Brought my 3.4 ghz 2gb 7800GT system to a crawl on it's default settings, which are by default cranked all the way up. I took it down to 1024 x 768 and it still looked great, and played fluidly. Great looking game, the motif is pretty wild. It's the design that Barker does best in my opinion: the extreme horror, cenobite-like tortured soul thing. Lots of blood and chains. The level in the demo is a cozy little vision of Hell, and I couldnt help but feel like I'm in some nice little reception area of the Inferno as I cruised around it.
The guns shoot pretty good, but the melee is pretty lamentable. At one point you have to take control of the "half naked ninja chick" as Ive heard her referred to, and embark on a brief solo quest. It's probably the one part of this shooter that I wouldnt have showcased in the demo. First person melee combat for me sucks, period. Swing away while pointing at the enemy, watch your health drain, hopes yours drains slower. No chance to block or evade, no tactics at all, just button mashing. Youll kill em, and they crumple and go all ragdolly on ya. Oh look, theres another one. Weee.
Perhaps I'm missing something??
which then led to one of those contemporary directional button sequence games, which I'm beginning to truly loathe. They pulled the same thing in the last two Tomb Raider games on me. Instead of some cool boss fight or action of similar ilk, you now have to play a round of Simon. Quick, push the UP button! Simon says push the DOWN button! That's not something I think is a suitable replacement for a neato fight.
I think I might be too much a control freak for this one. I was under some strange delusion that this was a little bit more of a tactical game. I like my squadmates to be more at my direct command, not running all over the place taking everything out. They should never run ahead of me, wasting things before I ever even lay eyes on them. Why am I even playing at that point?
So yeah, I think it looks definitely cool, but I'm mixed on how it plays.