Finished it a couple of nights ago :
This , in my humble opinion is Bloober team's best effort so far, these guys love and know how to (properly) do atmospheric set pieces.It's one of the things they excel at.
Really nice camera angles/shots/framing (that Niwa resort wide-shot, hhnnnGgg), really good art-direction and Yamaoka's music, while most definitely not his best work is A-OK, kudos to Arkadiusz Reikowski too, some really nice and atmospheric tunes there.
Writing was mostly OK, no complaints there as was the whole story.Marianne's funny(?) one-liners/monologues were hit 'n' miss and maybe unneeded, no need for such light-hearted humour when dealing with such oppressive environments, just let the game bask in its misery/oppressive tone, this is a horror game after all.
The main problems i found with the game were :
- The absolutely amateurish facial expressions/animations, they're so G'damned bad most of the time that they really destroy any kind of immersion, it's like they hired 3D modelers straight out of university/schools.
Same with the general animation quality : while not the worst out there they weren't exactly what i'd call good, for example, when you leave a character standing still/idling...it's like they're in that typical 3D model T-pose, completely lifeless, coupled with that vacant stare where characters look like they're gazing into infinity without even blinking it's another immersion-breaking factor.
Also : The running animations are like the characters have a stick up their ass.
- Other technical hindrances like micro-stuttering in some parts, weird flickering blue/red/white lights when split-screen/dual reality is active and generally speaking, making my console feel sluggish when pausing the game in specific spots(usually during cut scenes) which would sometimes freeze the game AND the console for a good 10+ seconds(i.e: guide button would become unresponsive/couldn't do anything).
- The split/dual reality was...mostly for show and in my opinion, unneeded since there weren't any "real" puzzles in the game that felt that they couldn't have been there if not for the dual reality.This thing ended to be more a like a bullet point for "hey, look how cool is this thing we're doing with the game !"
Also, it wasn't worth the graphical and/or performance trade-off, 30fps on the XSX + framerate almost halved on PC (when split-screen is active) is not a good look, they could have spent their energy and resources elsewhere, it's basically a gimmick (and not a good one at that).
-The voice acting for Marianne was mostly good but everything else...yeah.
Thoma's voice acting (and writing) was friggin' abysmal 99.9% of the time with the constant "fuck you's", here's a character where in one scene has a loved one - YOU KNOW WHAT - and in the next exact scene (where gameplay starts) he immediately starts spouting witty one-liners coupled with 10's of "fuck you's", it's just horrible stuff and writing which completely takes you out of the experience. The actor's whole delivery was also bad.
Sadness's was meh as was the Commie guy.They various voices for the creatures were OK.
The ending - IMO - was fantastic, yes it's a cliffhanger but it was done masterfully, it ended when it needed to endr without dragging things out, really looking forward to what the next chapter brings.Gameplay wise, i could have done with 2-3 hours more.
All in all, a very "honest" 7.5/10 "AA " game let down only by Bloober team's typical incompetence/lack of experience/lack of good 3D modelers and budget, just imagine this fookin' game with an actual good engine and nice character models (with proper animations), it would have been a thing to behold, instead, what we got is the typical and mediocre Bloober team game - that is to say, a nice/OK and working game let down by the usual (for them) technical limitations.
These guys need a bigger budget and way, way more experienced 3D modelers/animators.
TLDNR : a honest AA game mostly due to Bloober team's good art-direction/aesthetics let down by their usual lack of technical expertise
