Context: I was a huge fan of the very old The Specialists Half Life mod, which was confirmed (by the developer) as a strong influence on this game. Because of that, I have been following this game eagerly since the very first early gameplay was shown, hoping for something close to the old TS experience.
The good: The visual style and theme of this game is incredibly cool, very much like Neotokyo. Graphics and sound design are great, the weapons and characters look very cool. The only thing that is a bit of a letdown is the visual design of the maps is a bit too simplistic for my tastes.
The bad: Ok, disclaimer. I played 20 minutes before I refunded. If that disqualifies the review in your eyes, fine. The reason I didn't need to play any further is because within that first 20 minutes not only could I tell this was absolutely not the experience I was looking for, but also that this game is dead on arrival, regardless of its quality. The movement isn't bad at all, but it's not great either, definitely not as intuitive as a game like Titanfall 2 which nailed the aerial control and wall running aspects, which feel very heavy and a little, I don't know, "molasses-like" to me in this game. I was much more disappointed with the combat. The gunplay had the classic "you have to shoot them for 5 minutes but they kill you instantly" feel, and yes, that was absolutely a skill issue on my part, but the gunplay felt quite bad, with lots of recoil and the feel of inaccuracy, not much feedback (I couldn't easily tell when I was landing shots) except for the sniper rifle, which I thought was the standout weapon. I will grant, however, that The Specialists also had guns with lots of recoil, so maybe that inspiration carried over. The part that absolutely ruined the game for me, though, was the fact that you can bleed out after a gunfight, so even in in some fights where I won, I would bleed out literal seconds later without having time to heal, which is the most infuriating mechanic I could possibly think of. Nobody wants to be punished for narrowly winning an encounter.
The gadgets were horribly confusing. There was one instance where I tried to use a grenade or whatever it was I had equipped, but my gadget slots were red and unusable, even though I hadn't used any gadgets that life. Was I jammed or something? I don't know. On one loadout, using middle mouse button gave me a Neotokyo like thermal-scanning thingy so I could see enemies through walls. Cool, fine, but when I switched to the next loadout, all of a sudden it put me in third person. Is third person view a gadget?
Yes, I understand that if I put more time into the game, it would have demystified some of these questions. That's not the point, the point is that the new player experience is not great, and I am coming to this game already understanding the general gameplay of an arena shooter with dives and wallruns etc from my time with The Specialists and Double Action Boogaloo. This game will struggle hard to gain and retain any players. I absolutely support the dream of keeping TS-style games alive but this isn't doing it for me. I refunded.
