Even before finishing the previous game (Chaos Theory) some friends have forewarned me about this one. They said it's a horribly, terribly bad  game. But of course I'll make up my own mind about it. When did I let  negative, but especially positive reviews get in the way?

The game is built very differently compared to the previous ones, it's not divided into 10 clearly separable missions. Basically the whole game is one big mission. And this is a refreshing difference, I might have found it dull to just have ten new missions following the same scheme again. Another new idea I really liked were the undercover missions, unfortunately their novelty vanished fast, when I realised that it's almost impossible to get caught doing things for the other side while pretending to work for one side. And you always have plenty of time to spare even after doing everything for every possible faction. And while you encounter a lot of NPCs during these undercover missions you can't initiate any kind of conversation with any of them unfortunately. I'd have really liked if they put in some everyday tasks into these missions, so you could mingle to avoid detection, but no. You can't even sit down on a freaking chair after finishing all the tasks. You have to stand around like a fool until the timer runs out and the mission can be completed.

Another thing I liked in the game, that sometimes you have to make some impossible decisions when there is no right choice only two or more wrongs. It really helps the immersion, and the story.

As I've said the game itself is not bad in my opinion, but I do have to admit one thing. It's probably the buggiest, most unfinished game I ever had the misfortune of playing. I'd be embarrassed in the developers place to even label it as a beta, not to mention selling it as it is. There was everything you can imagine, getting stuck in objects, taking damage or dying by doing something in small spaces, and the list goes on... But the most disgraceful thing was that no matter what I did, the game just wouldn't trigger the ending video. It just switched to an external camera and wouldn't do anything, I did the ending about 5 times, with patches, without patches, after reinstalling, but nothing helped. (Thankfully the ending was pretty easy to do as well, otherwise I would've gone mad) In the end I had to watch the ending cinematic by looking it up on youtube. And as I found out there is a bonus mission in the game that I couldn't do either because I'd only get access to it after the ending video. So this was probably the first and last time I found a gameplay video on youtube useful.

Unfortunately the length of these games seems inversely proportional to their number in the series. Cause this one is so short I barely even noticed it. It took about five hours from start to finish.

The story is a bit scrubby, like it was written by aspiring youngsters. Lots of the most common clichés appear in it. Like when they try to convince you about something without any prelude. For example (major story spoilers):
Spoiler
When Enrica interrupts Fisher lurking in her room. They barely broken words before that, and she still doesn't show the least amount of content. And if you save her mid game she doesn't even get upset at the end when it comes to light that you're and undercover agent aiming to bring down the organization she believes in

I found these bits totally unrealistic in the story. I know games are not realistic most of the time. But the story at least should be believable There is already a very big barrier to getting immersed in the story. That you basically learn nothing of the organization you're supposed to infiltrate in the game. You hear nothing about their goals, or their ideology, all you get is "Phew terrorist scum"

Despite the game having a main storyline the individual missions you're sent on during your undercover stint have no connection to each other, and most of the time to the main story either. During these missions you always get contradicting orders from the NSA and the JBA (the organization you're in cover with) I thought it would be fun doing the balance act between two sets of orders. But unfortunately the missions are always orchestrated in a way that you can do good on both sets of orders without compromising the other. For example your terrorist boss conveniently leaves you alone for half an hour when purely by chance you have to do an errand for the NSA that takes exactly half hour. Because either they won't be looking for you while doing something for the NSA, or the chance to get back to your post will be built into the mission conveniently. That means the thrill goes completely non-existent by the third mission.

The characters aren't very well developed either. You can't really grow to like or even hate anyone. Maybe except Moss.

The graphics quality seems to deteriorate over the missions towards the end of the game. It's clear as sky that the devs were rushed like hell to get it out on time. That explains the bugs as well.

As for controls, the moves and actions available to you are exactly the same as before. But nonetheless they completely rearranged the controls for no apparent reason. It isn't any more straightforward or easier just different than before.

The difference in gameplay is that they finally got rid of the visibility indicator, so no more moonshining for Fisher. But they also got rid of the health bar so you can only guess how injured you are, and there are no medkits and similar things either. Instead Sam heals over time. I'd love to be that person, whose gunshot wounds heal without any medical attention in a few minutes

On some maps the enemies constantly respawn which resulted in some hilarious situations. At one occasion if I shot a soldier, then turned away the view only so much that he got off screen, and turned back, he was standing again  At first I thought they made a clever NPC that only pretended to be dead, but no, I could shoot him 10 times and he would still reappear for the eleventh time. And it was not even the same soldier, but a soldier appeared in his place.

The savegame system is buggy as well. I was driven insane by it. For example if you're in a game, the load game option is not working anymore, you can choose any save, the game even asks you if you really want to load it, but no matter what you answer nothing happens. The quick save feature only works within one game session. So if you save your game with quick save then quit, or the game freezes, if you restart it you can't load your quicksave, because Quick load only becomes available if you already used quick save at least once during that run. The game gives you a save message every now and then as you progress, you'd think it's autosave, but WRONG, because if you try to load the game will throw you back to the last quicksave point. (Not just the quickload, but the "Load last save" option as well) IT happened many times that the game corrupted the quick save and it wasn't loadable, fortunately the game stores the last four saves parallel. So you can try and go for the one before that if this happens (and it happens a lot)

The bugfixing must have went something like this:
- Hey boss, we still need to fix the quicksave issue, the gamers will be outraged if they loose their progress ingame.
- Don't worry, we put in four quicksave slots, it's unlikely that the game would corrupt four saves in a row.
The funny thing is that the game doesn't list the saves by time and date, just throws them in a list without any particular order. And since they can't be named, you just get a list that consists of savagames that are all named "SAVE" without even a number next to them. So the guesswork can start about which is the latest that actually works.

+

  • Atmosphere  
  • Gameplay  
  • Hard decisions  
  • Missions with contradicting orders (as an idea, not the way it's realized)  
  • Undercover mode (as an idea, not the way it's realized)  


-

  • 5 hours to finish the main campaign  
  • Tons of bugs  
  • Respawning soldiers  
  • Believe it or not, the enemies are telephatic again  
  • At the JBA base even the last janitor is above you in rank even after proving yourself in numerous missions.  
  • Junk save system  


Seriously how can I rate this heap of crap that would otherwise be a decent game if not for the bugs? If I completely take the bugs and overall programming quality out of the equation then it would deserve a 8/10. But if I look at the build quality it would deserve an 1/10. I'll avarage it out at 4 out of 10.

I'd gladly recommend the game to anyone, but the bugs prevent me from doing that. Only consider it if you fancy pulling your hair out.