Recent reviews by davidbalparda

Nightmarish unexplained bits that make you wonder

Well, the game is a big grind that involves fighting, fighting, driving, fighting and fighting some more. It's still a very nice depiction of Hong Kong. I didn't enjoy the fighting controls and interface compared to - say - Batman Arkham City and Mad Max. I would reccommend it only if you're very into the GTA genre. It's worth the price on sale.

Played 11 hours so far, and explored what seems to be 25% of the world map. I really enjoy the visuals, music and combat system. The story so far feels a bit bland. There's not much stress on dialog, so most decisions are going to be "attack gang X to get on gang Y's good side". There's a fair bit of exploration and danger around. There is a combat tutorial but there isn't much hand holding in terms of autosaves or quest journals. You are supposed to save often and write things down on your in-game notebook, including your own quest notes. No problem with that, but some younger players might complain. I had some trouble with controls/UI, especially when I wanted to jump windows back to the outside, and AI was mostly very dumb. I did not experience much experience-ruining bugs people were complaining prior to patch 1.1, so that was an improvement. It's a pretty game, but in its current form it has failed to hit home for me. I don't know whether the team is willing to change the game further or make an expansion with the same engine, because this is a case of a good system and engine suffering from a lingering / uninteresting story, bad dialog and unremarkable characters.

You'll die a lot, but it's fun with friends

Great, addictive and punishing game, especially if you're playing the Long War mod, which I absolutely reccommend. Maybe Long War is a bit TOO long for some players, so there's a setting there to tweak the length of the overall campaign.

I didn't like it as much as the base game. I think the base Cloudpunk is more laid back (less rush and action), less confusing and way more interesting. The inter-twining stories in COG did not have a relevant narrative impact on me.
As I felt I was constantly hurried to urgent tasks, I did not take the time to explore the city and look for interesting NPCs as I did in the base game.

Mostly reccomended, not without some critcicism

It's a great story-driven investigation game where you get to drive some classic 40's cars and feel the golden era of the American dream while chasing pervs and perps. Astonishing facial expressions even for today's standards, nice voice acting, nice puzzles. Some of the clues are just major giveaways that wouldn't happen in real life, so that makes puzzles and clue finding kind of easy in general.

Very similar to Mafia 2 in gameplay, post-WW2 America setting, driving, combat and little things in the story that pissed me off. But you play as one of the good guys.

There are some major flaws, though: devs tried to hint whether characters are lying or hiding something through facial expressions, but that becomes very misleading later in the game. The combat system is terrible. If the main character had less hit points, combat would be plain suicide, because I found it impossible to go through gunfights without getting hit in this system and with these controls. Also, there are frustrating and constant instances of 'Cutscene Incompetence' throughout the game which makes you chase and fight perps around, get at least a case wrong and acting in a total this-would-totally-get-a-real-cop-killed Dirty Harry fashion but I'll give it to the 'story driven' character of this game.

(Reviewing the Base Game)
The huge megacity the artists put together is alone a one-of-a-kind visual experience. It's a masterpiece. Each neighborhood has got its unique touch of personality that often invites you to just hang around and drink it all in. Gameplay is easy, I didn't die a single time, so I don't even know if you can die in this game, but I guess you can. Talk to people, get from point A to point B, collect stuff and make a few choices. Nice story with lots of transhumanist backdrop, androids and AI. I'd say the whole experience is super family-friendly except for cussin' and the possibility to use stimulant drugs that don't even make too much of a difference. Other that this, there's virtually no violence and zero shots fired.

Only annoyance for me was long loading times, but that's because I played on a low-spec laptop. It should run great on almost anything modern.

Greatest strength: Andrew Hulshult soundtrack

Nice: as a reboot of the original it looks pretty nice and is quite faithful to the original idea of being a naïve and surreal shooter with a cheesy story and ludicrous gibs.

Weak: I have a hard time finding the enemies. Visibility sucks. They're shooting at me, there's no cover anywhere, I'm a sitting duck taking fire and still I can't see them. Baddies with pistols have an absurd effective range and accuracy. I get lost often. Jumping is clunky. Overall, these weaknesses turn the game, even in its first levels, into something much harder than the original ROTT. It was supposed to be a more casual shooter, not something this hard.

I'd say this game has everything to become a cult classic. A straight-forward, tough but balanced beat 'em up with an amazing soundtrack, retro pixels, and a story setting and gameplay inclined to the grotesque and ultra-violent.