1. Why the gaem is unremarkable:
The setting and everything about it is completely wasted, there's no meaning or purpose behind it whatsoever. The basic premise is - there's a city, there's a ruling class, there's a rebellion and there's a plague. This could have taken place anywhere, there's no reason for it to take place specifically in a post-apo environment. The supposed cataclysm of 20 years ago is only a backdrop that fuels the art, and that's it. Put the same scenario into medieval times, ancient times, modern times and you'll see no practical difference at all. The same is true about the smaller setting details - why is the ruling class called the aristocracy? Because. Why are they named after Roman emperors? Because. Why are they stylised as 18th century wig-wearing dudes with flintlocks? Because. There is no significance to any of this. You never even see any of those red bluecoats use their rifles for shooting, they just stab shit with bayonets. Fuck, there is actually not even any significance to the green uranium shards that gave the game its title. They are just there, hangin' 'round, givin' da light, acting as nothing more than props.
It's a meaningless theme park, and it quickly makes you wonder why the hell are you even doing all those rather insanely mundane tasks in this specific world.
Plus, there's also the part about the story at large, and the puzzles, and the characters (except maybe Tiberius) being about as deep as a sheet of paper. It's all mundane, generic and unremarkable. There is no flair. No shine. Just bleh an' feh.
2. Why the gaem is stupid:
Ho boy there's a lot of that. The vast majority of it happens due to the complete lack of any logic all over the place.
- Start with our protagonist. Amy Wellard is a car mechanic's daughter. In the first scene she's reluctant to mercykill a guy that asks for it, her hands trembling as she aims the crossbow. But then she can wrestle a burly rifle-wielding guard and stab him in the eyes with a syringe, shoot another guard in the head from some 50-100m away with the crossbow, consistently shoot small buttons with the crossbow without multiple tries, hit a rope holding a chandelier with the crossbow, and consistently murder people towards the end of the game without doing as much as flinching. And then at the end, she actually becomes the PERFECT GOVERNOR that outshines all the other aristocrats who came before her. WAT?
- Shit all over the game that made me shake my damn head. When Clem the rebel receptionist gets fatally wounded by the guards, he still has enough time to cross out shit from his letter to Amy to leave only the few important characters in to tell her where to find the rebels? When the iron bucket has just finished baking in a furnace, Amy can take it out with her bare hands? When Danton runs into the two guards in the ministry tower, they just charge with bayonets instead of shooting her with the rifles? The super high security prison is patrolled by ONE GUARD and NOBODY HEARS the piano being dropped on his head? A bolt with an affixed rope can pierce a steel chute and become embedded in it firmly enough to let a guy climb over said rope? When the quarantine zone has a corpse disposal chute, there are still dozens of corpses piling up in the streets? To open an elevator door 20 years after a cataclysm, with no electricity, all you need to do is pry open the button caller panel outside and put in a fuse? A guard just goes ahead and drops his pistol in the street, letting Gordon take it up and sell it? What the hell is all this and who thought of it?
- The factions are idiotic.
Let's start with the rebels - if they just take any random person off the street into their Super Sikrit organisation, even though said person is quite possibly a spy (OR BUGGED, WHY DOES NOBODY THINK OF THIS?), I can't say I'm surprised they are as hilariously incompetent as they are. Because actually, do they DO anything? To my knowledge, the only thing they actually achieve is sitting in their basement drawing shit on a blackboard. Also, ministry of medicine spy dude learns that the gubmint is hoarding vaccine. But he's just some shitty receptionist. And he doesn't know where the main storage is. How does he get this info? Also2, I would say their constant blabbering about MUH FASCIST OPPRESSORS is considerably ridiculous when you see the representatives of said fascist oppressors try to cut fair deals to citizens in the market, and the citizens just respond with GTFO FASCIST OPPRESSOR VIVA LA REVOLUTION.
Now, the gubmint. For a large part of the game, I was actually wondering how this gubmint was supposedly this band of EVIL FASCIST OPPRESSORS. As mentioned, it tries to cut the merchants fair deals. It more or less keeps a functioning society. It has a vaccine for the green lung and does distribute it, albeit on a meritocratic basis, but it's a dog-eat-dog world out there. I have a silly feeling that the game developers also came to this conclusion at some point - "hold on, the gubmint is not evil enough, we must ramp up the evilness to overdrive", and so they started consistently putting chaotic stupidity into its agenda. The whole vaccine hoarding thing - Tiberius gives two reasons, and both of them are stupid. First is that other countries/cities would try to invade them if they learnt they had stocks of vaccine. But... nowhere in the game is any other country or city even as much as mentioned and even if one such existed and was comparable to the city where the action takes place, it would hardly have enough strength to go to a full scale conflict. Plus, how the hell does it matter whether the gubmint is sitting on a small or big hoard of vaccine? Isn't the very fact that it DOES have it in the first place reason enough for a desperate rival to go to conflict over it? And then his second reason is that the population would be much harder to keep in check and resources would become sparse if green lung was cured. Hold on. I thought 20 years have passed since the cataclysm? And green lung has been around for long now? And it kills a person in what, 2 months? How the hell hasn't the population been culled into "manageable" levels yet with the controlled vaccination of desirable elements only?
- The endings are ridiculous.
Let's see, our heroine Amy can get rid of Tiberius, Danton or both.
a) Kill Tiberius, Danton makes America great again. The city streets run with blood but THE PLAGUE IS CURED AND AT LEAST ALL OF AMY'S FRIENDS DIE WITH DIGNITY BELIEVING IN A BETTER WORLD! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
b) Kill Danton, Tiberius makes America great again. The plague is cured, as predicted by Tiberius the population gets out of control, resources are scarce. Amy is left with her friends in her luxury house and FEELS LIKE SHE'S LOST HER PURPOSE IN LIFE, BOOHOO ;____________;
c) Kill both, Amy makes America great again. The plague is cured and... Amy becomes supreme ruler? And fixes everything? People are happy? Industry will get restored in 5 years? There's a new, better government? ALL THANKS TO THE CAR MECHANIC GIRL RELUCTANT HERO, WHO ACTUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE A BETTER RULER OVERNIGHT THAN THE ARISTOCRATS THAT HAVE BEEN RUNNING THE CITY FOR 20 YEARS NOW? AND SUDDENLY RESOURCES ARE ABUNDANT AND THE POPULATION DOESN'T GET OUT OF CONTROL?
????????????????
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿
yeah fuck this game