Some more thoughts.
I'm finding my rhythm in this game. There's more to like here than you might think.
Some of you will be truly
to learn I am even enjoying the combat. At high difficulty, bullets are at a premium and I actually have to use support items like the foot traps. Melee
is janky as fuck and I wish it was smoother; on the other hand it's nice that it forces melee to be a last resort only. The 3 or 4 different enemy types I've seen so far all demand different tactics, and they spawn in different combinations which really make me think, which is all great. Running away is also commonly called for which feels very appropriate. It dovetails well with what I was talking before about how "Yeah, there are monsters now." From one point of view you might say the combat is "not as good as Call of Duty" and you'd be right. I prefer to think of it as "like Silent Hill but better" and in that light it is fun.
It is weird that loot respawns in containers, but not
that weird. After all, the monsters are respawning too, so stuff is happening "offscreen" when you're not there. The town does generate a lot of hobos so maybe they are hiding stuff there before they get eaten. Whatever; it's fine. It does happen
way too fast to be believable but I can roll with it. I guess I could "farm" for shit but I'm not a degenerate.
I've experimented more with turning HUD elements on and off:
* The "Status HUD" is fine and I have it turned on now; importantly, it goes away when you're not in combat or taking damage. No screenshots ruined here!
* The compass is nice in that it only appears in the "overworld". When you're in an investigation location the compass goes away, making it less annoying than it could have been. I still leave it turned off.
* Having "all interaction icons" turned on doesn't actually mean
all, just ones that are very close to you. I leave this turned on so I know when a nearby object is interactive, so I'm not clicking on every piece of furniture in sight.
* Having "long distance icons" turned off means I can't spot every interactive thing from across the room. I feel like this is kind of a baby option for people who don't want to bother looking over a crime scene. It
is nice that even turned on, distance icons are just a little dot, not intrusive to the atmosphere.
* I ended up turning the crosshair back on. At high difficulty combat is just too hard without it. Fortunately, the crosshair only appears when you are aiming a weapon, so again, no ruined screenshots.
Weirdly, when you hand place icons on the map, they only appear for your currently selected case. So you can't walk around the town cleaning up points of interest in a smart way unless you are flipping through your different maps all the time, which is a cumbersome process. I don't like it. Maybe the compass shows them all. Meh. [EDIT: It doesn't.]
The atmosphere has really hooked me. I'm a gamer who likes to walk slowly down creepy alleys even though I could be doing the "video game jog" to get to the objective faster. This game is perfect for a contemplative approach that really absorbs the scenery.
However
fantadomat is absolutely right about the "Dragon Age 2 effect". The first time I saw a rowboat that somehow smashed through the 2nd floor to the 1st floor, I was like "that's so arbitrary and nonsensically destructive, how atmospheric". The
second time I saw a rowboat smashed through the first floor ceiliing, making a ladder to the 2nd floor, in the
exact same spot relative to the front door as the first time, I was like, "........."
Dialogue is good and doesn't feel forced or "gamey" at all. Remember that awful stuff from Bloodlines 2 where the woman is like, I am giving you a task in a video game and here are your objectives? None of that here. People talk to you because they have a point of view, not to dispense quests. At the same time, they don't talk just to sound cool or waste your time showing how brilliant the writing is. Conversations don't drag.
Supplemental writing ("lore"): there is a lot of it. Plenty of journals, notes, diary entries etc. about all kinds of weird and horrible stuff. It's all good and creepy, but disappointing in this format. In a novel, if someone finds a weird journal entry and then you (the reader) read it, it's all part of the story. In a video game, particularly one like this that nails the atmosphere so hard, writing a bunch of crazy horror stories about stuff you will never see is a big letdown. I don't want to just
read about the mummy of a prostitute's dead husband nailed to the ceiling watching her work; either show him to me or don't bring it up.
Voice acting is hit and miss and I want to emphasize that there are "hits". Yes, some actors aren't great and they do stick out so it's easy to say the acting is bad; on the flip side, much of the acting is solid and convincing. Critically, I don't hate the protagonist. I'm a fan of detective fiction and there is a lot of writing and acting in the genre that I
do hate. I'm so relieved that Reed is neither smug nor clever. He sometimes drops a touch of observational sarcasm and that is it. This understated approach really works for me.
Sidebar about the protagonist: I love to play Barbies in games and it's cool that you can switch outfits at your hotel room. It makes me feel like time is passing. I like to rotate through the clothes so I can see them all and it really lends a sense of "and then on the 3rd day I solved such-and-such case".
That's it for now. Thank you for reading my randomly ordered, unedited thoughts.
