Recent reviews by Akhlys

I can neither recommend nor not recommend this, but steam doesn't let me review without it.
On one hand, it is a nice platformer, reminds me of the old sonic games. Nice enough story to boot.
On the other hand, this game has no mercy invisibility and stunlock for the player character. Which many bosses exploit. It's not fun when a boss can deplete half your life bar or more at once because he's fast hitting and you can't do anything because of the stun lock. Your reaction to a new boss coming shouldn't be 'oh no, not another one'

could have been so much better. why not upgrades? like more power, abilities to kill 'enemy blocks', shooting down, bombs, safe blocks (blocks to hide in, and maybe get trapped)?
so much potential, all wasted. this would even be boring as a flash game

Pretty fun. I recommend finishing this before part 2. Do not be like me and do 2 first.
The end boss was a bit of a let down tho, survived it with perfect health

After replaying it quite a while after I initially made that review, I would no longer recommend it. Every single problem save for the lag is still there, nothing was improved at all.
When I initially wrote it, I hoped it would, but alas.
It's still not a bad game per se, but it just isn't fun, it's just a slog. You're forced to do plenty of too easy missions just to get the meager ressources for even an attempt at the harder ones, which you'll probably fail for the reasons below, then it's back to the start.

---- original review:

Having played this for quite a while now, I'd recommend it, but it has some problems.

You see, at the start, it's pretty fun. You start ou small, get better stuff, get bigger missions, all great. But as soon as you go above "hard" missions, they jump from "medium" (what hard really is) to "what in the living f*ck is this, f*ck this game".

I think the main issue is that you have nothing that really works against shields. Shields are equipments many thoughter enemies have that reflect any kind of attack. They come in two variants: One is active as soon as they spotted you, which is fine, it just means if you have been spotted, you better run because forget fighting back, hide until they go back to neutral. The other variant is always on.
Now, there ARE ways to kill shields. There are two types of tools against them, one just turns them off and one inverts them so their own shots get reflected inwards, which is pretty sweet. The problem lies in the numbers. Even "high capacity" variants of those tools come with just 5 uses, and the time when you actually encounter those enemies, they're on huge ships with many guards meaning those 5 uses are gone pretty quickly with still plenty of shielded enemies around. (there are a few other ways, like blowing out a window next to them, but they aren't really applicable most of the time and means you also lose everything the guard holds, like keys)

There are two types of enemies, common and boss. that just means the boss ones got slightly better equipment and are a fifth in number. mostly just those got shields, but for the highest level difficulty missions I've seen yet, there are many where every enemy type has shields (and proximity sensors and so on).
Combine that with a pretty short time limit, armor (which you can only ever defeat once you unlocked armor piercing weapons, which is btw way too late, before that you have to just not do any of those missions), huge ships and plenty of guards and it's becoming pretty much impossible.

Some tools are rechargeable, which means they get filled up when you visit a friendly station. The one time I finished off a ship full of shields, I had a high capacity rechargeable, and pretty much killed 5 enemies, went to the nearest station, came back, killed 5 more.. took tons of time and is not what I'd call fun)

Either the game should make it easier to get self-recharging tools (which you only see very rarely, I think I only saw them in special "deflector missions" which are sepparate from the rest), vastly increase the limit of uses (high capacity should be 20 uses minimum) or give us weapons that can bypass shields. You could go the way plenty of scifi went and only make lower speed weapons penetrate, like melee or even just slow types of melee.

Also, the time limit should be expanded or at least being spotted should not reduce it even more so you could rambo through to the captain, because in 9/10 missions with time limit, I was either caught or had to abandon the mission incomplete.

And before someone says to just not do such missions: you get 5 missions to chose from, maybe 6. if 3 of those have shields and/or time limits, you're stuck with some "medium" and "hard" ones that are actually a piece of cake and pretty easy.

Each time you get spaced, which means enemies killed you and throw you out the airlock, which is a nice idea in and on itself because it's a middle way between permadeath and just restarting at a checkpoint, the amount of time you can survive outside decreases. Would be fine if it was just for that mission, but it's permanent and I know of no way to increase it again, which means by the time you got all the equipment to tackle harder ships, being spaced once or twice, which will happen far easier, means you're dead.

Restarting at the start of the ship, maybe even through the menu, the way it is with deflector missions would be great. Some times you have really bad luck with the layout and, for example, a group of five enemies right in front of your entry point. Some times you manage to blow up part of a ship which makes it impossible for you to go further into it. Both cases mean you just have to abort the mission, which is no fun.

Give a faster way to travel through the huge ships. maybe teleporters unlocked when you reach them. it's really frustrating having to wander through the whole ship again just because you forgot a guy or something.

