Basingstoke Reviews

luv me bangas an' mash luv gud level design an fouken luv me bri'un m8 god bless fumbs up from me ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

TL:DR; Its not an action game, its a stealth game- or at least the majority of it is. Misadvertised but still good for what it is, but not what I wanted. The first big negative here is that this game was misadvertised. I don't think it was malicious or intentional, but they really oversold the action angle here. This is a strict stealth game, you die in one hit and if you're running and gunning you're about to die or expending valuable resources desperately to avoid dying- after which you will go back to stealth. I don't think the game ever gave me enough resources to consider running and gunning. Melee weapons are fragile, guns are rare and ammunition is the same. You can craft things to distract or pass by obstacles or enemy's and use them quite cleverly, but you'll rarely rack up a body count. I'm in two minds about the difficulty- on one hand one hit kill stealth really jacks up the tension and forces you to engage with the core mechanic. On the other dying in one hit is so annoying as it dissolves your ability to make any mistakes or engage with any part of the game playfully. You will perform as the game expects you to, or you fuck off and start again. I think in the end I just exhausted my patience for the game to engage me, which is a shame as it has great potential for mechanical depth but I went in with the wrong idea of what I was going to get and by the time I understood fully what was expected of me I was done. I might one day come back to this with the right expectation or mood to play it, but I think there are other games that sold me the right idea of how to play them from the start that I'll just play instead.