Recent reviews by Estecka

Multiple times I thought I reached the end, but the story continued.

How to win:
- Find a target who'll shoot first.
- Hide behind a corner
- Let the Police kill the target

Really cheap AI's.
A few crashes -which is quite the big deal in a save-less game.-
Some questionnable or unexplained design choices.

Meta done right.
Unlike most of the meta-driven game I've done, this one does not becomes condescending toward the player when breaking the 4th wall.
And the few 4th wall breaking puzzle are absolutely HUGE, you'd never see anything like this in a different game..

This game has two mechanics that combine into a huge flaw:
- Enemies can spot you behind low obstacles
- The game has a top-down point of view
From this perspective it's almost impossible to tell where you can or can't hide -talking about obstacles that go up to the shoulder, not obviously low obstacles,- 100% of the time, I could only tell that an obstacle was low because I died to it. We also have some very questionably "low" obstacles which, even after close comparison with the character, still look taller than her.
There is a "take cover" action that allows you to crouch and hide behind certain obstacles, but not all of them. (And again it's not clear where you can crouch or not.)

The alertness of enemies is so low and their obliviousness so high, it doesn't feel like a stealth game at all.

Overall the game feels very unfair. Amongst the most frustrating features and bug we have :
- The limits off the terrain are not shown, so you'll often engage into a street only to meet an invisible wall.
- Enemies can see and kill you from outside the screen (even with the view extended at maximum)
- The ability to die during cinematics.

Never did a game put so much meaning into which button you needed to use.

Exactly 28mn to 100%
Simple game with tight controls.
Bought on an impulse, played on an impulse, and everything went fine. Not a game you should stockpile in your library for years or build up expectations about.

Not so much of a bad game, it can be fun to play, but I find it doesn't stand up to how it was presented and what I expected of it.

My major turn-off's are:
- Huge difference of quality amongst graphics, some drawings look very impressive but others are downright ugly. (Most of the cutscene that look like poor flash animation).
- There is no story. Troughougts the journey you may collect (optional) clues and journals about what has happened in the backstory, but else nothing will actually happen or move the plot except in the final level, and maybe the library.
The story is about a server where you upload the soul of dead people, but it doesn't feel like you're visiting the deads or their memories,.. it doesn't feel like you're doing anything meaningful.

• What I expected:
Water, and a lot of fishes.

• What I got:
Atlantis meets an Illuminati conspiracy.
and litteral truckloads of fishes.

I barely went through the first level, already met all these :

- Keybinding works when it wants to (Certain keys works, other won't.)
- Character collision feels odd (Cannot pass in space big enough for me to fit twice)
- UI issues (multiple pause menus superposing, in different languages)
- Some weird graphical issues (Color bleed on the side of the screen, resolution of my desktop is changed even in windowed mode)
- Game freezes when changing graphic settings (Most of times won't unfreeze until you Ctrl-Alt-Del) (Once even fell into uninterruptible sleep: couldn't kill it, had to hard-reboot)
- Bugged animations (When going up slopes, the character teleports upward every half-steps instead of smoothingly climbing)

TL;DR
Bugs? bugs.
Bugs at literally every corners.

Metal Gear Rising revengeance : Stairs Architect edition