Played the demo for about four hours... (Gaming)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, April 28, 2017, 04:52 (2548 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Korny, Friday, April 28, 2017, 05:10

Yeah, it's technically a short demo that can be completed in under an hour, but I enjoyed the exploration and environment enough to keep going even after completing my objectives. There's a lot of the same vibe that I got from Bioshock, where you feel like the place that you're in was a real place, with every room having some history and purpose. There's a LOT of reading in the form of other people's emails and news/magazine clippings, but you really do get to know the people there through all of the extra materials, so you want to read it all. Overall the mood that I got is more akin to System Shock 2, where there's a constant sense of dread and desperation in a place that should feel pretty secure and mundane.

Demo spoiler example: I passed by the main entrance of the Typhon lobby, and to the left is a security transaction window that was manned by two people. I saw their nameplates at their desks, and told Sammy "The one on the left, Sarah, is the security chief who was being questioned by Mathias over her relationship with the other head of security. The other one, Black, is blackmailing a chick upstairs for trying to export some contraband, and I found his body over by the bathrooms." I knew more than that (Sarah's real name is Sarai, but her mom changed it, and she was in the military) just from the small area that I was in, so it really felt like this was a place where people worked and interacted. The Phantoms all have names, as do the corpses, and if you look in the employee registry, you can even check their names off on the casualty list (which I'm sure is a Trophy). All of the Phantoms have names as well, which adds a bit of a personal touch, and helps you feel bad after killing one and learning his name.

Gameplay-wise, it reminds me of System Shock as well, since ammo is scarce (though craftable), and your choices as far as upgrading and developing your playstyle are very, very important (though it doesn't look to be as relentless about it as System Shock 2 was). I didn't work on upgrading my physical strength, so I couldn't clear debris blocking certain doorways, and it looked like it would be a long while before I'd be able to, so I missed out on some rooms and easier access to other areas. I didn't upgrade my hacking, so I had the same problem elsewhere. I upgraded my pistol's damage, but ran out of ammo fairly quickly, so I ended up hauling a deployable turret with me to different rooms, and I soon wished that I had invested in mechanical perks in order to repair and possibly upgrade the turret. This sounds like a complaint, but it's a good thing, sort of... you can develop your character to fit your ideal playstyle, but the game won't be easy no matter what you do, and you'll always see the greener grass of other playstyles. Folks that specialize in melee and plasmids will no doubt end up with a ton of ammo that won't do them much good since they may not be carrying the guns that use it, and so they'll wish that they had spent some upgrades on firearms to take enemies out faster at a distance. It's a neat balance, and helps with the feeling of vulnerability in the game. You also can't take a ton of hits, and health packs are rare and weak (unless you upgrade your health and improved healing). It's definitely not a forgiving game, and that's something you just don't see in shooters these days. But it's also highly replayable.

Another similarity to System shock is the somewhat unpolished feel of the gunplay, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since you're not a soldier, and the game looks like it will give you so many tools and ways to approach combat, that you should really be more creative about how you approach encounters rather than shooting your way out (at any point, you can zoom in on the environment, assessing a room and the different approaches that you could take). I found a room with two Phantoms in it, so I built a Gloo wall, hauled my turret into the room, and set up a firing line down the hallway, letting it do the work while keeping it safe with the makeshift barricade (and I made sure to draw some of their fire behind a bigger wall). Once they were dead, I went in and saw a few things in the environment that I could have used to set off a chain of events that would have killed them both, if I had had a single bullet.
It's really neat stuff like this that I love, and that was only with the tools that the demo offered.

My biggest complaint is the music. It is so loud that I had to lower it to about 25% for it to be tolerable, and the combat music NEVER STOPS... until it does. Abruptly. sometimes even in the middle of combat. Apparently it's a track, rather than a loop, so if you spend enough time in a room, it will end, even if there's a Mimic hidden in the next room, and he's already noticed you. But yeah, even if you haven't seen an enemy in ten minutes, because the game reads one five rooms away, the combat music will not stop until you kill him or the track ends, by which point more Mimics may have worked their way in to trigger the music once more.
And it sucks, because the music is neat (often really good), but it quickly becomes distracting.

Overall, I really liked the demo, and I liked that it didn't kick you out once you reached the end of it, as I was able to explore for another couple of hours (and I ran into a couple of rooms that I had missed entirely). I might play through it again with a different build, as throwing heavy objects at enemies and using tables to block doorways looks like a very viable way to survive without using any guns.

I may not get it at launch, since my backlog is bad enough as it is, but it's definitely on the list of games that I need to play.

Also, this trailer is pretty neat: