Fun. Glaive. Action.
The game uses its own proprietary graphics engine and it looks great. Very similar to Gears of War but with higher res textures and without the excessive reflections and shine that characterize the unreal 3 engine. Thanks to the great lighting effects i had fun simply lighting up the glaive, throwing it along a dark corridor and watchings the reflections on the walls and ceiling as the glaive flies forth and back, in that order. Yeah, i'm easy to please that way, small details go a long way.
The glaive is really the star of the show here. It's really fun to use and control. Most of the combat revolve around getting from cover to cover and killing enemies to progress a la Gears of War, which some of the reviewers found repetitive. The variety mostly comes from the glaive which gains new abilities and let you approach a given combat situation in different ways. Again i don't want to spoil it for you on the off chance that you'll play the game so i won't go into more details and instead let you discover the glaive abilities for yourself. I'll just say that if like me you watched Krull as a kid and used to pretended that you were chopping bad guys heads with a glaive on your way to school, it's an awesome feeling to be able to act out that fantasy in a video game. Kinda like the first time you used a light saber in a Star Wars game.
The game get challenging at times, which some reviewers also didn't seem to like, especially during boss fights and some of the puzzles. It has that old school feel where you're really scratching your head at first on how to win that fight after you've died for the 5th time, or wonder how to move forward. There is no dumbed down flashing doors here like in Army of Two to tell you what to do and where to go next, you'll have to figure it out yourself. To me the challenge makes the gameplay rewarding. And it had me shout "yes! i finally nailed that mofo" a few times which is quite rare in video games these days.
So as you can probably tell i had a great time playing this game, it isn't perfect but it was fun and very satisfying too.