Not a bad game, not the best game I've ever played but its worth a play through and enjoyable.
Graphics: One of the best parts of the game. I like the graphics, and I'm sure there are those that dont. Although there's always bound to be someone to disagree with anything and thats fine but in this game I liked the graphics. I dont play for graphics, but its really cool when you play a unique game such as this and find it has pretty graphics to boot. One thing (of a few) that I agree with gamespot on this game was the fact that it didnt take very many liberties to push the graphics engine even though it proved it could do so. Only a few times did they do such things as sun light piercing the darkness outside and coming in through the windows, dust particles noticably in the air, and other beautiful details a dank and dirty atmosphere can provide. Sadly they must have felt it would have been contrived to rely on these things as I said they only did it a few times and mainly you dont see to much artisitic lightning in this which was a small let down. I did want to see more from it because I knew the engine could handle it (based on how great the Enemies look). The enemies look great however, and admittedly to me the last 2 maps you play on are equally impressive. Although I think that may have a little to do with the fire involved which gave it that beautiful dirty artistic look I was speaking of earlier. None the less the game is pretty- it just didnt feel like they did enough to reach its full potential. The NPCs are very well detailed (my favorite being the Fireman looking dudes, followed closely by the guys with all kinds of misc bottles and such on them... its very awesome how detailed they were, must see to believe type thing here). Its an artisticly great looking game that could've gone farther but its still great where its at in my humble opinoin. The variety of enemies is also something to be mentioned here.
Sound: Just as good, if not close to better. Attacks feel powerful. I have a huge gripe i'll put here (as it pertains highly to sound followed closely by texturing or something). Why does every wall you hit that is unbreakable sound like its made out of concrete? Even wooden doors, metal gates, glass bullet proof windows, and ceramic panels all sound like concrete chipping when hit if its not supposed to break. Why is that? That bugged me alot and on top of that it chips and dust falls as if your hitting concrete. And if you hit a wood door (for instance) with a metal locker door it makes an impressive sound of concrete (or possibly dirt) chipping and falling through it. Good sound effect but... um... out of place. Thats my biggest gripe though with the sound. I liked how bad guys grunted curses at you in combat as if they were in fits of rage or short of breath (you swinging a weapon made equally brilliant noises as well) and to me anyway it wasnt to much or over the top, and while not particularly varied you dont really get bothered by it. The only shame is they didnt have more to banter at you but in turn one could say it was enough and theres no need to push it. Honest. I dont particularly remember music to much other than on the main menu so I'm not going to critique it other than to say it didnt stick out, but served its purpose in a low quality way. I do however remember alot of effect ambience (such as when enemies sneak up behind you to run to a place to hide, and you can hear movement and breathing and such) very well played.
Combat/Gimmicks: This games gimick is two fold. First you have the more obvious gimmick which is the melee oriented combat which while not the only option in fighting is more often the best only because guns are in general short enough supply to make you not want to use them for too long (I often would expend the last round on a gun and just toss it for a pipe or fire axe when at the end of a clip) as they cant be reloaded and its actually very realistic in that you dont have a gun thats technically yours after a certain point in the game. No spoilers here though just know both gun play and melee is an option here and both are generally good choices but be rdy to go melee at any time as its always an option while bullets are in all honesty in short supply. Then there's the Tazer which is great after about the middle of the game (although you always have it I didnt use it at all until about then) as it stuns enemies. This is merely supposed to be useful in disarming enemies I guess (as the game tells you to use it for that) but I didnt see that as anymore then wasting time as theres tons of other weapons for them to get and the tazer has a reuse time on it so might as well just get used to the next part which is melee. Melee is unfortunately not anything new or exciting. It is click to hit, and while all weapons appear to have some sort of stat guns feels almost as powerful as they should but most melee weapons feel weaker then they should (although if taking a shotgun blast to the face and continuing to come at someone makes the shotgun powerful then I missed ... something). Anyway the biggest downside to all the weapons is they shamefully feel underpowered and I can only say that the story saying its because something is driving everything (including birds) crazy is a bit weak and I'll add that I dont care how crazy you are, a fire axe to the face one time will take you down. Nuff said. Its fun the way it is but entirely gimmicky in that they wanted you to use it but not get through their short game to fast.
That leaves us with Gimmicks. The real gimmick for this game was the seriously great idea for actually doing detective work amongst all the crazy bullet drought, melee infested combat. While gamespot thought this was super clever of them and that they should have done it more, I think they did it enough and if they had done it more I'd have been annoyed and given up. I honestly did not like the way the detective tools worked. Either they were to easy (pull it out and shoot such as the DNA sampler) or to annoyingly hard (trying to get the right position to take pictures of finger prints such as the camera). Seriously though there was a little detective work in all that, I cant say there wasn't, as often you do have to search for the actual clues but it was all context sensitive so technically you always knew if you were on the right track with it that just made it feel less then it could have been. If I had to do that stuff (such as walk through a demented house follow clues I can only see with a black light while switching back and forth to kill... something)as a job, I'd quit and get another job. I'm sure it was as accurate as they could make it without being unfun, but I didnt like it and while I was happy to have it in as it was clever and fresh- I was also happy they didnt do it more then they did.
AI: I thought it was suitable for this game. It wasnt brilliant but neither were the NPCs technically. This story surmises something is driving people (and birds) mad so it made sense to me that they would all be rediculously angry and rampaging. On top of that your searching for serial killers which are equally deranged and not what you'd call brilliant tacticians so I found it to be adequate. I personally loved how they would find a wall (you could watch them do it if you were quick) and hide behind it getting ready to jump out at you. They always get away with it, sadly, even if you know they're there and if I was quicker with the blocks I probably could've been better at not getting caught by it but anyway I thought it was a nice touch that made the AI stand out to me.
Overall Gameplay/"Fun Factor": The story is lame, the ending felt out of place and rediculous, but overall the actual gameplay is fun and in a really sick way the story was fitting so I cant say it wasnt worth the effort to play through it (which wasnt to hard or to easy, was just fine for my book). I say if you like gaming enough to try something new give this one a try. Although you shouldnt do it because I tell you to, either you like a game or you dont you should read this to decide if its worth that and nothing more. =P