After I woke up today I sat down and finished the game in one sitting. Gave myself a few hours to think about it and let this review brew. Lets start with the obvious good stuff.
The audio team absolutely carried the project on their back. The music and the sound is superb, immersive and spectacular at every point. My sincerest congratulations to everyone involved.
The graphics are top notch, they're obviously trying to showcase what Unreal 5 is capable of and they're delivering on that front.
The camera work is also great, and the story is decent, altough nowhere near as captivating as the first entry, and it gets sluggish at times. Especially considering how much the gameplay breaks the already slower pacing. And this is where the problems begin.
For a 5-6 hour game, feeling tired of the gameplay at hour 2 is a terrible sign. You repeat the same 3 things over and over again throughout the game, forced into a super slow running and climbing animation. I don't know why they decided this would be the best direction. Maybe we're forced to slow down to show us how amazing Unreal 5 can look but... a rock is just a rock the 1st and the 600th time as well.
I would've been so much more satisfied if it was just an audiovisual experience. Sit in your couch, put on a headset and enjoy the show.
But having to hold down the left stick for 5 hours to move forward in the slowest possible animation, drizzled in with the same puzzle again and again is just frustrating. (And again, you can only solve them super slow because you move at the pace of a snail.)
Overall, the atmosphere is great. Every aspect of that is utilizing every latest technology, and it shows how much care was put into this project. But you don't HAVE to make a game out of it...
Or well... maybe you do if you're owned by Xbox...
