaints to a good playing, good looking, good length action title. With a some better decisions, dev time BC seems like a game that could've been an AAA action title this gen. As it is, it's a good action game with flaws. I'd say it's better than Lost Planet and I like LP
PS. The final boss part makes me wish sooo much for an HD ZoE
