OL wrote:I knew that would set you off.
The game is amazingly solid in just about every way. The control is precise, glitches are extremely rare (apparently an unusual quality in modern shooters), the combination of shooting and traversal works together seemlessly (though, as you said, melee isn't particularly good) and, unlike many other cover shooters, the levels are designed in such a way as to encourage the use of all the abilities at your disposal, and keep the action moving at a quick pace, as it should. There's almost nothing about it that isn't solid.
Its a fun game made by people who had a passion for what they were doing. Nothing wrong with that. I honestly don't see what it ever did to incite such hatred from you toward it, besides being a shooter and being popular.[/color]
The game is amazingly unsolid in everything but the graphics. The controls feel half-baked, there are glitches that freeze the dam game (which created a drama on gamefaqs and other online communities like that back in the day), the combination of shooting and traversal works like shit because both elements are watered-down and the game doesn't have its own identity. To top it all, the levels are short for this gen's standards (PS3 couldn't handle anything bigger with these graphics anyway). Ironically, that fits the fact that you have so little abilities at your disposal. The whole thing is saved only by the fact that it's fast-paced and an average Joe just runs thorough it blindly, without seeing how shitty the game really is. There's almost nothing about this game that isn't terribly overhyped.
If U2 - an awful shallowness coming in a shiny box - is glorified this gen, then it's no wonder that everything is only getting worse and worse in this industry.