Finished the entire game today. Haven't played a full game in 1 day since like ZoE2 in 2005! But Marlow Briggs was fun, moved at a quick pace, and I like GoW type games.
Overall it's great. The graphics are really good! Lots of great looking environments. The combat gets a little better and there's some good boss fights (liked the final boss), the writing is AWESOME. It's not consistently A++, but there is sooooooooooo much good banter between Briggs and the Mask. Like some of the dialogue is probably the smartest self-aware comedy writing I've seen in a game in ages. Plus Briggs is just awesome and he shouts cool stuff like MANSLIDE when he does the rockslide magic and I'm like OH MY GOD DID HE JUST SAY MANSLIDE?? Good checkpoints everywhere and there's a very neat little miini-game bit that was pretty unexpected but cool. You'll know when you see it. The ending's great too. Length's just right at around 5-6 hours.
On the downside, the game actually does suffer from the same game design flaws that God of War types or just videogames in general tend to have. The game has a lot of HP tank enemies (BIG GUYS/BIG BUGS) and the last 1/3rd of the combat scenarios are just putting lots of big boring enemies at you at once. The combat gets pretty repetitive by the end ones because of it. Likewise, the game repeats the same "sliding down the lane" and other mini-game bits over and over and the instant fail deaths get a bit old. The camera can be iffy on some of the platforming and the end credits mini-game is THE WORST THING EVER. Like, why would you end your game and give the final impression to the player with a mini-game that is pure torture and horrible as horrible gets. Really tries to sour the experience and is stupid. And yeah, the frozen-in-place cutscenes are terrible. I get they had no cutscene budget but there had to be better ways to do the cutscene transitions. I ended up skipping all of the ones like that so the story would be even more jump-cut-y and I'd have no idea what was going on half the time, which somehow made it even better.
Also the game is odd in that it totally rips off stuff straight from Uncharted, God of War and Tomb Raider, yet it also has SMART CREATIVE additions like SWIM DASHING and being able to convert enemies to your side (which for some enemy groups is faster to just turn them all than fight them all). Half the time it feels derivative, the other half the time it seems like it actually wants to be a serious good original game. Seems a little lost in that respect. The game reminds me of 50 Cent Bullet in the Sand to the point I'd call it 2013's 50 Cent. It's a super competent and executed fun and silly game that's extremely derivative of the genre it's apeing.
But yeah, as a fun God of War meets Uncharted meets Tomb Raider 5 and a half hour action game it's as solid as it gets. It's not just a B game, it's a B++ game.
