drakesfortune

User Score
8.5

Presentation - 9.5
Gameplay - 7.5
Value - 9.0

Positive Elements:

1.  It's got a great interactive story.  A lot of people in the games media were down on the story, but I thought it was quite good, quite engaging, and very well told.  There were no incongruous elements, and I always felt engaged and like I knew what was going on.

2.  It's a beautiful game.  The graphics are stunning.

3.  I really enjoy the fact that they used European actors trying to sound like Americans.  It gives the game a surreal quality that really makes it feel unique.  It feels like this place is some strange American city I've never been to, and I really enjoyed that.

4.  The controls are both a plus and a minus.  At their best, they bring you into the story.  This is one of the few games where I liked the motion controls, and that may be because they aren't used often, but when they are it makes sense.  See below for the negative aspect of the controls.

5.  I played the game like my decisions were locked down.  If I made a mistake, I stuck with it.  This made for a very enjoyable experience. 

Negative Elements:

1.  The walking controls in this game just suck.  They are awful.  They have you pulling the right trigger like in a racer to move your character around.  Further, when walking the characters control like slow golf carts with square wheels.  It's bad...really bad.  The good news is that you don't need to control the walking with any precision at any point in the game, but they really could have just put the controls on the analog sticks and made them more responsive and that would have made the game feel a lot better.

2.  There is a moderate amount of screen tearing.  It's too bad they couldn't lock the v-sync down.

3.  There were a few choices that were not clear, where I was trying to do one thing (not shoot a guy) and the ambiguous choices lead me to do the opposite of what I intended (shoot a guy).  It was a pretty big bummer to be honest.

Conclusion:

If you're an adult who enjoys crime/thriller/dramas, give this game a try.  It's a lot of fun, it's refreshing, and supporting this game sends the message that we want more like this.  I'd like to see more developers experiment with this format and iron out some of the kinks.