Final Directive Reviews

A good game that I didn't know I got. Glad I managed to finish it and was satisfied of the ending. Recommend the game if you don't want anything too serious and also comes with an endless mode if you are into something similar to Enter the Gungeon for $2, and will most likely will be at a discount along with the Oceans Day Bundle with a game that I also recommend.

It's not bad, and I really love the art style of the comic book interludes, but I can't reccomend this game. It's just sorta barebones in terms of gameplay and at the climax the game bugged out on me and some of the cutscenes and playable segments were entirely black. I guess it is worth two dollars, but I didn't have that much fun with it all the same.

A cool artstyle, some nice music and fun dialogue won't save Final Directive from being a frustrating mess. Every level has a very similar layout with the same tight hallways spammed by bullets. It's almost impossible to see what you're getting hit by and you have so little health that it's easy to get one- or two-shot. The dodge roll is also bad and only serves to get you in more trouble as it's hard to control. Couple all this with a massive screen shake every time you take damage and what you get is a twin-stick shooter in the worst way - no, thank you.

Final Directive is a pretty cool sci-fi twin-stick shooter. It's got really nice pixel art, great sound effects and awesome music. I found the gameplay in this to be quite fun. It's very challenging though, and I died a lot but was happy to continue and try again. It's not as frantic as many twin stick shooters and sometimes you actually need to hold back or time your attack so you don't get destroyed. There's definitely a bit more strategy to this one than most of the others twin stick shooters I've played. One thing I never like to see in a twin-stick shooter is an aiming cursor. This game has one, however, it doesn't seem to bother me very much. I often find that instead of looking at my character I'll be looking at the cursor and walking into enemies and things like this. After a while I don't even notice the aiming cursor, it's fairly light and this is a good thing. I didn't find it distracting as I usually do with these. There's a good variety of guns and different fire types / ammo types. One thing that you have to keep an eye on is your ammo because you can actually run out and screw yourself over. There's ammo boxes dropped that refill ammo to any weapon but if you aren't careful you can end up wasting your bullets without any way to replenish other than restarting. One thing that I really loved about this game is the music. When I was playing I actually thought I left on some music in the background and couldn't figure out where it was coming from until I clued in that it was from the game. The thing is I usually listen to music like what is in the game just in the background while I'm working on stuff so it was a welcome surprise to find the music in the game so good. After a certain point you get a little robot helper guy. He's okay, he's not the most useful but he will get a few kills for you here and there. One thing I didn't like about him was that I sometimes would get confused and think he was an enemy coming after me so I would try to dodge or run away from him. I am not sure why this happened, maybe that's just me. You have a dodge move where you roll into a ball and get a short speed increase. At first I died a lot because of this, I assumed that when in the ball form I was invincible while passing by enemies. That was not the case and after a while I figured out that you still take damage when using this dodge roll. Normally in many of these games you are invicible while using a dodge technique, not in this one though. That's okay, but it does take a little getting used to. Final Directive is quite challenging but if you enjoy a rewarding difficulty level with fun gameplay, you will enjoy this. The price is fantastic for this game and to be quite honest, I wasn't expecting this to be as good as it is. What a wonderful surprise :)

Final Directive is a top-down shooter definitely worth its price and it has: -responsive controls -a variety of weapons at your disposal (you can swap between 2 in a similar fashion to nuclear throne) -an interesting dodge roll mechanic with slight ricochet physics -wonderful cutscene art by that wonderful boy soup-erb -solid pixel art -a good challenge for anyone who likes to fight hoards of enemies that endlessly spawn -3 game modes (story mode, endless, and local co-op) the only issue I think anyone could complain about would most likely be the length of the story, which took me roughly 90 minutes, but it truthfully isn't that big of an issue for a game that's $2.