Last but not least, lower the difficulty of personal missions. with like 20 characters, I survived that maybe once.

to recap, ways to improve the game:
- weapons against shields or at least higher capacity or recharging for tools
- more self-recharging tools, period. One deflector mission had just glitch trap and a swapping teleporter (teleports you to where the enemy was and the enemy where you were) and I had a blast, setting the trap, standing on it and swapping with an enemy. But with the limited number of tools you can take with you this is not possible to really use without self-recharging tools.
- quicker way to get armor piercing
- longer time limit or less missions that have one
- a way to "heal" yourself to withstand space longer again
- add teleporters
- lower difficulty level for personal missions (if all of the above get implemented that may not be neccessary)
- a way to restart a ship, reroll it's layout

some additional points:
- fix the memory leak or whatever is responsible for the game getting sluggish after some time running. At several points it was nearly as slow as while targetting.
- Add a cheap ship type, like $5 or so, that would be a dinghy to your normal ship with which you could ram through windows if you go at them at full spead, sacrificing it but being able to start the ship where you rammed in it. could maybe alert the ship to make it not too easy. [note, maybe there is such a ship, I haven't unlocked all yet]
- add some more options for those wanting to ghost. like a hack tool that would hack access hatches to air ducts with shich you could bypass enemies. a way to lure enemies to your trap without causing alarm. light switches or fuses you could turn off so enemies would not see as far. always just cloaking or teleporting is boring and costs a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
- after the enemy spotted you, followed you and lost your trail, make them return to where they were. otherwise you some times get 8 enemies in a single spot you need to go through
- with how much emphasis there is on teleporting, teleporting grenade launchers should be included. Or at least some variety, like bouncing ones that you could (better) shoot around corners. as it is, grenade launchers are pretty useless, they alert everyone (shields go up) and often you're in line of sight of you shoot them

This is a god awful console port if I've ever seen one. Steering is night impossible. Game starts in a window and even if you set it to fullscreen in the settings, it doesn't capture the mouse which is especially annoying if you have a multi monitor setup. I've found no way to actually open the menu once you're in the game (even esc does nothing, you have to exit it using alt-f4). But even if you could, it's jeopardy if any menu item actually works when using the mouse.
But you can't. Meaning there's no way to actually look up the keybinding or change it once you started.

I can only attribute the good reviews by people who were a fan of it on console and just recommended it because "LUL I LIKED IT BACK THEN". It's been a long time since I saw such a bad port.

I can't even tell you anything about the game, but the non-capturing mouse and inability to lookup/change movement keys is a no go for me. Hell the game even pisses on you, showing the keys for the damn console. They couldn't even change that. Way too many games don't, but for those, you can at least look it up!
What an awful, awful port.

This would be the first game I'd ever get a refund for on steam, but sadly I got it a while ago and only came around to play it today.

I don't understand why so many people disliked the game. I went in expecting it to suck and had a really good time. Maybe it had issues that were patched meanwhile. I only had a single crash, after the shooting range, but you don't even have to go into it

I would give this 5/10
It would have been a fine game. The jumping from shadow to shadow was nice, as were some other abilities. It does have quite a few problems that make it look unpolished at least.
For example, for a game where sneaking is your main way of moving, as all enemies kill you in one hit with quite a distance, you can't hug walls or look around corners better than with just the third person camera.
The twist in the story is painfully obvious and can be guessed just 20 minutes in. Skip this paragraph if you don't want this spoiler but believe me, it will be no surprise. Least the game could have done was "your" side being the light clan and the ones you fight against being the shadow one, so that the twist would have been a bit more of a surprise, though it would still have been obvious.
The level design is nice enough, but there's never any hidden path for you to follow to emerge behind enemies. In fact, there's no "behind" as at least 80% of he enemies constantly walk around.
The speakers seem to be japanese, which I don't understand, or a made up language for all I know, but there's no way the subtitles in any way fits what was said. Some times the subtitles are paragraphes and what was said are 3 words. It would have been better without any voice, really.
You can distract enemies, but only with bells you carry, since aparently, you can't even throw stones. You gotta be pretty near for them to hear the bells, so the best way to distract enemies is to just stand out in the open until they got suspicious and the teleport to a shadow, that works with larger distances.
The graphics are stylisch and look nice, but objectively, they're quite dated. A tree without leaves, for example, has as many polygons as it would have had in an AAA game 10 years or more ago. The graphics never distracted me, so that is good, but I thought I should mention it.

But all of that could have been forgiven, it wasn't a story dense game anyway and mainly fun to play, which is after all the main point of any game. A game can look the greatest ever and still be crap if it isn't fun to play, and a game can look like undertale and still be fun.. save for 4 mayor points that really transform the game from "fun but not great" to "frack this game". In order of severity:

1. No quick way to kill. You get two ways to kill enemies, a normal attack and a shadow attack which you have to unlock. both of these take about 2 seconds (with initiation of the shadow one being an additional second). There's no way at all to swoop in, kill an enemy, flee. In a game where the paths and vision cones of the enemies often interlock and you have to go in in the short time an enemy is free, that is a real flaw. In fact, killing takes so long, in case you alerted the enemies and they go searching you, and one wanders off from the rest.. The search party will probably have come in range again and spotted you by the time you finally killed him, meaning whenever they search you, you can do nothing but hide. The only quicker way is the aerial attack but that one's pretty bugged, see 2.

