PARKSIDE: DECAYED SOUL MANIPULATION

A good immersive sim with an ambitious narrative, fun gameplay, great atmosphere, and nice electronic/jungle soundtrack. Plays a bit like Cruelty Squad but with a more traditional approach to the genre reminiscent of the original Deus Ex. Took me 9 hours to reach the ending which didn't outstay its welcome and I would have actually liked the final act to have an extra level as it finished quite abruptly. Only encountered one bug relating to a mission objective not updating properly but didn't prevent me progressing and I also fell out the map once. Game has decent replayability on account of there being a lot of little areas you could easily miss in one playthrough, different builds/approaches to try out, and multiple choices you can make in the plot — though I think the missions are broadly the same no matter what you choose. Gameplay was about what I expected — the AI is extremely basic and it's often hard to tell what will cause enemies to aggro, or how much of an area will be alerted when the alarm is raised. You do have non-lethal options and there is a slightly unpredictable system where you can attempt to bluff enemies through dialogue to stop them raising the alarm, but I found it a lot more reliable and fun to go full lethal as there didn't appear to be notable consequences for doing so. One aspect that people have criticised is lack of manual saving — you get one special item (two if you upgrade) that only works in very limited areas of the map in each mission where you can effectively put down a single-use respawn point. Otherwise progress is only saved upon completion of each mission, or at a checkpoint when entering the next area in some of the longer missions. This approach was clearly a design choice on the part of the developer and for me it mostly worked well. My only issue which I would hope could be fixed/altered is that if you do use your respawn item, enemy alert status doesn't reset — so you don't get a second chance at sneaking if detected. The levels are reasonably big and complex, but you can run through them very quickly (and bunnyhop even faster), plus you are pretty strong compared to enemies from the beginning and get a lot of experience to buy useful upgrades quickly. I felt very overpowered by the second half of the game in a good way. I didn't die many times, but when I did, playing through the level again didn't feel tedious as there are nearly always several different routes you can take and more unexplored areas to be found. I thought the level design was mostly very good — the earlier levels in particular are dense to explore with good verticality and some basic side missions, while the later levels felt a bit more linear but still with lots of routes and hidden areas. It gave me a strong community mapping vibe with its sprawling levels that reminded me at times of gmod city maps and EYE, but unlike the latter of those examples, actually felt intuitive to explore and I rarely struggled to find my objective. The story and setting were fairly interesting and the narrative progression is ambitious for a small indie title, but it rests upon very familiar tropes and there wasn't much depth or complexity to it. Overall, I had a lot of fun with the game and it mostly beat my expectations. It felt like good value for its price and I would definitely recommend to fans of the genre if you can tolerate a bit of jankyness,