I finished this game last night. You can blow through it in about 10 hours.
At 1st, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The novelty of the anti-gravity walkways and
the portals was fun. I am not so big on the spirit-walk thing. There were a
number of puzzles that seemed very contrived. It was like the aliens set
up their big spaceship just so I could puzzle a bit and figure out how to use
spirit-walk. There would be no other reason to set up their ship like that.
When you die, you go to the spirit-world, where you shoot little birds with arrows
until you come back to life. The better you do hitting the birds, the more health
you have when you get back to the real world.
The end of the game feels like the programming team rushed the job.
At one point, the spirit of your grandfather talks about some 7 trials you
must do, but it never comes up later. Like it was something that the
development team planned, but did not get around to. Near the end,
there are 3 battles in quick succession which are nothing more than
"throw 3 of every enemy in the game at this guy, and he cannot leave
the room until he kills them all."
The engine and the game show a lot of promise. It's a lot of fun, the last
20% of the game feel like the programming team was burning the midnight
oil to hit their release date, and cut a lot of corners.
Pros:
-Solid performance, never had a single hang
-Pretty visuals
-Portals and anti-gravity pathways are novel and fun.
OK:
-Spirit-walk and associated puzzles are a bit contrived and hokey
-Die but come back to life after killing some birds is silly
(but you can just reload instead)
-Story line is a bit goofy, but this is true for most FPS games.
Bad:
-10 hours of game play for a $50 retail game.
-Level design at the end felt like a rushed job.