Damnation

This game is difficult to explain other than it is a post apocalyptic style game. The term that is used today is “Steampunk” style. While it is in the far future you feel like you’re in the old west.

To sum this game up it is a Casual First Person Shooter. I would like to call it an Action Adventure which is what they would want you to believe; it is not…

I did not play the multiplayer as no one else was so that made it hard to test. Maybe the multiplayer makes up for what the single player lacks. This really is the case with most first person shooters. The single player missions are really a way for the player to familiarize him / herself with the game at hand.

The game is highly linear which also prevents it from being considered an action adventure in my book. An action adventure needs a significant amount of exploration to be considered as such. While you can explore the areas you are in there is no reason to; nothing to find. Even the secret items you collect are pretty obvious and hard to miss.

The story was not all that deep and a bit vague; more back story was needed. It was a decent plot pretty much consistent with the usual first person plots. A person of power trying to take over the world.

One feature I did like was the ride along partner system. At all times you have NPC’s to assist you in your journey. Their skills were quite lacking, but it at times does help although very little. An awesome nearly flawless version of the buddy system is in the game “Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood”, that game did it right. Many times in this game your partner sort of lets you do the work with little assistance. Your partner is only brave once you have cleared the enemies in the area. The upside to this is your able to know if you completely defeated the enemies in that section. If you did then he / she will run ahead of you.

The game had quite a few glitches throughout, I even hard crashed the game once. The loading screens came at the wrong time, often in the middle of dialogue. I know the story is weak guys but don’t cut someone off in mid sentence, that’s just rude…

The weapon system outright sucked.
You can only have 3 items in your inventory; two rifle types and one hand gun type.
The weapons available were not that spectacular either with the usual, Machine Gun, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle assortment. Now before you get mad, yes there were also rocket launchers and landmines that could be placed on the ground or thrown. They were not very impressive is all which is why I didn’t bother to point them out.

Now on the flipside I love the explosive barrels throughout the game. There is something so satisfying about shooting them so they explode. Even better is if an enemy is nearby; I love to blow stuff up I guess.

Gameplay:
Casual gamers first person shooter, run and gun, action platformer. Neither of the 3 descriptions given were out of the ordinary in quality.

Sound:
Good sound, decent soundtrack, dialogue could have been improved upon. I could imagine by the tone of the voice actors they were just reading back the script in front of them; no emotion.

Graphics:
As it is called it was “Steampunk” style visuals. The whole game was pretty much the same dark shade other than the yellow explosive barrels and blue collectibles you might think the game is black and white.

Replay:
On single player you will play it once and not return. This is not necessarily a bad thing its pretty common for most first person shooters. One time through is all that is warranted. With online multiplayer a games life can be extended considerably, only problem is no one appears to play this one online.

In Conclusion:
Its an ok game for someone who is not that adept at first person shooters; which I am not. This might explain how I was able to play it from beginning to end; rent don’t buy.

Article By. Burn