2. No other ways to kill and no way to dispose nonviolently. One enemy at a time, always the same way, two different animations every time. There's no way to kill two that stand right next to each other, there's no way to use the environment to do it. You can, in fact, drop on an enemy to kill him, but that function is so bugged that I often had to run around a ledge several times until I finally found a spot to do it. There's an unlockable ability to kill enemies on a ledge from below, but I had not yet had any chance to use this, as enemies below climbable ledges are really rare. I don't think I saw even one since I bought that ability.
Not a single way to dispose of an enemy without killing him. Even stealthy games that gave you the option to run and gun instead, like Deus Ex, had options to take an enemy out of the game without killing him. That means on a no-kill run, you have to run away all the time, making it really not much fun to play.

3. The bosses are absolutely unfair. The whole game you've trained yourself to hide in the shadow and sneak and plot your path. Both bosses before the end one have a sixth sense to know exactly where you are. Disappointing but still kinda fine with the first one, as he rather slowly just walks in your direction and does not attack until he actually saw you, so you can stay far away from him until you dispatched the other enemies in the area.
The second boss though is a sniper sitting in a tall tower that sees you as soon as you are in line of sight, no matter if in the shadows or not, and teleports to a different tower as soon as you get too near. This was OK at first, as you leaped from cover to cover up to the tower, but later, normal enemies were introduced. Because there's no way of quickly dispatching of an enemy (see 1), killing someone that is in line of sight of the sniper results in your death, and since you usually teleport to a shadow near the enemy, you often only know it was when it's already too late. A shadow patch looks ideal to kill the enemy so you teleport there? too bad the sniper can see you. If that wasn't enough, there is a thunderstorm going on, so even if you are in shadow and out of line of sight of the sniper, a lightning will reveal your position to every nearby normal enemy, and one happens every few seconds. This is means pretty much no place can be used to recharge your shadow ability without getting spottet.
The end boss is laughably easy in comparison, managed it the second time and only failed the first because I had no idea what to do, while ol' sniperboss needed something in the ballpark of 15 tries.

4. The saving system. All of the other points could have been really reduced in severity if this one wasn't there. The game has no quicksave. In fact, it has no manual save at all. All you have is an autosave, and the save points are really few and far between. Exit the game and start it later again? Back to the start of the level even if there were save points in between. Made your way through undetected, killed tens of enemies, and one of the last one sees and kills you? Though luck, you start again at the start of the level because there never was a save point, which may have been 20 mins or more ago.
This is particularly rage inducing in the case of an enemy like the second boss above. Sure, that one saves after you stormed the hill, before other enemies were introduced.. but then you go to the next tower, really slowly, killing everything in your wake, reach it, go towards the next tower, teleport behind an enemy that you're sure is still out of line of sight (you can't be sure as you can't see sniper yourself).. well tough luck, he wasn't, you are kill and you can start again at the place other enemies were introduced, before the first tower. And if you somehow managed to survive that, there's a third area full of normal enemies (as many as a normal level) in addition to a superbly positioned sniper boss.
This was so infuriating that I pretty much gave up any 'good' way to play this game and just pretty much ran past enemies, giving no sht if they spotted me or not.
Let me save whenever I want, if the game gets too easy then, well that's on me, isn't it? Or at least distribute the save points a bit more than uncle scrooge distributes free money.

It just.. wasn't fun. It had the quality of a flash game, but some of those are even fun. I would be so pissed if I paid $10 for that, I'm still a bit miffled I paid $1 for the bundle (not a single game worth anything in it yet)

Deadpool ist ein lustiges Spiel und alles in allem recht cool gemacht.
Schade nur haben sie es mal wieder so vollkommen verbraten was Konsolenumsetzung angeht, die Steuerung ist richtig mies. Standardbelegung für blocken war soweit ich mich erinnere auf B oder etwas ähnlich abwegigen, während "Fokus" (nur sicht ausrichten auf wichtige Sachen, nie im Spiel wirklich wichtig) auf F ist. Und das nur als Beispiel. Am schlimmsten war, dass man es nicht frei neu belegen kann, man hat nur eine Hand voll Tasten, auf die man Aktionen legen kann. Granaten werfen auf Maustaste 4, weil man eine Maus mit mehr als drei Tasten hat? Keine Chance.

maybe it's because I'm not usually a racing fan, but it was damn stupid. firstly, the UI. we all know console ports suck, but this was a whole other level. F1 to change between different parts of the menu, seriously?
then the game itself. the driving was nice enough, I give you that, and the idea of one race etc on each signal was too.
but if you give no actual marker of the way, at least make sure that the shortcuts that seem to lead in your direction actually do so. I quickly learned to avoid them because some I used turned me to a whole different way and street. also, either zoom out the minimap or don't give us many potential streets to use where some go elsewhere after the short distance the minimap shows.
seriously, the whole game seems to be less about driving skill and more about memorizing the map.

cue "rablerablerable you said yourself you're not a racing fan you don't get to judge a game you paid money for!"