TLDR; The base the story has is good, but the more the game tries to expand it, it falls flat on its face. Gameplay is fun and I have little issue. Enemy AI sucks, though. Music is great. Game just feels kind of stitched together with duct tape (direction-wise, the game functions fine). If you're looking for a fun old shooter game and don't care much for story, I absolutely recommend.
Overall, 8/10.
Long review:
I've had this game on my wishlist for a while now, and only decided to buy it a few days ago since I had the money and it conveniently had a sale a few hours after I remembered about it and checked it out again just to pass it down. I figured why not? It's 2 bucks. I don't regret a thing, because this game rocks, and it's a MASSIVE shame there isn't a big community for it. There's almost nothing from this game online on Sketchfab, VRChat, ect. because it's seemingly so obscure and it makes me sad. I love this game.
The only reason it says I have 0.4 hours is because I used the Alpine Faction mod to add widescreen, but mostly just in hopes it'd fix tabbing out (which it did). It uses it's own launcher so Steam couldn't pick up my hours which sucks. My review is a bit of a mess, forgive me, but I'll add all I can think of. Starting now...
Every weapon is fun to use (though unfortunately the pistol becomes rather useless in the later half of the game). I found myself using the assault rifle and precision rifle the most out of them all. The control baton has an awesome equip animation, has to be my favorite weapon animation I've ever seen honestly. It's satisfying! My one issue is that I think it should be cancellable if you click, as you need to wait for the animation to end before you can attack with it. But the control baton doesn't get many uses unless you're out of ammo for everything else. And even then, it kind of sucks because you'll get littered with bullets before you can land a hit unless you stealth it. And good luck trying that. Every weapon has an alt fire unless it has a scope, which is also a very nice touch to add some variety. But the shotgun sucks. Unless you're right in front of the enemy, don't bother with it.
The maps are mostly forgettable, the destruction system isn't used all too much which actually made me confused when the solution was to destroy something because I haven't used it often so I forgot I could even destroy the environment unless I was told directly. Now the maps weren't bad, but they were bland. I really wish we saw the surface of mars more.
The gameplay is great and I enjoy how it feels. I really don't have any complaints that I can think of. Vehicles are fun to drive, I loved mowing down guards with the cars. And to my surprise, you can even mow down guards with the flying vehicles too! Don't know why you'd be flying so low, but it's a great detail. But you will be only seeing guards 98% of the game. There are other enemies, but they aren't interesting to fight and only appear in a few areas. Other than that, you'll just be fighting a variant of the guard.
The story is so minimal and hard to keep track of. I wish it was stronger. A few people died, yet I hardly really knew them. Later in the game, an antagonist is introduced and then 5-10 minutes later you kill them. What? All characters are so forgettable and it's very difficult to attach to them. The story is genuinely awful. The main part of the story that you learn in the first cutscene after starting a new game is that you, Parker, accepted a job as a miner on mars for Ultor. Turns out for Parker that working conditions is more like slavery, and there's a plague going around killing miners. That sounds like a solid story to me. But further down the game, it just expands into more things that just don't fit into the story AT ALL in my opinion. Without spoilers, the most I can say is that the rest of the story (and the twists) are just way too sci-fi. Everything in the game so far has been very industrial(?) and low-tech for the most part, so it's a huge jump in technology. I get it's in the future, but at least ease us into it first instead of throwing it at us. At the very least, one of the first sci-fi elements is introduced to be "the first prototype".
The voice acting is BAD, at least for Hendrix. It wouldn't be that big of an issue if he wasn't a major character that chimes in throughout most of the game. It sounds like he's reading lines off of a paper. Which, obviously yeah, he is, but you SHOULDN'T sound like that in a voice performance. The other characters sound decent, like Parker and Eos, and the guards' lines are fine. Their pain sounds SUCK, and their alert lines sometimes make no sense. "Party time!"?? The miners are on a revolution, and that's their response?
The music is GREAT. Absolutely love it. Just wish there were more intense tracks. My favorite track has to be the combat part of Spectre. However, some of the tracks just feel so out of place. A lot of tracks are reused (which is perfectly fine) and here, I don't know how to explain it, but it just really feels like the music was made either before the sections were made, or without the sections in mind and fitted in afterwards. It's very odd.
Texture and model design is absolutely beautiful, mostly on the guns. Characters look fine, I really like the face rigs, especially in cutscenes, as jank as they may be. I really like Parker and especially the Envirosuit. The viewmodel arms of the Envirosuit are sick. Guards have cool designs.
The AI is bad. Probably the worst in any of my favorite games, unfortunately. Enemies just don't stop moving, and stealth is almost never an option. If you ever find another miner, they're either scripted to die, or literally die in one hit. I think there's only one or two parts where you actually get to leave the miner alive instead of them dying before you walk off. And of course, in those sections they don't help you. The forced stealth section is alright, but some guards are placed in areas where it's just impossible to get past without getting recognized and attacked from all angles. Might have missed another path, though. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if you had your arsenal. You'd be ready for it, right? But unfortunately they take all weapons aside from your pistol and leave you with 2 mags worth of ammo. You cannot pick up any other weapon for the entire segment. It's bafflingly horrible game design here.
