Lost potential
I love playing co-op games with my friends and I love Mass Effect 2, I also love Borderlands and I was really hoping The Scourge Project could combine some of the good things about these two. For a while it actually seemed that it would succeed at some level, having support for co-op play with up to 3 friends, a very familiar cover system very much like that of Mass Effect 2 and powers much like biotic powers. However, the further I got into the game, the more I started to notice the many shortcomings of the game.
While the fighting feels pretty familiar after hours and hours of ME2, there's a lot of thing that just don't feel right. The weapons don't make much of an impact on the enemies and poor level design sometimes makes the whole cover system useless, when enemies come pouring from multiple directions. Like ME2, The Scourge Project also has regenerating health and the edges of the screen start turning red when the player is taking damage. However the effect is so minimal that it is often hard to know when the damage taken is close to critical and I was surprised to find myself incapacitated at times when I thought I could take more damage. And at these times, I was either happy that I had a friend with me or usually doomed. The developers probably thought that players would take advantage of the 4 player co-op and not bother playing alone because the AI is very, very bad. There are two things that AI controlled allies usually can achieve. Nothing and dying. They charge the enemies just to be shot down or stay very far back and do nothing. Sometimes they might even come stand next to you when you're incapacitated to watch you die and stand by idly.
The game has many issues and my only hope is that they hadn't rushed it. They could have designed better levels and made a passable AI, optimized the models for steadier frame rate and changed some of the ridiculous encounters with monsters, that offer no challenge but take up just too much time. The games just feels unfinished and lacking new ideas that could make it come even close to the games it borrows from, almost like the designers felt the ideas of others meant no effort was needed from them.
The Scourge Project demonstrates well that no matter how great things you take from great games, it doesn't add up to be great game without some effort and hopefully, some ideas of your own.
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