I actually really liked it. Like others have said, it is fairly generic, but I guess the fact that I've been playing mostly RPGs for a long time made me thing that actually I could go for a bit of Gears action.
On the cover system; it actually made a lot of sense to me once I understood why they'd done it that way. I feel like it keeps you moving without stopping briefly at every object you vault over like in gears, and means you don't get a situation where you accidentally vault over cover into the line of fire (like I found happening all the time in ME3).
Shooting felt...I dunno. I felt like the animations for enemies when they get hit, and the fact they aren't bullet sponges, made the shooting feel weighty and meaningful, powerful feeling guns etc. But that wasn't really backed up by just the feel of shooting the guns themselves, if you know what I mean. The only exception to this was the shotgun which felt almost too powerful, cutting down three dudes at a time close range is super satisfying though.
I liked the slow-mo stuff for headshots. It makes chaining them together really satisfying.
Never had any problems with my squad mates. In fact, occasionally felt they were a bit too good at clearing out dudes before I really got involved. Not often though. Would have liked to maybe have a little bit more control over them (mass effect style) but they were effective enough.
Enemy AI could have been better, particularly the bit where they are all running up the stairs; they're so hell bent on getting to cover that they just let themselves get mowed down. It's a bit silly. Also they never seemed to make much effort to get away from grenades.
The grenade throwing was a little finicky?
The quasi stealth moments were really enjoyable.
But I do sort of agree that the game is going to live or die by its story. I feel like the story stuff we saw was a bit garbled and I'd want to see how well it was paced in the full game. All the allusions to Heart of Darkness are interesting but I didn't see anything in the game that made me feel like drawing the comparison is a bit pretentious (I mean on their part, not on people in this thread), and doesn't seem to do much to help the story at all. I also wonder whether they'll take the opportunity to indulge in some neat inversions that the setting allows for (like Insomnia's reverse Noir I guess). Other than that though, I did think the story seemed interesting and reasonably well done. The characters were at least more likeable than their Gears/CoD equivalents (or at least, I thought). The atmosphere of the world was pretty good, but the graphics on some of the wider vistas didn't do the idea of it justice I thought, but still, the idea and look of sand covered Dubai was pretty well realised.
So I guess all this is getting at this: Enjoyed the demo, with some reservations. Probably not a day one purchase, because I'll want to hear a bit more about whether the story is as good as it feels it could be, but even if it's not I might end up getting it when the price is dropped, just as a competent shooter with a few interesting ideas.
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