Post by Bytor on Jun 24, 2009 11:55:19 GMT -5
-Visuals- 9.5/10
Possibly the strongest point of the game. Insomniac did away with the grays and starkness of the first one (although they still managed to maintain the over all feel) and opted for more color and vibrancy. The sheer amount of stuff going on at any given moment is mind boggling. Whether in the swamps in Louisiana or in the forest of Idaho the scenery is breath taking. It's so much so that in order to see everything often you have to stop fighting, find a place to hide and simply look around. The Chimera are even better than in the first game and the bosses are bigger, badder and rendered much better! And trust me, when they say melee, they mean melee, at any given time there may be 30, 40 or 50 enemies roaming around and the frame rate is such that hardly ever does a glitch happen...now, having said that, there are a few times in the game where the frame rate is overwhelmed, you may find yourself in a corner for instance where you cannot tell up from down, or stuck in a hole for a minute, or having trouble navigating through some ruins, but it's few and far between.
-Sound- 8/10
Pretty much the same as the first game, little or no music, voice overs are good and acting matches what is going on in the game. Nothing special, nothing especially bad about the voice acting. The explosions will however, deafen you if you have the speakers turned up, lol.
-Gameplay- 8/10
OK...here's my biggest complaint about the game. It's too easy to die, I swear I spent more time dying than fighting sometimes, now, having said that, as soon as you figure out the weapon needed and the technique the vast majority of these battles then become too easy. In the first game you had more freedom to fight as you wanted, here it's simply not true, for instance, in some battles you MUST have the Auger, no other way to win, and the game will basically tell you what weapon you need by having it laying around waiting to be picked up, also ammo is not an issue, while you don't pick up ammo per se there are always plenty of guns laying around just waiting to be picked up. The boss battles are the same format, figure out what to do, and they are all pretty easy, now I know that is the same for all games, but in my opinion Insomniac missed the boat by making this game way too easy once you figured out the needed gun and/or technique. The weapons, are fun though, and do provide a different feel for each weapon used, I just wish you had more freedom to use the weapons, for instance, the most powerful weapon of all is only found in a couple of places and runs out of ammo quickly, thus rendering it useless as you can only carry two weapons at a time, so you cannot hold onto it until you run across it again. Here's another somewhat annoying issue to me at least. You are basically lead step by step in what to do and where to go next. Often you will be following one of your allies as they traverse steps, halls etc in order to reach the next goal, while helpful at times it does not allow for much self exploration. One good thing about your allies though is unlike some games they will help you fight here, not typically if it's your guide but in the larger battles they are sometimes helpful! One other thing I would have liked to see different was the narrative aspect which was utilized in the first game, it added to the story so much by not only explaining things but by giving the story more back bone. Here the dialog is more of a first person approach and it loses some of the "historical feel". Overall, not bad, but these issues to me make what could have been an unreal great game simply a very, very good one.
-Story- 9.5/10
The story basically starts up right where the last one left off but shifts to the US and then jumps forward to 1953. If you liked the last game you'll like the storyline in this one, although it still left some questions unanswered. I'm not going to ruin the story by going into too much detail but I will say that it certainly leaves the story open for another sequel. As I stated earlier though I did miss the narration which was present in the first game. I felt it not only tied things together better but made the feel of the story much better.
-Overall- 8.8/10
The game provides easily 10 hours of gameplay, and as I stated on the review of Fall of Man I felt it was simply nowhere near enough...I was left wanting more. Also, because of the gameplay to me it felt like even less time logged, certainly a tad disappointing to finish so quickly. Once again I didn't play online or multi but from what I've read both are exciting ways to further the gameplay. Insomniac..you came so close once again...a very, very good game, but not a very, very great game, still worth every penny and based on the sheer amount of enemies and fights going on the background shows what the PS3 is capable of.