I'm struggling here a bit. I don't know what to say about this game. It's been almost a day since I finished it, but I have nothing good to say about it. While I judged the first one to be a slightly better than average shooter. I can't say the same about this. This game is as generic as it gets.

There is absolutely no variation in the gameplay whatsoever. You shoot nazis, ad nausea. And during the pauses you play errand boy. Basically 99.9% of the levels in the game are built on an extremely simple template. You enter a general area, that consists of a few rooms interconnected by various corridors or a hub area.
And these have a few dozen of henchmen in it, two officers, who call reinforcements if not taken out quickly. And maybe three or four heavy enemies, that usually only get released when you finished off the rest. And when all enemies are killed a doorway opens where you can move into the next area, and repeat this until the end of the level.

Gameplay wise it is almost a carbon copy of Bioshock Infinite, but without its charm and stunning visual design.

It was fun for 2-3 hours, then it all started to feel like a chore, with no reward. So I bumped down the difficulty to the easiest after that. And honestly the game didn't feel any different on easy. Or I should say it wasn't more rewarding to play on a harder difficulty level.
The only thing that actually changed is how fast I could progress trough the levels. And that was a good thing that I could progress faster, because I was already contemplating abandoning my playtrough when it suddenly ended, to my surprise and even greater relief.

I didn't expect it to be over, because there was no build-up, the last map didn't feel any different to all the previous ones that came before that. I was half expecting this to be only a halfway point in the game, but when the credits started to roll I realized that was it really.

As for the story, it started out where the first game left it, and for a while it was OK, but slowly and steadily it devolved into complete madness. They jumped the shark so many times that I lost count, and I became completely indifferent to the story. Sure, sure the first game wasn't realistic either, but this broke my suspension of disbelief beyond any hope of repair.
Was this meant to be fun? Because except for a few small moments it wasn't. And I knew that Swedes and Finns are not particularly best friends, but the guys at machine games really went all out this time bashing the Finns. It just wasn't good comedy, it was the awkward comedy, where everyone is shifting uncomfortably in their chairs, waiting for the others to start laughing to see that it is acceptable to laugh or not.

And actually this notion carries on through the entire game. It was more awkward than funny. I can count the jokes on one hand that actually worked.

I've tried the freedom chronicles DLCs as well. The first one gunslinger joe, is more of the same as the main game, so I said no thanks, I had too much of this already. But the second one is a breath of fresh air to this stale game. Because it actually changes the rules and you can use a different more stealthy approach. Didn't get around to the third series yet.

Graphics was OK I guess, didn't really stand out either way.

Gameplay wise there were two things that really, and I mean really annoyed me: It was very hard to tell when you were being hit, I only noticed that I was being hit most of the time when I saw my Health and armour numbers on the HUD rapidly decreasing. And even then it was hard to tell where you were being targeted from, I had to spin like a carousel to find the enemy actually shooting at me. So the visual and audible feedback of the game is terrible. And this includes the goal indicators. There is a "hint" button in the game that shows where your actual objective is. But when you press it it flashes a tiny winy angled bracket that disappears within a second, most of the time I couldn't even find where it was on the screen before it disappeared. Of course 98% of the environments in the game are grey, and what color is the bracket? Yeah right: grey. So often after clearing one area I had to run around aimlessly while abusing the hint button to find the exit. As often the exit was a small opening or vent or ladder tucked away in one out of the way corner.

The non-combat sequences between missions in the resistance HQ, are nothing but a bunch of the worst fetch quests. Go here, talk to this one, go there, bring this, find that...Blargh!

+

  • A few good lines mixed in among thousands of weak and awkward jokes.  
  • Runs OK, no noticeable bugs.  
  • Freedom chronicles part 2  




-

  • Repetitive gameplay  
  • Awkward jokes  
  • the story becomes beyond ridiculous, and jumps the shark more than once
  • the nazis are portrayed as so stupid that you have no reason to fear them, this is the nazi menace? A bunch of idiots? How could they have won the war if they're really this stupid?  
  • Hard to tell when you're being hurt, and in turn hard to tell if you're hurting an enemy or not, actually almost impossible. You just shoot and have faith that sooner or later it will fall.  


Scoring:

graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: 3/10
gameplay/controls: 4/10

overall impression : 5/10

Not the worst game I played.