You return to where you came from. As homecomings go, this ranks slightly above Silent Hill's and far below Spider-Man's. Of course, this does allow you to pretend to be the webslinger. And The Dark Knight. The Man of Steel. Iron Man. And as is the case in the MCU, you may find yourself slamming face-first into the ground. Then you dust yourself off and proceed. Sheldon, ironically, is assassinated. Well, his character. Don't expect much from those in this... well, at least they're distinct from each other. Dimah(Bibiyan, rambling and feeling guilty) is about the only one I didn't want to just shut up. She at least has an arc, and isn't irritating. The quips are terrible. Rico(Collins) himself is made boring. Anyway, you know the drill. Dictator who has an interesting personality needs to be gotten rid of. You go smash stuff. He'll be defeated.
Let me take a moment to note that I played this over 3 weeks leading up to the date I review it. Via Steam. On a PC that lived up to the recommended specs. And almost everything people criticized has been patched. It hardly ever crashed. Just about didn't log in/out at all. While loading remains frequent, the times are down to 5-10 seconds. And my sympathies to anyone brave enough to get this at launch date. A lot of what this has is what we've already seen, but done... different. A lot of it better. Basically, everything can be made to go really fast, hit really hard, jump however improbably, etc. A lot of these things have to be unlocked. Mods. They tend to be worth the effort. It's easy to tell how to get them and what they'll do, from the menu. Basically, you need to earn Gears, which is done by completing Challenges(I did every single one at least once. I'm not competitive. I still managed to get almost everything unlocked. Those who have had a lot of trouble, it seems to have been fixed today). Races, Frenzies(break a lot in a little time), using cars as bombs a la Speed, etc. Yes, vehicle handling is bad, on most of the dozens available. It's still enjoyable to get them to garages so you can get them just about anytime. If you stand on a jeep of allies, they'll drive to the way-point you place, and attack with you. Once you have it, you can use Nitrous on any you've collected. Bomber jet. Rechargable shields. Incredible speeds. A Formula 1.
One of the major new things is the Wingsuit. No, you can't shoot from it. Well, you can if you get the Bavarium version in the Sky Fortress Pack DLC. Really, get the whole Air, Sea and Land Expansion Pass, and, well, none of the rest(their contents are largely outdone by material in the core experience anyway). That one can take off, land, there's a speed boost that also enables evading any missile that's locked on, and you can use your own, along with the MG, to cause a lot of destruction. On the airship, which is guarded by drones. The Mech combat is fun, if the TK is awkward and slow compared to the BioShock series. And ridiculously OP Loochador boat and eDEN Spark are a ton of fun. Pardon the digression. In the vanilla one, you can float, very fast, as far as you can keep from touching the ground. Slingsuit along to stay up.
Liberating is now golden. There's a set amount of things to destroy, all of which are still easy to tell from looking. And now, you can look up what there is, what's left, and the more you take out, the clearer, on the map, the rest will become. It's too bad the places feel very copy/paste, with a lack of variety. You can let in your comrades: just make sure they can safely get in, and you may have to open one or more gates, and in they'll come, fighting alongside you. Some places, you have to activate several buttons in order to complete it, breaking up the monotony. Heck, in the case of the Monitoring System, you have to completely avoid mayhem, in addition to being quick to move between them! As stealth goes, it's simplistic, limited and... oh forget it, I love it, more, please! And if at all possible, don't make us wait until 2020 for the next one! You can relatively easily avoid detection, though the "last known position" isn't marked as it is in, say, Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. If you're "in view of authorities", they won't initiate, only respond, with force. Same if you don't spend too long in a "restricted area". On the other hand, "combat zone" means, like it or not, they're gunning for you. You can die from very little, or a lot, making the difficulty somewhat uneven.
Story segments rely far too heavily on escort missions. Honestly, if they just went BioShock Infinite with it, and made them unkillable a la Elizabeth, a lot of the setups would be a lot more enjoyable. They have some cool ideas in there. The ending completely fizzles out, a bland FPS boss fight where you spend the majority simply standing in cover, waiting for your chance to hit the vulnerable spots, and an ending video that doesn't satisfy. For attempting a B-movie, almost parody kind of tone, they really don't manage to make it the (intentionally) dumb of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, that so thrilled us. Voice acting is perfectly adequate. It's the writing that's the issue. Still, where it counts, this tends to bring the house down. Literally. Like, just parachute above it and drop C4, raining death from above. How about some homing grenades? Drop in a tank, etc.
I recommend this to any returning fans as well as those who think it's something they could get into – you can go into this blind, no problem. 8/10
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