Really impressed with this one so far. Almost as soon as I started playing it put me on edge a little bit, the ambience is done very well. The main character's grizzly story telling is kind of Bastion-like, but they don't go overboard by having him talk too much; the way he treats the shadows (zombies) thus far as equals in a way, as though they have a right to survive as well is intriguing and fresh. Though having only played two hours I might be getting the wrong idea.
Your character himself is pretty cool. And he's no superman, which I like. It uses a 'stamina' system reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus'. You can't simply hang on a wire forever or swing your axe over and over and over; your character gets tired. It makes combat (which thus far has been limited, personally) more intense and cerebral, especially against multiple enemies.
Graphics are slightly rough around the edge but very well designed and animated fluidly. I find myself stopping just to look at the lush backgrounds and the amount of detail put into them at times. Especially the grafitti, reading the messages left on the walls in L4D2 was always something I found really engrossing and it's here as well. Sometimes it's just thematic, sometimes it provides a clue to the next puzzle/area, sometimes it will elicit a response from Randall (your character). The action takes place in a 2D plane but all three dimensions are alive, friends and foes will sometimes appear unexpectedly from the 'back', changing your current objective/puzzle accordingly.
Level design is excellent so far. I really like how they're coherently put together and quite long (geographically speaking, you can quit at almost anytime and lose little progress because of a thorough checkpoint system). I like the feeling that you are a small man trying to make it through a big place rather than a series of arbitrarily connected small places, it's subtle but I like it.
I love the controls, they're intuitive and slick. Maybe it's because I spent so much time playing N, but I feel right at home on them. The only complaints I have are that the timing delay for a walljump feels too long and that your character crouches too slowly, but they're minor at worst. Also using ctrl for crouch when shift is sprint sometimes is hard to manage at times, but there aren't a lot of other options either. I did try mapping crouch to my mouse's "back" button but it wouldn't work unfortunately. One interesting, fairly new mechanic is "taunt" which is a button that gets enemies attention; useful for luring them into traps to get them out of your way or simply to trigger traps and give yourself a chance for safe passage.
So far it hasn't been particularly challenging, as once you figure out what mistake you're making it tends to be pretty easily remedied. And usually it's something simple like "oh I can walljump off that, I didn't realize". Death is also annoying as the animation for it and screen fade take a bit longer than necessary. But again, minor annoyance.
Didn't want to put it down last night, definitely glad I picked this one up.
Your character himself is pretty cool. And he's no superman, which I like. It uses a 'stamina' system reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus'. You can't simply hang on a wire forever or swing your axe over and over and over; your character gets tired. It makes combat (which thus far has been limited, personally) more intense and cerebral, especially against multiple enemies.
Graphics are slightly rough around the edge but very well designed and animated fluidly. I find myself stopping just to look at the lush backgrounds and the amount of detail put into them at times. Especially the grafitti, reading the messages left on the walls in L4D2 was always something I found really engrossing and it's here as well. Sometimes it's just thematic, sometimes it provides a clue to the next puzzle/area, sometimes it will elicit a response from Randall (your character). The action takes place in a 2D plane but all three dimensions are alive, friends and foes will sometimes appear unexpectedly from the 'back', changing your current objective/puzzle accordingly.
Level design is excellent so far. I really like how they're coherently put together and quite long (geographically speaking, you can quit at almost anytime and lose little progress because of a thorough checkpoint system). I like the feeling that you are a small man trying to make it through a big place rather than a series of arbitrarily connected small places, it's subtle but I like it.
I love the controls, they're intuitive and slick. Maybe it's because I spent so much time playing N, but I feel right at home on them. The only complaints I have are that the timing delay for a walljump feels too long and that your character crouches too slowly, but they're minor at worst. Also using ctrl for crouch when shift is sprint sometimes is hard to manage at times, but there aren't a lot of other options either. I did try mapping crouch to my mouse's "back" button but it wouldn't work unfortunately. One interesting, fairly new mechanic is "taunt" which is a button that gets enemies attention; useful for luring them into traps to get them out of your way or simply to trigger traps and give yourself a chance for safe passage.
So far it hasn't been particularly challenging, as once you figure out what mistake you're making it tends to be pretty easily remedied. And usually it's something simple like "oh I can walljump off that, I didn't realize". Death is also annoying as the animation for it and screen fade take a bit longer than necessary. But again, minor annoyance.
Didn't want to put it down last night, definitely glad I picked this one up.
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