I fell in love with this game.... the second time that I tried to get into it. The first time I tried to get into this game, I just didn't really get it. And I played it for over 2 hours. Initially the combat felt a bit stilted, and redoing the same #@$% made me wonder what was the point really, and I dropped it and went off to play other games. But eventually I had exhausted my other FPS games so I came back to this, determined to see what it was really about. And by the time I got about 10 hours into a newly restarted game, I finally saw it. It's like GROUNDHOG DAY. You wake up confused, But its not long before you feel the lack of consequence for your actions, and you begin doing reckless things, just for the fun of it. You don't know these people, and it's just a faceless mob of people partying it up like every day is a festival, but your the only character who remembers it all happens over and over again. These non-boss characters are mostly clueless idiots. These characters weren't completely hollow though. Many have their own stories intertwined. The character interactions with people started making more sense. I began getting laughs out of listening to these poor souls bickering in there endless loop, barely aware of whats even happening around them. Learning where and when their vulnerabilities lie. As you progress you can really get a sense of their selfish, childish natures, making it feel all the more fun to end them over and over again, in different ways. And you really can be creative in your choices. Using the environment to lay them to ruin, just nuking them in the middle of all their friends and running for it. Setting up an elaborate sentry gun ambush and luring them in. And you start to feel powerful. The beauty of it is that the game keeps track of everything. When I started originally I was put off by the gameplay because I thought, man, im supposed to remember what everyones doing and when? Is that what Im going to be doing? But no, the game logs everything and you can sort through stuff for a reference anytime, but for much of it you can really just explore and pop heads. And the unique weapons are fun. They have some pretty great secondary functions, my only complaint there is I would have liked to have had more of them. That being said, the powers really let you mix a play style as well. And then I just started Batman-ing around the map DISHONOURED style lighting people up, and dropping your Invader on her ass in 10 seconds with a huge handcannon making you wonder why you were ever even worried about her. It ended up being a great way to tell the story of all these characters through your own level of observation and actions, rather than progressing through a simple linear track like you expect from an FPS that isn't simply a run and gun. And yet, i was still able to DO alot of running and gunning just for kicks sometimes, meanwhile I'm working out a more complex puzzle than I expected form the game. And banfing my way around zones I knew very well, i was still finding new things all the time. And every note you find, every item, it's all a part of something. They arent just pointless flavour text, they become the clues logged by the system teaching YOUR character something important. And then often YOU get to utilise that as you see fit. When I think back on it now after waiting a few months, since I finally beat it and gathered all the unique weaponry etc, I'm starting to think about wanting to do it all over again. And I look fondly on those moments watching characters spill all there flaws out fro you to see, making many of them seems petulant, arrogant, egotistic, and often just... sad. Sad lives for these walking echos who's motives are, for the most part, hollow and selfish. It's mostly their dialogue you can hear from their day to die, but its also their actions, and how they treat each other. And at the end of the day, so to speak, do these people deserve the loop? What is the loop to them really? An endless party? Is it just a cage they didn't even know they were building? Is it their heaven? Purgatory? It's different things to different people based on perspective. Is it really even up to YOU to be the one to decide what the loop is? That's all up to the player to see what it is to them. The only thing I knew for sure when I got to the finale, was that I was glad I came back to play it again. Because it took some time, but I got hooked. And I started to enjoy every aspect of the game. The combat felt natural eventually, even though I dislike the "drop-off screen" reload animations when modding it, seemed like a cop out when you could just speed up the original animation on the rifle and shotgun, and the whole play area and story opened up and felt like something big, and alive, and that was the opposite of my first impression. And that's about it. I recommend that people give it more of a chance, because like in GROUNDHOG DAY, theres so much to learn about the people in town, and through them you see what's important to you in that context. Then, just like Phil Connors, eventually you get to build YOUR perfect Day, and possibly end the loop? Theres only one way to know for sure, only this time, some people likely wont see February 3rd.
Read more