Control

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Misc & Gameplay

  • This game has some real problems with texture popin. I dunno if that’s because they tried really hard to get the framerate under control, but nothing in this game stands up to scrutiny when you first zoom in, you will see LoDs load in constantly, and it’s really distracting

  • I appreciate that this building is full of the same signs you would expect to see in a big office building, and they’re actually useful

  • I find it cool that the control points basically act like a bonfire, except they also physically morph the world around them when they are activated. They’re a checkpoint, but activating them also physically enables forward progress - the act of activating them is significant in itself

  • Because the mods you can construct are random, it feels like it’s pointless to invest resources doing so until after you’ve upgraded your construction level significantly first

  • Even the map in this game can take forever to load in, and that’s just not acceptable. If you’re looking at the map, then you probably feel like you can’t do anything until you see it, so you’re literally just waiting, potentially several minutes, for this 2d texture to load in?

Structure & Narrative

  • It’s interesting that the story is structured around this idea that you just walk in off the street and are made Director of this burea you know nothing about

  • I dunno who thought up the idea of bureau emergencies, but it’s pretty dumb. I really don’t want to see that popup when I’m in the middle of combat, or solving a puzzle, or hunting for the next control point, or ever really. Why would I want to be distracted from what I’m currently doing?

  • I kind of dig the combination of being able to hear Jesse’s thoughts, in addition to the fourth wall breaking of having the player being inside of Jesse’s head. With the 4th wall stuff not really established, it feels like I’m being pulled into the game as a character

UI/UX

  • I love how clean their font is

  • I really like the combined ammo meter and recharge meter, it’s a really clever use of space, combining both functions into one, and because you have infinite ammo, one part is never relevant while the other is being displayed

  • It strikes me as odd that there’s no minimap or compass of any kind. I can get the minimap, it doesn’t feel necessary, but for a game focused on exploring and using your map, it feels disorienting now knowing what direction you’re going. But maybe that’s a feeling that they end up using later on. I would believe it based on what I’ve seen so far

  • I’m finding I’m having a bit of a hard time understanding what kind of items I’m getting when I pick something up. Nobody has told me how any of these items work, or even implied they exist yet, even if some of them (like weapon / personal mods) are easy enough to understand what they are on their own. What’s the difference between a Material, a Research Log, and a Case File, for example?

  • I appreciate the minimalism in the UI, but I really miss the ability to see what gun I currently have equipped on the HUD. I can’t really tell until I shoot

  • I dislike that the reload bar is orange. Orange is used for enemy health bars, one should really not use the same colour for things with different meanings.

  • Enemies in this game all have a level displayed, but it’s hard to extract much meaning from them, because Jesse doesn’t have a level herself, so it’s hard to compare. I guess the point is more to indicate “hey, these guys are slightly harder than the last”

  • I appreciate that the developers recognize that, if a player wants to launch something at an enemy, they don’t want to actually target it first, they’re just going to hit R1 and hope they grab something (since there’s so much stuff in the environment anyways), so they let you rip up random pieces of the environment even if it’s not something that’s highlighted (which also makes combat more dynamic, since the landscape is frequently changing)

  • For whatever reason, Bureau Emergencies can be completed while you’re still in the middle of combat, and so all your rewards pop up, but you have no ability to actually look at what you earned

  • The map in this game really is trash. It tries really hard to represent vertical space, but it just fails so hard that, even horizontal space is mostly incomprehensible. It can only really clue you into your general direction, and orientation of areas. Actually understanding overlapping areas, or finding connecting hallways, is completely impossible

  • I feel like this game struggles a lot to reward the player. Most of your rewards are either a random mod, or a narrative pickup that you may or may not care about. Finding new objects of power are cool, obviously, but it feels like there’s a middle tier reward that’s completely missing

  • Inventory management and screwing with your mods just doesn’t really feel like it fits this game. This isn’t a survival game with a tiny inventory, this isn’t an RPG with big customization or character builds, this just random loot that’s moderately consequential, this feels like busy work

  • My primary motivation for disassembling mods, is to free up inventory space. Why is it then, that I can’t see inventory space once I open it up? Sure I could count the tiles, but I’m not going to do that. Just give me the same 14/24 counter that’s present 1 level up?

  • I really like the way this game uses light to grab your attention. It’s an in-world thing, so it feels more believable than some kind of UI marker or outline or projection