The game is a tale of revenge (yawn), it’s about protecting those you love (bleh), that and conspiracies (oh, those), the criminal underworld (played it), corruption (seen it), and let’s not forget hacking (you mean like Deus Ex/Bioshock/Arkham games hacking? NO. I mean HACKING everything)
Prior to the release I remember hearing someone express their concern that since it’s a UBI game we can expect to do about 6 different things over and over….Now that stuck with me for some reason. The person was not that wrong actually, but the integrated multiplayer adds more things to do.
Single player:
- Story missions which are varied and interesting;
-Unlocking the CTOS towers (there are a handful of them);
-Stopping a military convoy;
-Acting as a decoy to lure away cops for the criminals to do their deed;
-Delivering vehicles with minimal damage in a set amount of time;
-Locating weapons’ caches;
-Locating and eliminating gang hideouts
-Intercepting someone else’s packages
-Playing poker ( I played high stakes and lost $ 10,000 even though I was using a camera to look at other player’s cards, no refunds);
-Playing 4 virtual games. I loved “Alone” – very creepy and gripping;
-As well as stopping crime (and by that I mean following one person wherein that person either kicks ass or get their ass kicked which is where you come in);
Multiplayer:
-Intrusion: Find the hacker or hack someone by blinding in and steal their money;
-Online Races;
-Team deathmach with decryption of the other team’s server and then attempting to get away with it;
-Taking control of cops/chopper and chasing each other;
-FREE ROAM!!!!!
In between you get to intrude into people’s lives by using your phone’s “profiler”. While I appreciate the devs showing today’s post Raegan/post Bush America wherein most people are making something between 20K and 35K annually, there are a few things I found that were off:
-How does a fast food worker who makes $ 23,600 a year go to Iraq? Or anywhere else for that matter?;
-There was a hispanic looking guy, the profiler said he opposed immigration, so I went to push him to see what's up, he replied something in Spanish....so yeah, a Spanish-only speaking dude who opposes immigration;
-Others are pretty funny: "Recently joined the apocalypse survival group" or "Supports anarchy" (while wearing suit and tie);
-A waste management guy is an “Amateur Astronomer” - hey, to each his own;
-“Frequently purchases lottery tickets” - yeah, that's half of New York population right there and most of deli groceries’ business;
- A 24-year old Asian guy with a white name who makes $ 71,500 a year as a webmaster reports of hearing voices;
-Found a couple of sex addicts too;
-A few naughty people download pirated media;
- A junkie looking bald white guy who collects coupons makes $ 100.000 a year;
-Once in a while you'll see a 30 something year old recovering from first stroke - btw, there are no fat people in the game, nor are there any kids, or any old people;
-A 41 year old black male psychologist wearing a baseball cap backwards making $ 93,000 a year is charged with bigamy....wait what?;
-Frequently visits porn sites”- yeah that’s pretty much everyone with an internet connection;
-and then there are those who frequently watch torture porn....ummm...how much is "frequently" exactly? ;
-and there are some things you'd rather NOT know - like when a guy who has a third nipple;
- occasionally, you get to remote-trigger the explosives a guy is carrying, his last words were "oh NO! tell my wife I was...." boom!!!! As I used the profiler on the dead body it said: "wife recently filed a restraining order".
I am obviously nit-picking just for the sake of it and I could go on and on but I’ve already spoiled enough. But I didn’t stop there, I wanted to push the game’s AI to its limits:
So I stood in line at the ATM machine. A lady was in front of me, she was about to use the machine when I pushed her, she said "excuse me" dropped her purse on the ground and started walking in another direction - I guess this is how good the open world games are gonna get at this point.
Insofar as creating this extra dimension for NPCs that we have never seen before in any open world game is something that is very peculiar. It actually “feels” sometimes that it’s a human being with an actual life, or lack thereof. However, about an hour into the game and you'll start noticing same NPCs.
Ubi did try their best at having same looking NPCs wear different attires, so if you aren't looking too hard you may not notice that too much.
And there are little things like when you hack trigger someone's explosives on their body they can actually pull them out and throw them away killing a civilian in the process.
I am still confused about the morality system. For instance, stealing poor people’s money by withdrawing their funds from an MTA does not lower your reputation. Even if you do side missions you will keep gaining good reputation, however, in order to do those things you will frequently steal other people’s cars, break their cell phones, sometimes run over them and get them caught up in a line of fire, wreck city’s property. Now, in real world, even if one was to save the lives of 100 people but still killed one either by accident or by recklessness or WORSE, on purpose, then that person’s hero status will be close to zero. And I am still not sure what kind of perks I am getting by increasing notoriety.
There aren’t too many comedic reliefs in the game safe for some double entendras and some very dry humor. BUT, the funniest moments of the game is when you get to monitor people’s lives when breaking into an OS Tower OR when you reach The Bunker.
Back to the core.
The first 20 minutes of the game kind of teach you how to pee, but it’s all within a context and all very helpful.
Now this is NOT a GTA clone in the least.
-there are bus stops but no buses;
-there are cop cars that chase you when you commit crime but not cop cars at all if you just walk around behaving;
-there are taxis but you can’t pay the cabbie to take you somewhere;
-you cannot shoot while in a vehicle or on a bike;
-you cannot pick your fallen enemies' weapons;
-the soundtrack sucks;
-there is no “leisure time” to play pool, tennis, or go out with your friends (not that these things are in the game). You have a clear mission, well, sort of, and you get the job done until you advance the next act. Oh, by the way, about the acts. There are 5 of them. There are 9 main missions in act I, 15 main missions in act II, 6 missions in act III, 8 missions in act IV and one mission in act V.
But I did experience a level of immersion wherein I did my best to NOT kill anyone and to NOT be reckless. I found it very satisfying to take down CTOS guys without killing them. When it came to mercs or gangsters then I often made an exception in their case.
The Graphics:
I LOVE disrupt engine. I love the fact that you do not just reside on an island in the middle of an ocean (Ahem, GTA III, GTA: VC, GTA IV, GTA V). The textures are damn near photo-realistic, the vistas, the sky, the way the trees and the leaves move in random unison when it’s windy (reminded me of the Witcher 3 leak video in the forest – the way everything moved like it does in real life), the day/night cycle, the destruction, the physics are pretty much worked out except the car damage is unrealistic. Vehicles take a lot of hits to explode or even to get dents and be undrivable. Plus, any car you drive is like a bulldozer-mowing everything down. I didn’t like that at all. Drive a car and look at the back door/window which actually has real reflections of the things behind you - now that's a first, if I am not mistaken. Unfortunately when you shoot in water there are no splashes, the lip sync is nonexistent. The texture pop in when driving fast is noticeable and is VERY VERY annoying.
The Map is very well done. It’s dynamic and well packed with content as well as real-life locations.
The upgrade system is very neat - I would recommend getting the “disable helicopter for 15 seconds” as soon as possible. You’ll know it when you get to that point.
I also love playing on the “realistic” mode. All it takes is 2-3 shots for you to die. LOVE IT. Makes me think real good when I plan my approach. But I absolutely hate the fact that you can see through walls ALL the time and see your enemies on the mini-map ALL the time during shoot-outs.
I could go on and on but I’ll stop. The game has been 5 years in the making, and it shows how much effort was put in it. It has its little short comings but I see this as a next step in gaming. And this is the first game because of which I took a day off from work….