I'm going to avoid the political controversy of the game, this review is about the game not the subject, particularly in the current political climate. This also isn't the first time there's been a the "bad guys" win alternate universe, Wolfenstein did it with the Nazis, Fallout sort of does it with the Chinese (or more accurately no one won there).

The game is a mess. The ideas are decent, but the execution is problematic. Functionally I have had it CTD on average every 6 5 or so hours of play time (4 times in 23 5 times in 26 hours), and with no way to save outside of specifically designated save spots, this has made me replay the same section a few times. The loot collecting animation is fun at first, but it's terribly glitched, I've had objects just hang in mid air because the looting animation didn't actually give those particular objects gravity after you sucked in everything else of actual value. Even with the 'polymer' meant to defy gravity the graphical glitch was a bit jarring.

Rather than progress with the main story, I decided to hunt upgrades to my gear (A choice I made after getting my a** handed to me my first time trying to fight Hedgie) This meant me exploring some areas sooner than I otherwise would and the difficulty spikes were an issue, but the real issue is the sheer number of seemingly infinitely spawning repair bots in the open world, repairing everything you kill it, sometimes as fast as you can kill them. The repair bots only don't seem to repair themselves, but they don't need to, another swarm of 3 or 4 will be launched if you kill off the last one every single time. This sidequesting hunt brought up two other issues in the game though, first is some of the puzzle rooms were not thought out well. In some cases I think I skipped the intended solution and found shortcuts, in others those shortcuts I did find made it impossible to continue, I had found my way to an area I shouldn't have been able to reach by jumping and dashing around an obstacle. The second issue is that at one point the game messed up where I was in the main quest. I was getting calls from Petrov, a man who was supposed to be dead, and the player character just had an attitude with him and accepted it. This wasn't the only dialogue issue, a few times the PC and CHarles have commented on noticing some item, that they shouldn't even know they were looking for, because like a lot of players I live by the creed the right way is the last path you take when in 'dungeons' and I hadn't seen why I needed for example a Tereshkova's arm,.

The puzzle and platforming designs are pretty good, I've heard some complaints about some puzzles, but there are more than enough hints on those if you pay attention. I am not sure but I believe the magnetic poles are backwards sometimes, - attracting - instead of +. The player character is a bit off, swinging between unflinching, almost fanatic, loyalty that I and Charles both think is misplaced and a bad attitude at the drop of an ushanka.

The worldbuilding is great, I like it probably better than Bioshock Infinite, though it could use more travel between flying parts of the complex. Mostly I am enjoying the game, but there's some pretty glaring holes that need to be fixed, both in the programming and in the writing, which is why I don't recommend this game until they fix those issues. I am writing this after yet another CTD is probably going to force me to replay the last 20+ minutes of the game, so take that as you will.

I'm going to avoid the political controversy of the game, this review is about the game not the subject, particularly in the current political climate. This also isn't the first time there's been a the "bad guys" win alternate universe, Wolfenstein did it with the Nazis, Fallout sort of does it with the Chinese (or more accurately no one won there). The game is a mess. The ideas are decent, but the execution is problematic. Functionally I have had it CTD on average every [strike]6[/strike] 5 or so hours of play time ([strike]4 times in 23[/strike] 5 times in 26 hours), and with no way to save outside of specifically designated save spots, this has made me replay the same section a few times. The loot collecting animation is fun at first, but it's terribly glitched, I've had objects just hang in mid air because the looting animation didn't actually give those particular objects gravity after you sucked in everything else of actual value. Even with the 'polymer' meant to defy gravity the graphical glitch was a bit jarring. Rather than progress with the main story, I decided to hunt upgrades to my gear [spoiler](A choice I made after getting my a** handed to me my first time trying to fight Hedgie)[/spoiler] This meant me exploring some areas sooner than I otherwise would and the difficulty spikes were an issue, but the real issue is the sheer number of seemingly infinitely spawning repair bots in the open world, repairing everything you kill it, sometimes as fast as you can kill them. The repair bots only don't seem to repair themselves, but they don't need to, another swarm of 3 or 4 will be launched if you kill off the last one every single time. This sidequesting hunt brought up two other issues in the game though, first is some of the puzzle rooms were not thought out well. In some cases I think I skipped the intended solution and found shortcuts, in others those shortcuts I did find made it impossible to continue, I had found my way to an area I shouldn't have been able to reach by jumping and dashing around an obstacle. The second issue is that at one point the game messed up where I was in the main quest. I was getting calls from [spoiler]Petrov, a man who was supposed to be dead, [/spoiler] and the player character just had an attitude with him and accepted it. This wasn't the only dialogue issue, a few times the PC and CHarles have commented on noticing some item, that they shouldn't even know they were looking for, because like a lot of players I live by the creed the right way is the last path you take when in 'dungeons' and I hadn't seen why I needed for example [spoiler] a Tereshkova's arm,[/spoiler]. The puzzle and platforming designs are pretty good, I've heard some complaints about some puzzles, but there are more than enough hints on those if you pay attention. I am not sure but I believe the magnetic poles are backwards sometimes, - attracting - instead of +. The player character is a bit off, swinging between unflinching, almost fanatic, loyalty [spoiler]that I and Charles both think is misplaced[/spoiler] and a bad attitude at the drop of an ushanka. The worldbuilding is great, I like it probably better than Bioshock Infinite, though it could use more travel between flying parts of the complex. Mostly I am enjoying the game, but there's some pretty glaring holes that need to be fixed, both in the programming and in the writing, which is why I don't recommend this game until they fix those issues. I am writing this after yet another CTD is probably going to force me to replay the last 20+ minutes of the game, so take that as you will.