A decent but often overlooked game from the turn of the decade.
Since the game's setting is important for the game mechanics I'll explain it a bit, I say nothing that isn't revealed by the end of the first map, if you want to avoid it, skip trough the next paragraph
The game starts with an US satellite detecting a large burst of energy emanating from an old Russian research station. And of course the US being what it is (poking its finger in everyone's pie) they send a group of soldiers (who else? ) there. You're one of these men, but your helicopter crashes, and the anomaly that is the source of the energy burst, throws you back in time to 1956, when the base was still fully operational and busy as hell. The Russians were trying to weaponize a new element that is capable of manipulating the fabric of time. You find yourself in the middle of a botched experiment and inadvertently save the life of a person, not knowing that by doing so you fundamentally change the future. And when you find yourself back in 2010 after the anomaly subsides, the earth is ruled by the USSR, and from that point on, with a group called MIR12 who somehow (ex-machina alert) know that this is not how history should be, you try to put thing back as they were before you ripped the space time continuum.
The game gets its unique flavour from, the TMD or time manipulator device, that you get very early on in the game. You can use it to send things back and forward in time, well not exactly back and forth, because it stays there, but its age changes. You mostly have to use it to solve puzzles, it can also be used as a weapon, but it's not that effective for that.
If I wanted to paint the game in a negative way, I'd say it's a Half-Life rip-off. Indeed it is, but only in a good way. Because it only borrows good ideas from there, and tops it off with some good things of its own. The game mechanics, the gameplay, are very HL like.
One of the best assets of the game is the damage system. Average soldiers don't run at you with 2 magaznies of bullets in their chest. They can be disabled with 2-3 shots that only hit limbs. Which don't necessarily kills them but they are rendered harmless. So the gore is very realistic, to the dismay of the concerned parents association and other hypocrites.
But the game also has a very specific Bioshock sensation to it as well. That is due to the architecture and the rusty metal objects everywhere. And the augmentation system is similar too.
What I didn't like, is that the TMD can't be used on everything, only on a few prepared objects. It would've been good if you were able to manipulate everything with it even if just for the fun of it.
The graphics is pretty good, runs well.
The save system is checkpoint based, which raises the stakes, makes you more careful, therefore it makes the game more realistic. The problem with it is that you can only load the very last checkpoint, you can't go back if you pass a checkpoint very inefficiently. Because of that many times if I felt that a part of the game could've been done much better, I immediately tried again, before passing a checkpoint. The game is not particularly hard, so it's not a big problem. Just a small inconvenience.
+
- Atmosphere
- Gameplay
- The borrowed ideas are not wasted
- Multiple endings
-
- Bit too easy
- TMD can only be used on mission critical objects
- Short, 5-6 hours.
- There are many special weapons, but most of them are useless because there isn't enough ammo, and many of them are self-endangering or cumbersome to use, but most are both.
- It's not particularity gripping apart from one scene, I felt that the setting could've been better used in this regard, but the lack of difficulty also takes away from the fear level.
I give it a 7 out of 10, not more because it doesn't have any revolutionary things in it, it only uses the borrowed material well. Its a classic first person shooter, there is no branching storyline, no decisions (apart from the ending) the only thing interrupting the shooting, are the TMD puzzles.