Spoilers and such: You have been warned.
I blew through this game on easy after the $5 sale simply because I remember being there so much talk about it. Around 4 months before I bought and played it, I re-read
The Heart of Darkness (something I hadn't read since high school) and watched "Apocalypse Now" for the first time ever. My thoughts on those are for a different thread, so lets stick to the game.
I have the strangest set of reactions to this game, partly liking and partly disliking a lot of it. For one, it feels like there are just to damn many "kill box" rooms. For a game that is trying to have a serious story and make you feel bad for killing people, it makes you kill
a lot of people. It also doesn't help that I tried to beat the "White Phosphorus" moment without using it, and must have died 15+ times until I realized the snipers on the roof indefinitely respawn. I would set the camera to the upper right building, shoot one, and watch as he fell but another enemy magically spawned and ran to his exact spot. I used every bullet in the gun I had, killing countless snipers, and more kept spawning. That realization made me very angry. I didn't want to use the White Phosphorus. I didn't want to burn people to death, but the game was actually making me do it. There was no way around it. It made the resulting scene of walking slowly through the burned, mutilated bodies of soldiers and seeing the civies
lose impact because I legitimately had a gripe: I didn't want to do it. I've read some things since then where the designers said they wanted the player to get angry, but I wasn't getting angry for committing some war atrocity, I was getting angry because I
had no choice.
In retrospect, I ended up coming to the conclusion I think most people ended up with: It's an interesting piece that's not particularly a great "game" (meaning the shooting gets boring, repetitive, and makes me wish I had around 50%-60% less enemies to shoot). The fact that it made me have actual emotional moments throughout is pretty damn commendable.
....Whew.... I'm glad I got that out of my system. Sorry.
People constantly talk about the "story" and the "message" behind this game "the physiological effects of war" blah blah...
But I don't hear many pointing out the great art direction it has, the environments look really great.
You really feel like you are at a place where at one time the world's richest people enjoyed all the luxuries a Hotel or a condo etc. had to offer, and now is all engulfed by sand.
That's probably because in the end, the story is what affects you the most. Hell, I didn't remember anything about how pretty it is as a game until you brought it up. There are a bunch of views throughout that are pretty amazing.
Oh god, looking at that shit again is giving me PTSD.
Hahaha. Yeah, that part is great. It's a wonderful "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON" moment.