Why was this game even made?
While playing this game I couldn't help but keep jumping back to Bioshock and Cryostasis, and for good reasons.I mean the whole premise of E99 mineral is a rip off of Adam in Bioshock. The constant flashbacks to the past is a rip off from the Cryostasis and Bioshock.
First off, why send a couple of choppers with a couple of Americans with no knowledge of Russian to a Russian-owned island with no backing or any sort of diplomatic agreement with Russia in the first place?
You play as a mute captain with no character, voice, or ambition. Everything on the island is convenient for any visiting English-speaking person. The dead Russian kiddies speak and write in English, the Russian orientation films are in English, the secret notes are written in English, even the fluffy teddy bears speak English. The British-accented Kathryn who helps you has a Russian-Eastern Orthodox cross on her chest. What the hell? Why are the Russians still patrolling the island but they can't clear it from the mutants and beasties? Some of the Russian soldiers are speaking Russian with an American accent, and some of the Russian soldiers sound like they are five yers okd. Activision couldn't find a couple of solid Russian voiceovers? I am obviously picking these innuendos of the game to pieces, but I can't help myself - the immersion is ruined
What I found hard to believe was just how dumb the Russian AI soldiers were, both modern and Soviet Era ones. Remember COD, COD United Offensive and COD 2 created by Activision? Remember how German soldiers were running for cover? They weren't really a push over. Here, you can just mow down rows of these soldiers with ease. The mutated AI is somewhat interesting to battle though. The mutated beasties resembling insects are pretty disgusting to look at, but their bodies disappear seconds after you blast them.
The guns sometime disappear right in front of you. You exchange one gun for another and then after you use the ammo on your current gun, the one you kept on the floor is gone, so you are forced to keep using the gun the ammunition of which you just blasted away.
The overall feel to the game is pretty bleak. Yet still, it is personally hard for me to get the whole time travel thing seriously. The level design is nothing special. A 3-foot fence blocking your way there, a destroyed truck blocking your way there, you know, the usual BS confinement tactics - no room to explore whatsoever, plus I was not sucked into the game at all. The personal notes scribbled on pieces of paper that were scattered around - well, I could use them to wipe something. I was not interested in listening to the audio tapes even though they are much shorter in length than in Bioshock 1 and 2. But in Bioshock I really wanted to hear all the tapes, because the story was so interesting, plus you felt like you needed to know everything to help you survive. Here, all I wanted to was to run through the game and blow the head off of beasties and dumb soldiers.
Everyone has mentioned the graphics already. It's bad. No anti-aliasing support - it's all about the consoles. The water is atrocious. Some textures looked like they were back from the direct x8 era. The look on the bushes date back 5 years ago. Hell, Half Life 2 pulled off great vegetation, this on the other hand, is just laughable. In one of the levels, where I was trying to save the girl, half the mountain's texture was rendered correctly, and the other looked like like it was from 2003-2004, I kid you not, I guess this game does jump in between time often.
In Bioshock, plasmids and upgrades made sense. You understood what they were for and how the functioned. Here, you just pick up an upgrade that says "Now gaining health from kills", or "regenerate 25% of health when not in combat". Really?
They've added some other elements to the game, like the time-slowing force field (bleh), telekinesis (Bioshock), the ability to change the past (Cryostasis), the ability to age objects and enemies (Singularity) and a few others like using the pulse push which is pretty neat.
They've also ripped off the teleport splicers from Bioshock. Only these splicers are much more butt-uglier, or not, take your pick.
Overall, I could not make my mind up about this game. First I thought it was okay, then I thought it was bad, then I thought it was tolerable, then I thought it was bad again. The three different endings are rewarding to comprehend though, so that does offer some sort of a reward for beating the game.
I can't say anything else about it. I don't understand why this game created even the slightest amount of hype.