Recent reviews by BAPACop

I have quite a few complaints about this game, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume they aren't consistently problems and instead stem from the game deciding it's a good idea to put you against level 29 opponents in your first match. Of course, that decision is, in and of itself, a reason to not play this game.

Also: Champion ratings make no sense. How is a movement speed of 310 simultaneously 2.5 stars, 3 stars, and 4 stars?

Replaying a story-driven little-actual-gameplay game is a rare occurrence for me, let alone replaying it immediately after the first time, and yet I did it here since I felt that it would have enough replayability to stand up, and it did.

Chats and phone calls move fast enough to make adding datachunks awkward, but too slow otherwise, especially the second time through them when you already know what everyone is going to say. While one conversation is under a time limit, the rest could use a fast-forward button.

The game is very short. I have 6 hours on record and that's from playing through the game in its entirety twice, including some idle time when I walked away from the computer. Some players may not find the amount of content acceptable considering the price.

By far the biggest issue is that Orwell is essentially introduced and dismantled within the game world during the course of the game. While that is obviously relevant to the plot and its general message, I can't help but feel that there's potential for multiple cases using this "engine", for lack of a better word, so it's a shame that, narratively, that can't occur, although the fact that I find that in particular to be the largest issue is a very good thing for this game.

Parts 1-3: Stealth mechanics are a bit simplistic. Enemies are apparently deaf and have no peripheral vision, but guards having "sight-cone" senses isn't exactly a new thing. Neither the area design nor the control scheme would work well to more complex mechanics, and especially the latter wouldn't be able to be changed since the idea that you're only indirectly controlling the main character is important. The game suffers a bit from sense of scale and it feels like the areas were designed with the game taking precedence over the story. There are certainly areas we don't see during the course of the game, but what we do see is a odd mish-mash of places.

Part 4: Part 4 takes the mechanics the game has spent time building up and throws most of them out the window. Goodbye dystopian setting, hello horror setting, complete with spooky TVs, mazes, and a giant monster. There are a few plot-important details here, but unfortunately the plot is busy going off the rails. You could skip this part and not only would you not create any plot holes, you'd actually eliminate some.

Part 5: Part 5 ends where Part 3 left off. Of course Part 3's ending is still not properly addressed. Some new mechanics are introduced, such as cameras that supposedly sound alarms if they see Hope, though they don't work very well, as she can be directly in the line of sight of a camera without issue. They may actually only work on specific areas of the rooms; I wouldn't know because I never got seen by one. That's because this is the point in which a mechanic that I previously ignored for gameplay reasons (the ability to stop time) suddenly becomes highly relevant because when you turn one of these controlled cameras while the game is paused, it stays turned, and the time limit on the cameras doesn't count down while paused. So while I took the upgrade to extend the control time of these cameras because I had the money, it isn't actually necessary. Stop time, turn the camera away from Hope, jump to a different camera, resume time, watch the camera's sight cone, if it gets close stop time and point the camera away again.

This part actually is going great, up until you make a computer overheat and somehow wind up in space as the Plot Express finishes derailing. See, Part 4 reveals that Treglazog is trying to store data in DNA, and apparently decided that making clones of people was the best way to go about this even though Part 4 actually has data encoded in petri dishes which, last I checked, are a good deal more predictable than people. So Hope is a clone. One of many. One of them is a 33 year-old, another thinks she's Swedish, another is accidentally killing people in Spain (I may have the locations wrong).

Finally space travel ends just in time for the battery to run out because Plot and our hero is saved after a final close call and oh hey, there's the guy we got arrested in Part 3 how'd he get here (they're not going to bother to tell us) and we're all happy and the battery dies just as Hope somehow confuses a blue pyramid for America. Then the game fakes the credit roll and Hope finds a charger, manages to lose the three people near her and wanders into a ceremony with Treglazigzag. No one thought it was important to let him know of all the explosions until this very moment. He is very worried when he finds out because of the data, and you know he's very worried about the safety of the data because he had all the pre-cals (read: DNA-based USB drives) killed and then forgot about that until right now. Tregladyte then yells at the sky in a way normally reserved for the protagonist, but it's okay because Hope hears that Treglazerg had her friends killed and decides "gee, maybe I'd better let him know I'm right here on this boat that is now here." And it's okay, because Treglazero is just as confused about his plans as I am and apparently hasn't noticed that different versions around the world have escaped multiple times before. Faced with the choice of going back to Treglazounds, seeking asylum with an Admiral from the United Pyramids of America, or going with the people who helped her escape, she drowns herself.

