Since I’m essentially done I can give my lil mini review.
It’s fire, but them perfect 10s definitely feel paid off after playing it lmao. It’s flawed and does not deserve the perfect score imo. Mainly and most jarringly, the combat system. It’s very clunky and never felt fully satisfying. Dodges and parries are hit and miss as far as actually working, it’s kinda slow and stiff, and stamina runs out way too easily, which is a problem because when you’re out of stamina, you move extremely slow, and you can’t dodge or parry at ALL. Which is backwards in a dodge and parry based combat system. This was overall never too much of a problem, because it’s overall meant to be played as a stealth game so open aggro combat should be avoided as much as possible, but it was enough of an issue that I had to switch the difficulty to easy for the final boss fight (Which is hand to hand, no guns.) after playing the entire game on hard, because that shit didn’t even feel possible. Not even in a sense of true difficulty, but in the sense that it felt like the mechanics were actively working against what you actually needed to do. To make it even worse, you start the fight off wit a single bar of health because of the prior cutscene, and the boss is a one hit kill on hard. So you need to be absolutely flawless in a system where the dodges and parries are already iffy, and you’re constantly running out of stamina and can’t do shit anyways. And it takes like 30-40 punches to down him, so we’re talking a tediously long perfect run. Luckily there’s no difficulty based achievements and it’s a cake walk on easy so that didn’t ruin anything, but it still put a bad taste in my mouth how jank and sloppy the final boss was, when that’s sposed to be the most exciting part of the game.
The fast travel system is also garbage. Within each map, you can’t fast travel to points using the map, but instead only by walking up to designated street signs that let you travel to other designated street signs in the other areas of the map. But these street signs don’t even have an icon on the map so unless you perfectly memorize where they’re at, you can spend a long ass time even finding them again to use them, which completely defeats the fucking purpose. And these individual maps/sandboxes are pretty big, especially Gizeh. You can fast travel from the pause menu, but only to each individual map, but even that works like trash. If it’s been a while since you been to one, it transports you to one designated hub area per map, but let’s say you’re in one of the underground maze/crypt areas and it’s a long ass way back out so you try to fast travel to a different map and then fast travel right back to get back to said hub area, it instead transports you right back to the exact spot you were at in the crypt, meaning you have to instead take the long way back out on foot anyways, again completely defeating the purpose of fast travel. If Spider-Man 2 is the best fast travel system ever created, this is prolly the worst ever created, at least that I’ve seen.
Other than that tho, it was very enjoyable and I had a great time wit the game. The combat issue isn’t as glaring as it might sound, because again, 90% of the time, you’re doing one hit stealth kills anyways and sneaking around. And that being said, it legitimately plays more like Dishonored or Thief than an Uncharted clone like people thought it would be. There’s some Uncharted-esque setpieces, but the bulk of gameplay is straight up stealth and exploration. Exploration reminded me of Assassin’s Creed but better, and some of the puzzles are Zelda-esque and extremely satisfying to solve.
Graphically, it’s one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen, especially on the 4090, but only after it got the post launch texture pack. Before that, it looked okay, but was honestly pretty disappointing.
Also worth noting that I’ve never really been an Indy fan, and the only movie I’ve seen is Crystal Skull. So being a fan is not necessary I don’t think, it’s a great standalone stealth game regardless, which would only be accentuated if you know the lore and were already a prior fan.
Overall I’d give it a solid 8/10.
I was initially worried about it being a mediocre Uncharted clone so that’s good to hear. I’ve seen all but the newest movie and they’re good but I’ve never been a fanboy for them. Might wait for a price drop.
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I was initially worried about it being a mediocre Uncharted clone so that’s good to hear. I’ve seen all but the newest movie and they’re good but I’ve never been a fanboy for them. Might wait for a price drop.