PeterRJG

Frankly, one of the best things I've ever played - certainly the best use of the Half-Life 2 engine I've seen. It's bright, it's colourful, it's detailed, and it's massive. Yes, massive. The game is you, a structural engineer, visiting various locations such as dams, power stations, office buildings, sewers, and so on, uncovering endemic incompetence and corruption. While that may not sound like a lot of fun - especially since there's zero combat - think again. This is no walking simulator. It's a puzzle game at heart, and some of those puzzles are a nightmare to solve without a walkthrough. This aspect is one of the game's minuses, as well as an annoying rafting sequence in the sewers. Apart from these, INFRA is a wonderfully realised game in a massive game.

It's easy to write this off as Funcom's third flop in sequence but they gave this one 110% in effort. There's a lot of heart and soul in this game. So why does virtually nobody play it? My theory is that it is too weird and niche for its own good. There's no levels, no classes and people who load this up for the first time may be lost in a sea of confusion as to what's going on. There's no comfort zone here. Beyond that initial puzzlement, it's a rewarding and challenging game, but you have to get there. It's a semi-fully voiced (your character is silent), action-oriented MMO with some fairly decent graphics but the combat animations - especially from the zombies - do look awful though. That's one minus, but overall, the monsters look and animate well. Just not the zombies. Their running and fighting animations are comically farcical. The Secret World tries so hard to be hip, cool and out there, overloaded with pop culture and internet-speak references, it's beyond belief. You'll either laugh or facepalm at all the talk, maybe both. But if you do buy this and give it a shot, persevere with it. Experiment with the builds, try new things. Just don't expect too much social interaction. Despite all those people camped at the Agartha zone-in, you'll be playing this game 99% by yourself unless you really try hard to group with someone. Even then it has mandatory solo sequences, which IMHO, don't belong in a multiplayer game. But give it a shot. It might be the best thing you'll ever play. Who knows?

This is pretty much the mini-review I wrote for **** so it is a bit of a copypasta. Anyhow, here goes: I'm not sure what game these people here who say "excellent game" or "best thing ever" are playing. Maybe they're shills or trolls. Maybe they're easily amused. Maybe they get off on doing simplistic, repetitive, tasks. My bet is with the easily amused factor. Anyhow - my take on this in pro and con form: Pros: * It's pretty * Vibrant music * Well designed and animated character models * Switching jobs and classes on the fly is a new twist - largely in theory though * You can track your character through SE's FFXIV website. It's a neat touch. Cons: * Mindlessly simplistic combat mechanics - you mash the same two/three buttons from levels 1 through to 50 irrespective of class or job. In other words, it shows its console heritage * Everything is on the same cooldown timer * Combined, the above two points quickly devolve into boring and repetitive combat * Can't skip the cutscenes/theater after character creation. This aspect gets old quickly * No zone or global chat channels. You're in a heavily-populated though silent world. * /tells are worthless as most people have them disabled due to rampant gold spammers * Most characters look the same - everyone gets the same quest reward gear * You can't mail alts money or gear or materials. You need to join a guild with a company chest open to do this, or trust a friend to do it for you * If you play a DPS class, expect long waits to do instances * Quests are the usual kill x amount of this, or gather x amount of this to hand in. No real innovation here * This is a subscription only game and it's debatable it offers anything over and above many free to play alternatives. Very debatable. All up, 5/10.

Great story, like most people say, but it's too short and for about three hours play time at maximum (to say nothing of the lack of replay value), it's not worth $17.95 or whatever Steam wanted for it. For $5 like Dear Esther was, then yes, this game would rate a 9 or a 10. But yes, if you like stories of empowerment and self-discovery, this game is right up there.