im loving this game so far



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Yea loved ones gameplay and therefore loved 2 just as much. However, it was very easy... My friend messaged me he was 3/4ths to plat on day three of its release, and halfway thru hard at the time to.

So when I bought this from the psn store I went right to hard mode. I just platted it today, after starting it friday night. Waaay to easy, Only spot I had trouble with is the mercer fight on hard, and even then I only died a handful of times before I got him. And they finally did collectables right, meaning the right number, but then they go give you the little ping on the map. Yea, totally not needed there, I woulda been fine with just giving us the amount per area then making us find them on our own.

Then the story was kinda mehhh to be honest, And was kinda shocked at the amount of f bombs heller threw out so much. I don't mind mindless killing and cussing or even mini sex games (gow3), but really he was throwing mf and fker around too much, not in the sense it offended me, it just seemed out of place for the situation and context of the particular mission. Also, didn't like how they turned Alex into a monster villian so fast. They easily coulda continued his story and not made him an asshole villian with a beyond god complex.

I know I know, you read this and wonder how could I enjoy this? One answer... GAMEPLAY lol. Its what one did plus some new abilities. Throughly enjoyed myself in this regard. Story in my opinion comes next, wasn't all that great, but I did enjoy it enough.



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The problem is that people said that the first one was too easy, and they tried to make the second one easier, but made it WAAYY too easier. Still a very fun game though



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Gameplay wise excellent, best fun I have had for a while.

The story however is shallow and mindless. It completely ignores all the interesting open threads left from the original, such as Mcmullens speculations about what would happen if Mercer ever met pariah, something he believed would be disastrous. Mercer's interesting character has being reduce to a terrible predictable villain.



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I hear that. It felt like it was just way too easy. Prototype took me a few days to beat, and I was a lot more invested in it than I am in this one. It's like I barely have to try. Even without the armor, taking damage was only really possible when fighting the Evolved or in the final boss battle, or really early on when I was getting used to the controls. Heller isn't as easy for me to like as Mercer was, despite what happens over the course of the game and how much you learn about him.

And then there's how short the game feels. As I said, it took me a few days to beat the original game. Granted, I was taking it slow and enjoying myself, pacing to collect enough Evolution Points to upgrade my powers so that I had a wide range of things I could do to cause as much devastation as possible in a single battle, and most of my grinding was done in Times Square with the Whipfist just using a two hit combo from it. Left, right, left, right, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, be here, for hours, loving, every second. That became my chant.

This time around, you gain points, 'evolve' a level, select one thing out of twenty two, and get a little stronger but not with a power. Go to a //Blacknet terminal, find a Lair, take out a Field Op team, or collect a few Black Box recordings, and you get one point to upgrade a given area, becoming faster, harder to hurt, better able to take out opponents, or one of your weapons becomes stronger. You don't even get new special abilities when you get the powers. You just, have them. Claw Pounce, Blade Tornado, Black Hole, Spikes, and the power to grab a helicopter out of the air with the Whipfist. The sense of power is there, but I personally don't feel like those abilities are earned, just, given to you like 'here's your power, and here's the special abilities that go with them so you don't have to spend half an hour tracking down specific targets to earn it'.

Even getting extra levels of power for them isn't any serious feat requiring much skill. Find a Brawler, beat it up, Consume it, Claws becomes stronger and more awesome looking. Repeat until Claws are at maximum level, then find the next one and start working on Hammerfist, etc. until you have all weapons fully upgraded.

The story itself I liked, but unlike the original, there wasn't a feel of something happening in the shadows all that much. In the original, it was finding out who Mercer was and why he did what he did, what all happened between each person you Consumed to find out what you can about not only Alex Mercer, but Elizabeth Greene, the town of Hope, Blackwatch, the army, and a little info about Pariah. There was a larger background to the story, with something looming that never got fully explained, like it was promised for sequel. Was there new information about Pariah at all this time? Not to my knowledge (Though I haven't fully completed everything, I highly doubt it, as you don't get the Web of Intrigue.

