This one was tough to get through but I gave it a generous chance and completed it.



Listen, I'm a fan of story-driven, lefty political statement games. I paid actual dollars to try this out and, unfortunately, end up disappointed. Now, the chuds are all up in arms because this game includes people that don't look like them but that, of course, is no basis for disliking a game. I've got no problem with any of the people they tried to depict. I think the difficulty that anyone would have with these characters is that they don't feel like real people. I don't think folks like these talk this way. Honestly, the weird dialogue makes these characters border on caricature and verge on tokenism. I think the goal of the writers was to make you connect to these folks before the endgame events but the whole first half of the game is filled with heavy-handed, unbelievable conversations that keep you from joining them in their world. The story and dialogue improves in the second half but none of the twists and turns payoff as they should due to the inability for me, at least, to connect with any character on a deeper level than just the fact that I've never seen a character like that in a game before.

The gameplay is another let down as the pacing is chaotic, alternating between extremely long chat sessions, very slow exploration segments, weird Guitar Hero bits that don't belong, and the actual battles. The combat went for a unique aesthetic and would probably look interesting to someone watching the game but lacks any real danger and has a lot of options that aren't really necessary to use on the various enemies. I pretty much used the basic hit, the "taunt" mechanic, and maybe a shout and got through the approximately 10 battles just fine. While the weapons could be upgraded, you could earn more superpowers, the group happened upon new enemies, and different group members joined the main character in battles, nothing ever really felt like it was progressing.

This is usually where I say some nice things about the game I'm writing about. I must mention that the game looks nice with the comic-style, cel-shaded characters in a post-apocalyptic United States of the near future. The sound is fine, that one song is kind of okay, and the graphics are good... that's about it.

This game had many ideas that I think could have been great but, sadly, the final product feels like a disservice to games that hope to allow every player to be seen in the games they play.

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