Battle for Ercaton: Robot Uprising

This was a game that was off and on my wishlist. I found the theme interesting, even if the trailer didn't quite sell me on the game. I don't mind a little jank, as long as the game's fun. This, unfortunately, was not fun. The setting is cool, nice atmosphere and all that. The music has a nice vibe to it, and the planet and space environments I saw have some charm to them. The on-foot combat is pretty bad. It's like a 90s FPS where you're heavily relying on circle strafing to avoid the enemy shots. The guns you have are just absolutely awful. They don't do a ton of damage and will almost certainly need to recharge before you kill even 1 enemy. You've got an assault rifle, a sniper rifle that apparently can't be aimed with sights, a rocket launcher(I think that's what it was), and a pistol that's too slow to be useful. It was relatively just a non-stop collection of frustrating moments. There are also some weird areas where you need to avoid some purple orbs that I guess are a type of security. Before boarding a ship to move into the space mission you run across a dancing robot... An easter egg? I don't know. It feels out of place considering we're fighting robots. An…

The game opens with an endless monologue by your hero, Liam. Despite the very Western name, he speaks Russian, and the dialogue is so aggressively cheesy that I stopped reading it by the fourth line. You crash on the planet Ercaton, another ship crashes nearby, and then you find a space pager that triggers an even worse conversation with some girl. If you somehow survive that—congrats, you’ve unlocked the gameplay. In front of you, in the snow, lies a laser rifle. You pick it up and immediately die, because the weapon does almost no damage and reloads slower than continental drift. On your second attempt, you kill the first enemy—a floating ball—only to be swarmed by two more balls and something pretending to be a mecha. They tank your shots, never miss, and move faster than you, because balance is apparently optional. After roughly ten deaths, you finally clear the first fight and unlock a second weapon: a sniper rifle. Unfortunately, it hits like a wet paper towel and needs four to five business days to reload after every shot. Also, it’s called a sniper rifle, but there’s no scope. At all. Then comes wave two. Another ten deaths. Another pointless dialogue. Then wave three—no…

It's just, really lame. That pretty much describes it. There's no way to avoid ANY type of damage since the orb robots continuously follow you + know where you're at at all times, and move quicker than your base speed (there's no sprint). And furthermore on that point, health packs and armor are scarcer than water in the Sahara, so its a routine of: Engage robots, suffer inevitable damage, survive the engagement on 5% health, progress to another robot engagement, inevitably die, restart checkpoint. All of your weapons might as well be nerf guns with how little damage they do, even the "Sniper Rifle" (which you can't ADS). The dialogue is just mid and cheesy. The intro recorded message from the main protagonist makes seem him to be a serious guy, or someone who understands the ♥♥♥♥ that he's in, just for his interactions with the first person he sees to be nothing but marvel-hollywood quips. Then there's the space section and that's where I just quit entirely after dying for the 5th time. Your ship does poopoo-caca damage, the enemy ships have aimbot and will snap in directions to hit you (which you can't do yourself, the "evasive maneuvers" don't exist. You just have to fly behind …