First off the game uses the Lithtech engine which is a few years old now. What this means is that the engine isn't entirely capable of producing his resolution surface textures, but is perfect for light shading and other effects, big maps and reasonable performance on most computers. The engine was previously used to very good effect on the atmospheric Aliens Vs Predator 2. Improvements and enhancements for this game include far better models and animations and a genuine attempt at creating something that visually is very individual.
The music is reasonable; it has shades of that 80's Junk Yard techno interspersed with more new agey stuff. But really it's only there as background noise and is unobtrusive. The sound effects are excellent, if rather unspectacular. The voice overs are of a very high quality; both for the cutscenes and the NPC's ingame.
The graphics are very good...or at least achieve the required effect. Everything glows neon along the edges, but is otherwise a single tone black, purple or dark blue (or gold when you reach the old mainframe) and is both authentic to the film whilst also taking in and incorporating more modern and familiar computer concepts. Overall it's impressive if a little samey, though they try to vary the places you go to and show each in their own particular style so as to give some idea of the inner world not just being universal in appearance. Indeed great joy was found when on the old motherboard with its state of the art "286" power. Vrooooooooooooooom!
Gameplay is typical FPS through with a few novel weapons such as the disc (which is fun, if not something I ever used too much once into the game) but most are merely your bog standard sniper, shotgun, close combat and grenades - though with new skins and approach as to how they're shown. Badguys are stupid, very dumb. No attempt to dodge or avoid most attacks and their scripted appearances makes them very easy to predict. In order to make them a little more lethal in many situations you have to play in damage limitation mode because there's no way you can avoid being hit. This is good and means you're constantly on the look-out for fresh power sources.
The upgrading element is interesting but predictable in how it works, by the end you can have maxed out most of the upgrades anyway - the only difficulty is in recognising early on which aren't worth bothering with. Personally I amped up the energy resource skill meaning it didn't cost as much to fire my ranged weapons (such as the sniper), amped up the sniper (to make it more deadly) and boosted the largest and most obvious of the defensive protocols (torso). Logic states that a sniper in any computer game has the benefit of headshots and you can supercharge it making it probably the most lethal, accurate and easily wielded weapons.
There's occasional platformer bits - a return to the 80's there - some climbing and mountaineering through leaps and hops atop infinitely high moving blocks, the light cycles section is fun if somehow unfulfilling (and the computer is sometimes annoyingly good), and it's all a bit linear (even compared to most FPS) and the character development upgrading element doesn't ever seem to let you achieve something that you can't achieve in some other way (i.e. there's no perk for being having 'jump gold' in the first few levels such as being able to reach otherwise unreachable bonus) and some 'big boss' type badguys; something that had been frowned upon since the early 90's in most "realistic" FPS. Big baddies, whilst more just a matter of avoiding their obvious attacks, are novel. I haven't killed a giant purple fire spitting worm in many years.
I enjoyed it, very much so, and because of its fantasy elements it stands out from the likes of Medal of Honour and rightly so. If you want combat combat combat then don't bother with this, but for fun and games and for people who aren't entirely FPS savvy then it'll be a real challenge and an intermediate introduction to the field (and also has no gore, so is good for kids really....kinda).
Experienced FPS persons will blitz the game as it has the same exploits as most "lean around corner, headshot with sniper" games do.
