War Mongrels Review (Moknicorra)
DNF 16 hours in 'cause of a gamebreaking bug at the end of the 9th level where you have to kill all the officers and one of them spawned inside a wall (and I think I'd killed him earlier anyway??? so he just respawned there randomly???????) The game's been out 2 years and it's still in this state of "Maybe you'll lose all progress for no reason, who knows!".
- Game is all blacks and grays and browns so the level readability is null 'cause it all melds together
- Pathfinding is dumb as fuck and doesn't use normal ladders half the time even if it had no trouble going through that same ladder earlier
- The icon for being hidden in bushes lies all the time and guards find you anyway even if they're 10 meters away
- Kind of related: If a guard is alert (I think) his vision cones will sometimes snap directly to you despite no one else seeing you no matter how you time it, breaking it own usual rhythm specifically just to fuck you over
- Planning mode executions are super hit or miss on whether or not the character will actually do what you told them to (and those non-executions are not all as dumb as "oh no I was supposed to do an action on a sitting dude but the dude stood up what do I do??????????")
- Picking up items and corpses has never been this infuriating. If, say, you throw your knife to kill a guy, both the guy, your knife, and the weapon he was carrying fall in a single pile, so good luck picking up the one you want due to the aforementionned melding together of everything due to evrything being gray and brown!
(- You can use the highlight mode to more accurately pick up the item you want! But you'll have to turn it back on Every. Single. Time. You quickload.)
- 15 seconds for a climbing animation? Really? At least it's just this one's guy's special animation
- For that matter, I can't cancel going up or down a ladder?
- What kind of fully automatic stationary infinite-ammo machine gun doesn't allow you to simply hold down the shoot button to continuously shoot anyway? (I'm not gonna bitch too much about the twin-stick shooter thing being in the game in the first place 'cause I knew about it coming in anyway even though that's not something I want from my stealth games)
- A number of skills seem to lack a noticeable sound effect, which is...a choice
- The whistling skill also likes to not lure enemies sometimes, so that's great (the guy that's furthest got lured, but not the nearest guy??...okay)
- Some map sections have been very obviously made with a single possible solution in mind, which is a rather disappointing thing to come across when you're 10+ hours in
+ The cutscenes' art direction is pretty damn great, ngl
Overall, the game has some enjoyable elements and gameplay (16 hours, after all) but they're hidden behind a lot of tedious trash