Gears of Diablo
People like loot games. I get it. I'd be a liar if I said I don't enjoy them after putting many hours into games such as Monster Hunter 4 and Diablos 1-3. These games forego all pretense of telling a cohesive story and world building in exchange for the ability to see numbers go up on those new pair of pants you spent hours grinding for. These games are quintessentially comfort food. You play it and enjoy it immensely, but the experience probably wasn't healthy. But let's face it, most games suck at telling stories and building cohesive worlds mostly because of that naughty word dissonance. Put simply, what you can get away with in a game will likely break the immersion one way or the other, so it's just easier to keep the story in the background in favor of personality.
Unfortunately this game lacks said personality.
Yeah, let me start out with the negative right out the gate. This game's vision of a post epidemic Manhattan is really lacking. You could've gone either full on Dead Rising or The Last of Us, but this game doesn't really settle on a tone. The cell phones and laptops you pick up in the world are well done and depressing, but the villains (such as the leader of the cleaners) and main characters you interact with range from cartoony to cardboard. This is the kind of dissonance you want to avoid in gaming. Being melancholy in tone takes a certain kind of effort and that effort goes out the window when I'm listening to a recording of someone begging for assistance while a dog poops in the street with a sly face or a looter says "They got Alex!" for the umteeth time.
The world itself is well detailed and locations are varied, but the environmental details such as a man and a woman fighting in the street over supplies or the aforementioned dog pooping are copy pasted and the effect gets old fast. It's like someone built a beautiful recreation of New York and filled it with the same 3 or 4 Lego pieces throughout.
So the world building sucks, the game lacks personality, the story fails to establish any sort of decent arc beyond there's a virus and chaos is happening in the streets, the side missions range from boring to frustrating to painful. I've ran into bugs too. They've been mostly audio, but the group I was running with had issues with falling through the world and I've had issues with enemies spawning and getting stuck in the environment forcing a restart of a Water Pump side quest. There are problems with the core controls too. Double tapping the cover button will do a roll that will sometimes stick you to another piece of cover when you're trying to get away from a shotgun wielding psychopath. The default sensitivity for aiming on consoles can also make it hard to track enemies as they seem to be able to move and shoot at a faster more accurate rate than the player can (although this probably can be changed in the options). I've seen the PC version play and look wonderfully, so I'd recommend going there if you had the choice (this review is for PS4).
That's a lot of negative, but did I mention this game is about grinding for shiner knee pads that allow me to gain 12% health on kill and give me bonus headshot damage?! Oh, how about that holster that gives me more sticky bomb skill power and more SMG damage?! This game's shooting is pretty good too! Although the open world activities with the Gears of War control scheme can be awkward at first and navigating environments such as these can feel clunky as a result. But I didn't fail to mention that I got a new pistol that will reset my skill if I kill an enemy with a headshot, did I?!
Yeah, I'm willing to bet that if you're the type of player who likes these sorts of games, you're willing to accept a lot of the bad I've talked about thus far. The game plays like a typical Gears of War-like cover shooter with RPG like skills that you can change at any time. This is a big plus as experimentation is key to getting the most out of the game. You aren't limited by class like in games such as Destiny. Your spec is dictated by your gear and certain gun skills can only be activated once you've reached a certain skill threshold. For example, getting 7% health on kill on your shotgun might require 569 firepower (gun damage), 790 stamina (health), and 300 electronics (skill power). It's actually well designed to allow for different attributes and making one not overpower the other.
I must admit, however, that playing this game solo (for me) was pretty miserable. Fortunately for people like me, matchmaking is everywhere and every mission can easily match you up with a group of folks. There's an agro system in place, but unlike Army of Two, there's no knowing who has the most agro on what enemy. However, silencers and muzzle breaks can decrease and increase your threat respectively. The game is certainly doable solo, but my personal experience was better with other players. The talents and skills really compliment each other that way.
So yeah, I got my 60 bucks worth here and I think a lot of people will like this game despite its many, many issues. It gets my endorsement, for what very little that's worth. The final boss is against a helicopter and there's currently no rocket launcher in the game, so people like 50 Cent may be upset at that. But I got this new gun that crits for over 20k damage and that's good, right?!
3.5/5
