izigame.me

EDIT: Okay, now that I've slept on it... I know what pisses me off the most about this game, aside from the inconsistencies in climbing. In the game, there's a DEA awareness meter. Basically, the more deals you do during the day, the more aware the police will be. So the game punishes you for doing things the easy way. Okay. Fine. You get more out of doing things at night anyways, so the game encourages crafting during the day.... HOWEVER... This meter also goes up if the police catch you for ANYTHING, as in drugs, running accidentally when they stop you (it happens), getting caught during police hours and so on. So... the game punishes you for failing by making the game harder.
The game... PUNISHES you... for failing. See, in a game with dynamic difficulty, you make the game harder if the player does well in increasing difficult scenarios, as well as increase rewards, but once the player fails, the game dials that down and makes things a little easier until you get back in the flow of the game and you start kicking ass again. It's subtle and it works fantastically if done right. (Resident Evil 4's original release is a prime example of this.) In this situation, however, since you're punished a heavy amount each time you lose (ie: money AND the awareness thing goes up) you start to get a bit impatient, because you're thinking "great, I have to make up for lost money and time", but that gets you caught more and more and it snowballs until you're waiting for a stupid social security check to come in so you can pay back the cartel for the drugs you lost to the cops and continue the damn game.
Again, it's super frustrating because this game could be good. REALLY good. If the game was all bad, I wouldn't put a whole essay into a review for it to be ignored more than likely, if I didn't want to like the game so bad. There's just too much wrong with it to validate playing it over something better, though. Sorry, not sorry.
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I mean, it starts off fun enough. You run around and do your thing, you mix the real stuff with fake stuff to save money, you get hideouts, it's great.... until Sector 2 unlocks. Suddenly, you encounter countless fences you just can't seem to be able to vault over, despite them being shorter and less sharp than the others. Also, any time you lose money... you lose progress. You need money for upgrades and more drugs, so paying construction workers to get under the checkpoint only to have to constantly cost more and more each time is a big antifun mechanic. So, you try the sewers, unlocking about 4 or 5 doors tunnels for the 4th or 5th time that day with the mechanic from Bethesda that everyone has stolen before, but there's a twist to this one! As soon as you unlock the thing and leave, a door-locking hobo or some crap locks it again after some time, so that's a big time waste. There's just... too much slogging around to try to get progress. There's more, but I've got a headache from trying to enjoy this game for so long. There's good parts, like I said! But there are too many tedium and antifun mechanics that drag the game waaaaaay down... also, gimmie a gun. I'm tired of having the damn cops bust me and suck my funds dry because I was looking at a dumpster or I dared to try to do business during the day or commit the crime of being outside at night... I 'unno, maybe the sequel is better.