Fuck this game, no literally fuck this game, fuck it a thousand times, no a million, billion times! I hate it. And it wouldn't be terrible by default, but it's the most annoying game I've wrestled as far as I can remember.
It has no reason to exist. It is Wildlands, but it is at least slightly worse than that in every aspect. But in some aspects it's much worse.
I haven't felt more disappointed after finishing a game before. It lets you do the side missions and the chores and the sometimes fun but mostly just let's get this out of the way story missions. Only to wrestle control from your hands when the real important bits should start. And at other times as well.
Like on a schedule the game will take away control each time you reach a certain completion level in a region. You know exactly what will happen, and it is nothing but annoying. You have to sit through or sometimes thank god (pun intended very much) you can skip these awful sequences of verbal diarrhea.
They add nothing to the game, you're on a mission and suddenly you're teleported away, interrupting the flow of the game, to watch these predictable "let's get the fuck on with it" sequences. And you can't do shit about them.
Player choice is non-existent. For a game that prides itself that you can finish it in 10 minutes with a choice, it never ever gives you the chance to defy things ever again. You have to sit trough and painfully get trough the terrible nonsensical writing without being able to object to it just once.
Let me tell you how annoyed I was with the game at times, for forcing me into these situations without choice, and taking away every fucking boss battle I was looking forward to and turning them into nonsensical virtual battles.
I would leave the game running in the background in a window for 15-20 minutes waiting for the situation to go away, or to get a chance to do something that is not predetermined. I'd try to walk in the other direction in the bloody awful bliss sequences a dozen times to no avail.
I'd press alt-f4 in the middle of the unskippable cutscenes hoping that it would make it stop and let me skip it but no way.
You have to sit trough the entire theatrics and act surprised at the twists that are obvious even if you're looking down from the moon. Well you don't actually have to act surprised, but it seemed like to me that the writers didn't intend them to be predictable.
Not to mention that it doesn't make a shred of sense in the context of a story either. You're captured at least a dozen times in the game, and they still won't kill you. It makes the whole game stupid. That they can choose to capture you at will, but they cannot best you at any other moment in the game.
It is as if part of the development team didn't get the memo, what type of game are they trying to make. Some of it tries to be funny, some of it edgy, some of it serious. But these aspects don't augment each other, instead they cancel each other out.
The topic is ripe for gritty noir storytelling, that is truly sad and realistic at the same time. But this is none of that. This is a textbook case of cognitive dissonance.
What about the game mechanics themselves? Well as I mentioned it is Wildlands only everything is a bit smaller, bit less, a bit uglier, and a bit worse.
You have three regions each with an under-boss, that you have to defeat, it is exactly the same story. Except here you don't actually get to fight the bosses, at least not in the real world ever. You're forced into these awful uncontrollable situations that I tried to run trough as fast as humanly possible they were so painful.
The filler bits are not that bad, even if the game ultimately falls short of wildlands in this as well, the basic capture the outposts, and side missions / activities are enjoyable on their own.
From a technical aspect the game also falls short. Gunplay is worse than in W also, less weapon choice, no prone position in the game, less fun, the crosshair is moving around and is not fixed to the middle of the screen, and I don't mean during aiming with a sniper, I mean all the fucking time, it is like wrestling with the game again.
It's much easier to hit enemies from a distance than from point blank range. Visual and audible feedback of hits is minimal, sometimes I'd stand 2 feet from an enemy and still miss 70% of the shots.
Graphics is also a two edged sword, from up close it looks good, but there is terrible pop in, and detail ends very abruptly about 50m in front of you. The pop in is obvious while walking / driving on the ground as well, but as soon as you start flying it becomes terrible. Enemies and vehicles and building models with more than 10 faces only appear if you fly well within detection range of them.
And while we're on the topic of flying, helicopter controls are a joke. It's not just simplified it is so simplified that you might as well not even have it in the game. Wildands got helicopter controls right, it was relatively easy, and great fun to fly them. Here it is boring as hell because of the lack of physics and any connection to reality whatsoever. You can't even crash the damn thing you fly into trees and buildings and nothing will happen. And tell me why the hell do helicopters have flares on them? There was never once in the entire campaign an occasion where one would need to use it. And the aiming difficulty extends to the choppa and planes as well. It would seem that if the enemy is too close to you bullets will just avoid them, like they're deliberately going on a detour around enemies, because the farther away they ere the easier to hit.
I was really hoping of getting at least for the final big boss a real boss battle, and not these annoying fake encounters, where normal rules don't apply, but it turned out worse then the rest of it and even more nonsensical.
The fuck you in the face ending is far from being the worst problem in the game. I might even have liked it for it's unique nature if not for all the annoying shit I've had to endure to finally get there. But as it stands now, I can only reiterate my opening statement: Fuck this game, and fuck it's ending. If you force the player to be your bitch trough the entire damn campaign at least have the common courtesy of giving them the last laugh.
+
- Main gameplay when you're in control
- Graphics up close
- Good voice acting, too bad it's wasted on such a lousy and terrible story that's told even worse.
-
- Boss fights or what passes for that in this game
- The game wrestling away the control from you at every turn
- Helicopter controls
- The map is unbalanced. Out of the three regions only one is fairly enjoyable as far as filler content goes
- The painful elongated verbal diarrhea that comes after each time you're forced into the back seat in the story
- Terrible pop in, and lack of detail in graphics at a distance
- The awful useless multi tiered weapon wheel
- The whole process that is necessary to re-acquire weapons you already purchased after loosing them.
- The same process of jumping trough menus and the getting to one of the few spawn points to be able to spawn a damn vehicle.
- The help is useless. I mean the recruitable fighters and specialists.
Scoring card:
graphics/realization: 6 out of 10
story/atmosphere: -∞ out of 10
gameplay/controls: 6 out of 10
Overall impression: 5 out of 10
If they gave me a campaign DLC for wildlands of similar length (14h) I'd be 10 times happier than with this game.