Couple quick impressions:
- Reviewers were right about the video compression--it's not good. In fact, the weapon tutorial videos--which look worse than low-res YouTube stuff--only utilize about 1/2 of the OLED's circumference. I'm not kidding.
- Gunfire does sound rather weak, sounds like guns are being muffled with a pillow.
- Enemy AI is way more basic than the series is known for.
- Health regen is super fast, which kills all incentive to play smart when you can just get behind cover and regen in 2-3 seconds.
- Music is on-par with R3's, which is a good thing.
- Indoor areas are too dark, so don't expect to play this outside.
- Stick controls are wonderful.
- Touch controls are functional, but annoying (why am I being forced to take my hands off of the analog sticks!?!). So far, I don't see myself using touch-based attacks unless the game requires it for progress.
- Story is average for the genre.
- Environment graphics are similar in quality to R1, but with lower-res textures (which aren't nearly as noticeable on the 5" screen); gun graphics are quite good; and framerate seems more than adequate.
- Unable to connect online due to server errors (really, in the 21st century?). Game does have an online pass.
I think that people need to keep one over-arching point in mind here: the game as a whole seems fairly average, but, as far as PORTABLE first-person shooters go, it has no equal. I only paid $15 for my copy ($25 Amazon giftcard from credit card points), and I would suggest that others don't pay more than $20-$30. If anything, what's obvious from this game is that the Vita has the potential to be an amazing device for first-person shooters, so let's hope some developer somewhere is pulling out all the stops to give us a triple-A entry in the genre.
As is, the game is totally average; but it's nowhere near bad enough to warrant a "2 out of 10".
