izigame.me

While this is a small studio`s game, it certainly pushes into a "very well done" territory.
I have picked it up for several reasons - really loved visuals, dynamics and theme, but also loved seeing how devs are actively addressing points of valid criticism.
And currently it is safe to say, that some of those older negative reviews are no longer relevant.
Still, there are some issues left, so if you are one of those people who hates having any sort of bugs\glitches, and you abhor the idea of playing anything that is not 200% polished and AAA+++ , then skip it.
Now, what is this game?
- Essentially, a shooter, with 3 types of weapons, with aiming, sprinting, cover and rolling mechanics .
There might be some high-level stuff I haven`t seen yet, but most of the time you are cycling between shotgun, sniper rifle and a pistol\revolver.
- You have a base you can upgrade, by adding new stuff there, or making existing stuff better, shops cheaper, more accessible, upgrading your loot, reducing losses on death etc.
- From that base you chose missions to accomplish (I have seen about 5 types of those so far, plus boss missions, plus Arena type mission)
- you complete objectives, hopefully loot better and shinier guns with better stats, and teleport back to the base.
- At some point you can challenge a boss, kill it and unlock new region.
- Mission types themselves remain more or less the same , but their difficulty, enemy composition and abilities, and also maps - do change.
You also have some skills to unlock (like life-steal on kills, better dmg, chance to revive, chance to return dmg to attacker or more ammo in crates etc).
These are not overly complicated, but they are pretty important - especially those that give you more sustain.
Overall skills are there to help you in blasting enemies more efficiently.There is no some RPG style vast talent\ability tree or smth.
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Now, as for difficulty:
First of all - this game does demand certain "agility\reaction" from you. So if you hate it - move on.
This being said, it is not THAT demanding on those normal missions. You just can`t tank dmg, you have to roll often, and you have to avoid mechanics (like grenade launchers, turrets etc), one boss in particular makes you roll and avoid things A LOT.
Normally, I am not a big fan of this stuff, but still managed to have fun with this game. So I guess this game has a moderate demand for cyber "agility".
The beginning is actually quite tough - when you die, you lose all your guns. So you start from scratch with basic pistol.
But not all is lost - after you die, game gives you a bunch of easy missions to get back on your feet.
And life becomes truly MUCH EASIER when you unlock "buyback" terminal for your base.
It allows you to buy your favorite guns back after you lost them on death (don`t start new missions tho, buyback works only immediately after death!).
So, don`t get discouraged by rough start.
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---- Overall it is a fun little game, with engaging maps. A game with pretty cool style and "feeling".
- Combat feels good, enemies die in a satisfying way :D
- Controls are fine, just a matter of habit.
- Story is all about you killing more enemies and more and more.
- Game has certain grind-ness present, but it is really more about "hey, you can grind a bit, to make battles less dependent on your skill level" type of grind. Not a "must complete 10000 missions, or you lose".
The only really noticeable grind happens if you die a lot, and have to buyback your guns constantly, and then you run low on money, so you have to run some missions to make money, to afford yourself dying more :D
Worth mentioning, that this is not a game to "rush and beat in one go"!
It is a game you play for a fun, blasting things for let say 30-40 minutes, then you switch to other games. Tomorrow you will remember that it was fun to kill those robots, and you come back and play for another hour.
It is just a shooter after all so don`t overdo it.
-cons :
- Some reviews argued that initial price was too high, and I can agree, that you will feel much better about this game, if you buy it on sale.
Not because game is bad, but simply because at full price it enters a domain of a really fierce competition with other well established bigger games, developed by big companies etc.
- mission variety is relatively limited.
- got stuck several times. Was able to unstuck my char two times, had to restart once. (which sucks, since restart means loss)
- had a bug where script apparently didn`t fire, so mission was failed.
While getting that bug and losing mission was annoying, it was not a huge loss for hours of fun gameplay, so overall it is a confident : "recommended on a sale"\ "certainly keeping this game and not refunding"