8.0 from GSpot7.8 from IGN8.4 from GametraielrsI warn against watching the GT review. It's got lots of great footage, and no real spoilers exactly, but I feel like it gives away some puzzles and a few things. It's a good review, though.
Anyway... I'll note a few things right up front. Firstly, the screen tearing and framerate issues are only present on 360. I've heard they aren't really that bad, but the PS3 version has no problems and is the superior version. Secondly, I don't really find the gear/upgrade system all that bad. It seems like it's got a fair amount of stuff in it to play with, and unlocking new moves via the merchant really opens up the combo system quite a lot and gives you a lot more fun moves to play with. I don't really find the control scheme complicated or cumbersome either, contrary to what was noted in the GSpot review. The part where the guy demonstrates (in the video) having trouble with the boomerang thing was like... wtf? It took me literally about 3 seconds to do that little segment properly. I think maybe he's just a little bit stupid. Thirdly, I think it was the IGN reviewer that said he wished the world felt more populated, like he wanted to see how the world was coping with the apocalypse. Well... it isn't. This is the end of the world, dude. There's nobody left.
So I guess that leads into what the game is if you haven't heard about it yet. Basically, you're War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and you get blamed for causing the end of the world too early. Some scary dudes call you out on it, but since it isn't your fault, you ask for the opportunity to go back to the Earth and get vengeance. Too bad it's been a century and the world has basically turned into an empty husk where demons have made themselves comfy. Everyone keeps saying the plot isn't that great, and I can't say because I haven't beaten the game yet, but I think the setup is just fucking brilliant. You've got huge skyscrapers and burned-out husks of cars, empty streets littered with newspapers blowing in the dust... and then randomly you'll have giant demonic architecture going around stuff, huge chains thrust into buildings, giant chasms where the earth has been rent asunder, gouts of lava and flame that gurgle out of the ground. It's got a great comic book art style to it, but the world itself feels super gritty and dripping with end-of-the-world menace. It's pretty great.
Combat is pretty much
God of War, but they do away with the quicktime events. There are finishers and context-sensitive button presses, but they're all single hits. When you finish a baddie, you just press O to grab. Done. Watch animation and enjoy. When you open doors or break open chests or any of that stuff... single press. Thank God. So the combat feels really familiar, but it's done quite well and everything animates with panache. There's puzzley stuff in "dungeons" you find around, and these (as mentioned in all the reviews) feel a lot like
Zelda. They're done well, though, at least as far as I am in the game. The challenges aren't too crazy hard, but they'll stump you for a minute on a few occasions, and they're fun to complete. Bosses and minibosses seem to be pretty good stuff, consisting more of figuring out logical patterns, a little combat timing, and use of environment to defeat rather than pure reflexes, though there's a bit of that too.
All in all, I think whether you need this game depends entirely upon whether or not you really dig
God of War style action and the kind of open-world games where you get to run around and find stuff. This is a different combo of things than some of those games, but all the elements really come together well despite not being super original. But I think the greatest strength is just the concept. The presentation does a great job of showing a hell-infested Earth that's been emptied of its people. To me this is more or less the perfect landscape for a game like this, one I've always wanted to see happen. It delivered all the stuff I was hoping for.
