izigame.me

Unfortunately, this game isn't really what I was hoping for. It feels like this really could've turned into something good, but after playing through 3 levels, so far I have yet to enjoy myself. This game hinges very heavily on it's combat - there isn't much emphasis placed on the story, and while the visuals and music are pretty nice, they don't make the experience, and other than that the game doesn't have much else to offer. And the combat feels, well, dull. The game makes it very clear that you are meant to be relying heavily on the slow-mo. You practically need it in order to hit enemy weakpoints, which is both the main way you regain resources and the main way you do damage, as shooting at non-weakpoints does pitiful damage. If you're not using slow-mo basically at all times, you're not playing the game correctly, and you will die. And the game is very generous with how much you're allowed to use it - if you're stringing together weakpoint kills at so much as a half-decent pace, you won't run out. Now, the game does have some pretty cool movement and weapons, and there were some times where I do something and think "oh, that was pretty neat", but never in these moments do I feel like i'm having actual fun. This is because what I'm actually doing feels more like I'm playing a point-and-click adventure where I press a button on my keyboard every couple seconds to move close to enemies as I click on their heads. I don't have to worry about getting hit by enemies because any damage I take I can regain in a couple seconds just by getting more weakpoint kills. I only died like 3 or so times, and all of those times were literally due to the fact that I was getting so bored that I started playing sloppy and doing stupid stuff (and by "stupid" I mainly mean not holding down the slow-mo button). This feels like a game that SHOULD be fun, but it's just trying so hard to force you into playing in the most unfun way. And yes, I know there are options to tweak the difficulty and make it harder, but I'm not a fan of that stuff at all and I never touch it. How am I supposed to know in what way I should move these knobs in order to make the game actually fun? That's the developer's job, not mine. Just do set difficulties. Or, if you're not going to do that, make the base difficulty, y'know, actually well-balanced. Also, kind of unrelated to the rest of this rant, but the levels themselves can end up being pretty confusing. There were several times where I was hunting around for minutes on end looking for where I'm supposed to go next, or accidentally backtracking through the level, and it's not helped by the fact that whenever you fall off a building it just teleports you to a seemingly randomly location and you have to find your way back to where you were going.
I'll edit my review later if my thoughts change after playing through the game more (if I ever come back to it).