Basically, the game finds a total focus on Heller and his story of revenge turned into a quest altogether different from where it all started. But do you learn a great deal about Heller himself? If there was a lot to learn then I must have missed it or it wasn't shown in such a way as to teach you a lot about him. The most we learn is that he gained his powers, accepted them and made them his own, gets screwed over repeatedly, and a lot of stuff happens between other stuff that isn't of great consequence. Where's the dramatic change from a man hell-bent on revenge turning into a savior of the people? The most I saw was that he gains new powers, thinks they're awesome (Especially the Bio-Bomb), and turns from a man hell-bent on revenge to a man hell-bent on a saving New York while still getting revenge. The softest part of the game was alright, but it didn't have as much of an emotional impact as it probably could have had if Heller was more elaborated on as a person.

Mercer, on the other hand, never gets back all of his memories of who he was, but he started becoming human again by the end of the first game. What happened to make him change into King Dick? His master plan is only revealed at the very end, and little hints along the way that aren't totally explained, leading to questions. While that's a good thing in one way, I don't feel a lot of closure because I don't really get the 'why' behind it all. It makes me wonder what happened to make him change from a man trying to save New York from the virus he unleashed, to a monster trying to infect the world with the virus he became. Was it Greene's influence in him? Was it the virus itself taking sentience from all of the people Mercer Consumed and subtly leading Mercer to do it? There are questions, but the answers have to wait for the third part, if there is to be one, or the comic series or movie series, or something.

On the whole, this is a better game if you focus solely on the gameplay experience and ignore the fact that the first game had a lot of questions you could ask about the conspiracy hiding in the shadows, occasionally stepping out to remind you that there's more to the virus than the fact that Alex Mercer let it loose upon New York City and became 'something more than human, but also something less'. There was a whole mess that he had to clean up, and he did so with a brutal and gross style that eventually shows you that he could have been a hero, but he also could have been a villain, but in the end, he stood in the middle, becoming the lesser of two evils by stopping Greene, and the lesser of three evils by saving New York from a nuclear warhead. And then you have to focus on the fact that it feels like the whole idea was pretty much abandoned, and what was still there was hanging on the edge occasionally lifting itself up before being pushed back down, as if to say 'yeah, we were being a little ambitious with that, and while we could have saved it here and made the game both longer and possibly better by keeping it in, we took the other path, put it on the back burner to maybe use in the third game, but here's a shiny new power for you to use'.

On a scale of one to ten, it's difficult. For me as a writer and someone that greatly enjoys a deep plot with a lot of questions in addition to a subplot that slowly unfurls and remains ambiguous even by the very end, I give it 6.4/10, a good game, but I'm glad I rented it.

For me as a gamer that loves a well balanced system that lets you have a lot of power and really feel it by cutting a path through enemies even without using any powers, only to cut a gash in the earth when you really cut loose, I really found myself loving it. The simplified system letting you use two powers at once really made it more fun, and by using the right two at the right time, there was no real way for even the final boss to match you on a level playing field. But at the same time, I felt severely overpowered, because the final battle in the original was tantamount to hell because not only was your enemy resilient, fast, and very deadly, wielding some of your own powers against you while you were fighting desperately to take him down only a few minutes. This time around, a well timed dodge and use of your blocking power, was he even worth fighting? Sure, you couldn't use the same power he was using, or he'd counter you and show you how he does it, but if you used Whipfist while he wasn't using it, just jump high, charge it up, block the rock he throws at you after you damage him, and dodge on the ground, you just have to be good with your timing and it's too easy. As a gamer, 8.2/10, great, but I'm still just happy to rent it.

Overall, between the two, it falls into the middle of 7, a pretty good game, but as I said twice, rent it to see if it's worth buying. That way, you're only out a few bucks instead of fifty or sixty.

Sorry if it feels like a review. I'm in writer mode right now, despite that I'm actually playing the second to last mission right now.



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