Unique, for better or for worse.
My friend and I had such high hopes for this game. I had various ideas of how it would turn out. Silicon Knights has delivered on some of those ideas, while the most important ones are sadly ignored.
The graphics are pretty good. it isn't the best looking game ever produced, but its still nice to look at. There can be a huge amount of things happening on-screen, and the framerate somehow manages to keep up smoothly the entire time. Ironically, during cinematics the framerate stutters and there can be a little bit of texture pop-in. I haven't run into any bugs throughout the game, but it is littered with invisible walls. I think the sci-fi art design mixed with norse mythology turned out well and gives the game a unique and attractive look, although I'm sure there are plenty who disagree with me. The main city is gigantic, while the levels are narrow, streamlined, and cramped. The lighting effects are great, but I didn't really notice any shadows at all. The character models are well rendered for the most part, with a couple of exceptions. Baldur especially looks good, they put a lot of work into making him the standout. Character animations are lacking and very stiff, but your attacks do a good job of poprtraying a sense of power, and sliding across the floor looks just plain cool. Overall its a technically impressive game.
The soundwork is great. The voice acting is pretty good for the most part, with a few cheesy moments. The music is perfect and dramatic, and it reacts to your situation.
The storyline is awesome if you're into norse mythology, although not entirely accurate. The game-play is another thing that makes this game so unique. Instead of using your traditional XYBA buttons for combat, you use the right control stick. Normally this would be a major problem concerning the camera, but Silicon Knights has done a great job of using cinematic camera angles that allow you to see the action pretty well, plus you can center the camera back on Baldur with the press of a button. I still had the urge every once in a while to move the camera though. The right control stick works out better than msot were predicting, but it is still alittle clunky and can sometimes be unresponsive. The targeting is solid for the msot part, with the occasional quirks. Your enemies are very are tot ake down later in the game. It ends up feeling like you're banging your head against the wall and the game gets intensely frustrating. I had to turn it off many times due to frustration. There's a bunch off loot for you to customize your character with. Its very fun at first, but gets old after a couple fo hours.
When you play this game, you can tell that a lot of work went into it. Its very polished and there's a ton of little details that let you know the developers genuinely cared about this game, it was their baby. Unfortunately it just doesn't work out in the long run. I'm sad to say this is a solid game, and nothing more.
