schild
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Posts: 60345
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Let me start out by saying, for the amount of "in development press" this game got, I saw almost zero amount of "release press". There where no big banners, or countdowns or anything like that. This really surprised me. Even on gamestop.com the game was listed as "coming soon 3/25" on the 26th, and the link to buy the game was "error no item found".
Being the sucker for new games that I am, I rushed down one of my local gamestops and bought a copy (also a pre-order of the Warhammer Online CE. Sucker I tell you) and headed home. Having skimmed the various previews from different sites over the last 9 months or so, I had a vague idea of the story and setting, no no real idea about the game play other than FPS + KRULL = LOLAWESOME, and that one reviewer had said it was sort of a Gears of War clone. I had no idea how right he was.
The game starts out with you on the wall of some russian castle that is being controlled by nazi-esque bad guys and you are on some sort of mission. You are given no back story or info, but you are treated to some great angst from the main character who is shown sneaking up behind one of the nazis, breaking his neck, and then dropping to his knees, putting his head in his hands and saying into his radio "I cant do this again". After a few more lines of equally inspiring dialog with his commander, you gain control of the character. I don't know what is name is, but lets just call him Dante (with black hair). So far from the little intro I am expecting a sort of Splinter Cell style control, wrong. If you have played Gears of War, you already know the controls, and not just a little. Its EXACTLY the same.
Moving through the castle, I am amazed. This game feels so much like Gears of War, the controls are identical, and the gameplay is very close. Use "A" to move in to covers, use "Left Trigger" to aim, "B" opens doors, Holding "X" picks up stuff. Its like they completely took the GoW controls and just dropped them on this game.
I don't want to spoil the story for anyone so I will gloss over that. After a little bit of play you get the Glave or Krull Blades Thingy, this is used by hitting "Right Bumper" to throw it like a boomerang (Wow, something different from GoW) and it works pretty damn well. You can also melee with the Glave by hitting "B". While the Glave is your active weapon, you also wield a pistol in your off hand, so when you throw it out, you can still shoot with the pistol. The glave can do different things, all of which I am still unaware of, but new powers become unlocked as you move through the game. A few of them include, a power up throw, the ability to slowdown time and control the Glave during flight, and the ability to absorb different elements like fire or electricity. The absorption sounds pretty neat, but so far it has only been for puzzle solving. See a door bared by some material, find some fire, absorb the fire into the glave, and then throw it at the material covering the door, that type of stuff. Very minor spoiler here. The Glave is important, not only for being cool, and being a puzzle solver, but because you are infected the enemy weapons you pick up have Infection Detectors, and only last around 10 to 30 seconds in your hands before self destructing. This leads you to use the Glave for the majority of the killing (so far).
The graphics are pretty well done, the game has that washed out Gears of War style. The textures are really amazing, but some of the character animations are downright goofy. Also, the main characters face is cringe-worthy. It just looks wrong somehow. I guess the best way to describe what he looks like is Dante from Devil May Cry (with black hair) that had some one inject steroids in to his face, and then beat it with the ugly stick. Also his voice. Ugh. His voice is generic angsty young hero guy. Marcus Fenix, he is not.
It does add a few things on top of Gears, there are manholes spread around the game that you can use to access the Black Market, where you can add weapon upgrades to your current weapons, and also you can buy weapons without the Infection Detectors. There seems to be a way to have multiple "loadouts" from the Black Market also, but I haven't figured out how it works yet.
So far I am about 5 hours in or so, and the game is decently fun. I head its pretty short, and I haven't tried multiplayer. Basically if your like me and you loved GoW, and you like to buy all the new games, Buy It. If you are a normal person, you will probably get much better value from a rental.
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Rent it.
Sent in by Morfiend.
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