This game had promise, but unfortunately I'm going to return it for a refund as aiming using the right stick is frustratingly slow and unresponsive, compared with the many other twinstick shooters in my collection. The problem is, you have to move an aiming cursor using the stick. This produces lag: your gun moves through an arc when changing direction instead of instantly snapping to the position of the stick. By comparison, it's far quicker with a mouse, but I don't want to play with a mouse as I thought this was supposed to be a twinstick shooter... Also, it seems to be bugged, with no sign that the developer is still active. e.g. I can't raise the graphics quality above the lowest setting as my character disappears.

A very cool Indie game with an eye catching art style. The game has a fixed difficulty level thats challenging but not overwhelming. This makes for a fun and engaging game experience. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys this style of game or to anyone who is looking to try something different.

Lot of bugs, on ubuntu linux 18.10 with radeon mesa drivers. On an older graphics card, I could not get it to run at all, despite meeting system specifications. With newer computer, there were all sorts of shader issues, and the initial splash screen kept freezing up until I hit ESC to cancel. I know this goes for very cheap and regularly deeply-discounted, but I do not think it is worth it. There are other twin-stick shooters, and the comic-book style cutscenes do not make this game worth purchasing. This game uses the Unity game engine, and it takes up 4,500 MB (how? with what game resources?)

TL;DR: Though I do recommend this game, I don't think that this game is particularly good from a gameplay perspective, while the aesthetic and charm does wonders. Plus you can't beat the sale price. I'll admit that I came to Final Directive for soup-erb's art. And it didn't let me down! In fact, all of the visuals in this game work very nicely. Enemies are distinct in their visual designs and their patterns are easy to remember, the protagonists have cute designs that read nicely even in-game, and the comics are a pleasant little break between the levels. I enjoy the music as well; the volume rising as fights get hectic is honestly pretty great. When it comes to gameplay though, Final Directive falls pretty flat. The objective is to find and activate multiple buttons on each level and then return to the center of the level to complete it. However, this objective is never laid out for the player in any terms at all. Controls are decent but full of some awkwardness: the button mapping screen works but doesn't actually change to reflect which buttons have changed, which is highly confusing. Using an Xbox controller was a pointless endeavor; the aim controls are too loose to be even remotely useful. The rolling mechanic is interesting if a bit misplaced; unlike in similar games where the player can dodge bullets and enemies, the roll mechanic simply increases speed and handling for one second, allowing for slightly better navigation and sharper turns, but in stages where stacking enemies make bullet-hell layouts this move is useless. Which leads to how damage works: with a lack of invincibility on getting hit, screen distortion when damaged, health only being recoverable from random drops, and many situations in which dodging damage is completely impossible, death feels like a coin toss. Some enemies are no threat at all while others that shoot clumps of bullets can obliterate your health with the strength of an entire room full of enemies. This inconsistency is frustrating and a huge blemish that makes the difficulty curve highly uneven, not just between levels but between segments of single stages. Weapon variety is bland as well. Picking up new weapons after you find a decent automatic weapon is pointless usually, and the rather frequent ammunition drops feel like both a blessing and a curse. I honestly stopped testing new weapons after a certain point and really didn't regret it. These are my first impressions and I fully intend to finish this review once I finish the game. In conclusion, I do like Final Directive, and I do recommend it, but it feels like a game that needs a lot more gameplay tweaking.

Saying Final Directive is a story-driven game might be a bit of a far fetch, but given the price of the game I'm not going to complain. The gameplay is nothing new but it's tight and pretty challenging at parts, it doesn't overstay its welcome (story is 90 min), the music is great for its purpose, the sprites look really nice and the man behind the comic art is none other than the superb Soup(-erb). Again, I wouldn't say the game is story-driven, but I'm a big fan of Soup and I thought he did a lovely job with the comics. Lastly, I'd like to add that the game has some notable bugs, mainly roller enemies gaining speed offscreen as well as the ability to ohko you upon collision and the wall boss creating an invisible bulletproof barrier when firing its laser on top of having a really questionnable hitbox. Still a good game, still a good time, love what this small dev team managed to make and I'm looking forward to their next project.