[h1]F**k Me...[/h1]
As a big fan of Battle Brothers who had been eagerly waiting for [i]years[/i] for Overhype Studio's next game, I'm hugely disappointed with MENACE. I expected something inspired and unique, with personality, more mechanical depth, more customization options and a considerably increased production-value over Battle Brothers', given the success and ensuing profits from this one. And what I found here was the opposite of that.
The game starts off great, with a very nice cinematic introduction. But everything goes downhill from there.
The [b]tutorial[/b] is kind of a joke. You have to left-click, press "1," then "X," then click an icon on the screen and on a target. That's it -- congratulations, the tutorial is over and now you are "ready" to play the game. I literally went "What? Really?" and if the tutorial represents the whole complexity of the game -- which I'm fairly assuming it does -- then... good God, what the hell did they charge me $60 for?
After the tutorial, I started a [b]New Game[/b]. And that took me straight to a couple of still, cartoonish 2D characters on a bland background talking some nonsense subtitled in a black-square box, as if I was playing some cheap Ren'Py game. Going from a great, dark and gritty initial cinematic to an extremely basic, silly and amateurish visual-novel-style 2D scene was jarring, not to say downright shocking.
After that, you're thrown into the "[b]off-mission screen[/b]," where you can build some stuff on your Ship, purchase things from the Black Market, hire some new dudes, etc. Oops, sorry, there's not "etc." -- that's all that can be done outside of missions. And you know those bases you have in X-COM, Phoenix Point, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint and the such? Well... your "ship-screen," here, is nothing like that. In MENACE, your "base" is just a bunch of squares that you can put a 2D sprite on once you can afford to, to get some not-particularly-interesting benefits (as far as I checked in my brief time with the game).
Oh, and by the way, the large world you could freely travel over in Battle Brothers is [i]not[/i] present here. In MENACE, you simply click on a planet and jump straight into a mission. And, you know... it's always a good idea to get rid of the good stuff you already had in place and subtitute it for something far, [i]far[/i] worse.
[b]Character customization[/b] sucks, because each of your Squad Leaders (your actual characters) can only carry 2 weapons, wear 1 armor piece, and carry a few consumables into battle. And they can have up to 7 perks, I think, out of not-many-more-than-that. In other words: your characters are less customizeable than in Battle Brothers. Why not make them [i]more[/i] customizeable instead? [i]Why?[/i]
Your Squad Leaders command squads of 4-or-so dudes in battle. They all move and act as a single unit. But there's nothing you can customize about your Squadies themselves. And if you can't do anything with them, why even bother turning "one unit" into "one unit with 4 whatevers following it"? [i]Oh, why?[/i]
Upon entering my first [b]mission[/b], I couldn't help but notice the game's fog of war. Or rather the lack of it, because it's not a fog or anything minimally fancy -- your screen, outside your troops' view, is simply black. And then that blackness is revealed as squares. There are no special effects whatsoever, nothing minimally smooth: the map is divided in squares, and it just goes from "black squares" to "non-black squares."
The enemies I ran into were some kind of aliens. But I have no idea where they came from, what they're doing there, why they're attacking civilians, or WTF is going on. And they don't look very interesting either. Their models are fairly dull, and so are your units' and everything else. Also, shooting and killing enemies doesn't feel particularly satisfying.
On the practical side, you have no idea if it's OK to shoot through civilians or near your own troops, if enemies are actually in cover or not, or any other "details" like that because, as I said earlier, the game's tutorial is awesomely useless. And it turns out you [i]can[/i] damage civilians, and pin down your own troops, which totally messed up my first combat experience. And then I just closed the game and asked for a refund, because after 5 minutes into my first mission I had no doubts left that I'd rather keep my money.
[b]In short[/b], I have nothing good to say about MENACE.
The initial cinematic is cool, but that was probably made by a third party. The game itself is simple, uninspired and generic, lacking personality, polish, creativity, depth and artistic coherence.
This is quite a step [i]down[/i] from Battle Brothers. Unless they add several more core mechanics, much deeper character customization, upgrade the game's art, and bring in a bunch of cool new ideas, I won't even bother giving this another go in the future, not even during a major sale. And none of that is gonna happen, so... R.I.P.
They should have just made Battle Brothers 2 instead. They [i]really[/i] should...