Just kidding. She asks the player to make a choice three times, ignores them, and then drowns herself. Why? I haven't the slightest. It's like the developers looked at Mass Effect 3 and thought, "that would be even better if we didn't let the player pick what color the explosion was."

Here's some things the game never bothers to resolve:

• Who is the player?
  
• How/why is the player involved?
  
• How do garbage cans contain audio recordings?
  
• Can Hope hear the recordings I pull from garbage cans? If so how do I hide the video of the Librarian's murder from her? If not what explains the one time she comments on an audio recording and how people not holding the phone can see what I'm doing?
  
• Why does everyone forget how to make screwdrivers over the next few years?
  
• How am I communicating with Hope? Sometimes she addresses the player as if they are a silent protagonist but other times she clearly isn't expecting an answer.
  
• If the top of Terminus is just above sea level, how is it raining on the glass roof of the statue room outside Tregalzooks' office when that office is stories lower?
  
• Articles are written at 3AM by someone no one has ever heard about regarding three guards that just happen to be guarding the main escape route while an escapee is escaping. Why does no one find this odd?
  
• Why does Hope leave her things at the top of the elevator and wander away without them?
  
• What does Hope do during Part 4? We know she was in the area, but she leaves the key that is necessary to go anywhere behind. We should see her since we can get to all the areas that are accessible without a key, but we don't.
  
• Prideaux gets on the elevator long before Hope. Since she presumably does not have the key, how did she get anywhere? She is afraid of Mammoth so he clearly didn't let her in. Where does she go between going up the elevator in Part 3 and her appearance in Part 4? Why does it take her so long to get to Zager when he is right by the entrance?
  
• How does Zager fake his death so thoroughly? If he was shot, why does his uniform not show it? If a fake was somehow shot, how did Zager end up buried?
  
• In part 4, False Hope activates some pumps which results in draining Terminus' cooling. This is undone somehow not too long after she does it, which seems highly unlikely given what is necessary to reach the controls.
  
• Why would you put a pump that controls something important in a maze with four valves also in the maze?
  
• Weep drowns in a moat. How? This is only possible if he made it to an area he could not have got to without a key then decided to jump in a ditch and sit there.
  
• Who in their right mind would put controls on top of Terminus? The only worse place would be to put them in a hedge maze.
  
• How does the elevator lead to land when the Terminus leads to the middle of open water?
  
• Why do I end up in space?
  
• How did previous versions of Hope escape? How does Treglazonk not know about this?

• What is the Arrival?
  
  I had some more, but I've hit the character limit.
  
  Also there's a minor bug in Episode 3 where Hope can teleport between rooms because the game borrows her for a flashback cutscene and puts her in the room the trigger is in regardless of whether or not she was there before.

"Join in battle against other players."

That statement appears on the Play menu when you select Casual mode. You don't actually play against other players. You play against bots. I don't appreciate being lied to, so this game receives a negative review from me.

Also the last game I played had no UI. When the match ended it sat on a black screen and played some sound effects. I had to use Task Manager to close the game.

It's hard to review a game that is not really, itself, a game. Rather, it's a tool in which to play other games. It does that very well. It has multiple built-in components and also allows external modding via the Steam Workshop, so if a board game has existed you can play it in here (assuming either you or someone else has bothered to take the time to put it together).

• Horrendous PC port
  
• Forced PvP in a singleplayer game
  
• No pause button

Attempting to run this game disabled two of my three monitors, made all open windows flash fast enough to give me a seizure if I had epilepsy, and continuously spammed a network check window. I was forced to perform a hard reset of my computer to do anything as not even the Task Manager could be forced onscreen.

Developers are using in-game currency to bribe people into posting positive reviews.

http://forums.redbana.com/forum/audition/audition-news/audition-events/3011567-june-2015-vote-up