Lucian Strinati

Starting with the good (I played on the PS5), the game is generally beautiful to look at. Now onto the bad… The aiming mechanics are unsteady, the graphics rendering is poor and the level of difficulty is not balanced at all (for example, Standard was too easy for me for most of the time but then had some elements that were unnecessarily hard, - especially without the right weapons to hand - and for Hardcore this is only amplified). The combat mechanics are unintuitive - you can be surrounded then watch as you are hit then get back up, hit again, etc. while you can’t do anything about it; in addition, headshots regularly don’t stun enemies and QTE’s appear to be bugged. Some may enjoy the uncertainty this brings but for me it doesn’t work. In addition, Capcom added in micro transactions two weeks after release (so this wasn’t captured in the reviews) - make of that what you will. And there are elements of the original game missing (like the U-3 enemy) that presumably will be made available via paid DLC in the future. Overall, this game is a pale imitation of the original and was far more frustrating than it was fun to play. I’ve played the game 1.5 times (beat it once on Standard) and I’m done with it - for reference I played the original over 5 times. I wouldn’t bother buying until Capcom fixes the myriad combat issues (whether they will or not we shall find out). And for your first run don’t play Hardcore, unless you are an exceptional gamer and/or you are using a walkthrough (yes even if you’ve played the original - trust me).

This is an incredibly hard game to rate. On the plus side the graphics are incredible, showcasing the potential of the PS5 and its controller (the haptic feedback is cool and adds to the experience) and the game is really rewarding once you begin to master the controls and the various idiosyncrasies of enemies, bosses and locations. The game is hard but keeps pulling you back; perhaps there should be a difficulty setting but I don’t mind personally. The negatives centre around two things. The first is the lack of a save option, NOT because you lose almost everything when you die (that’s fine), but because of the occasions where I’ve had to start again through no fault of my own the last two times I played (one time I was trapped in a room, as the portal to return suddenly stopped working, and the next time I played the game suddenly crashed). Both of these were on Biome 3, so I had dedicated a bit of time and ether to get to that point (max health, good upgrades, etc.). I don’t mind there not being a save function (although personally I’d prefer that the game is saved once you use a reconstructor, which is a device that allows you to continue playing once you die - makes sense to me), but Housemarque should’ve been certain that there were no/few bugs in the game before releasing it (plus not being able to play another PS5 game without your run automatically ending is idiotic). And this links to the other negative: you are essentially paying full price at this stage for a game that feels like it’s in beta testing and not finished yet. I’ve had the two crashes above, doors not appearing on maps, invisible enemies, damage passing through closed doors, and other silly things. Why am I paying over £60 ($85) for that? If you like to play these games quickly and rush through to the end then it’s probably worth buying and the above issues will bother you less, but if you’re like me and you like to take your time, explore the areas and are a completionist, my advice is to wait until the above fixes are sorted, then buy what will probably be remembered as a seminal PS5 game for what will probably then be half the price = win-win.