GET EVEN: Full Game Review For PC

creativity101 (57)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

Get Even is one of the most bizarre games I've played in a long time. It's labeled as a first-person shooter but that's really only in terms of the camera perspective as it's a game that favors its storytelling much more than it does its gameplay often leaving those sections of the game feeling extremely unrefined and often downright terrible.

It's developed by The Farm 51 who are known for developing painkiller damnation and the necro vision series, a bunch of games that are all about shooting things over and over. The direction they've taken with Get Even is practically the polar opposite of what they've pulled off in the past.

THE STORY

In terms of its story, it's really hard to go into too much detail without somehow inadvertently spoiling something I mean even the gameplay footage can kind of give elements a way about the environment or characters that's best experienced in game. However, for all those people whose fingers are already hovering over the X button ready to complain about how much I'm spoiling things, it's also worth noting that this is a game that genuinely never stops giving away important plot elements.

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As Get Even is always constantly throwing some kind of new plot device into the mix and nothing is ever what it seems. At the absolute most basic level, the story is about a guy simply known as Black who is initially reliving some kind of memory where he was unable to save a kidnapped girl from a bomb. At this point, Black wakes up inside what appears to be an asylum with the memory exploring Pandora device attached to his head and his actions monitored by a man named Red who serves as the closest thing to an antagonist.

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Exploring the asylum, Black uncovers other inmates also wearing the Pandora device and he also comes across various clues and other pieces of information that begin to slowly uncover the secrets around his past with the ambiguous assistance of Red along the way. Through reliving different memories some of which are razón others of which are formed from fragments of other people this blurry picture starts to take form involving industrial espionage, corruption, betrayal, murder and all that kind of shit.

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Along the way, you're making decisions which will have eventual consequences though it can be often hard to tell when these moments are occurring and they're hardly black or white decisions either make hard to ascertain just what the hell it is you've done. However, I really think that this distorted and jawed way of telling a story is what makes the game so captivating. Moving through these memory blocks and uncovering these clues piece by piece in between the beds between red and black is really intriguing stuff helped by some incredible voice acting and a really impressive soundtrack.

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I just never wanted to stop playing because I always wanted to get to that next cinematic or exchange of dialogue for the next piece of the puzzle to fall into place and then just when you thought you'd made sense of everything, the board gets flicked and the pieces all get jumbled again. The way the game constantly shifts between different streams of consciousness leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat and blacks frustration over the confusion to his own whereabouts and memories echoes that of the player at times as you often find yourself faced with more questions than answers.

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But you can rest assured that by the end of the game you'll know exactly what's going on which i think is a real testament to the quality of the writing. Even the end credits has dialogue that's still giving away crucial information. It's a shame then that despite telling such a fantastic story that the majority of the gameplay is so horrible. The most I could say is that its average at the absolute best of times. Blacks got a phone that puts the smart in smartphone where it can switch between a UV light, camera, heat vision and a mini map that shows locations and vision cones of enemies.

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All of which you're going to need in some form to solve the game's basic puzzles as well as uncovering clues along the way. When you're not walking around solving puzzles, picking up clues by reading pieces of paper or scanning them with your smartphone you're in stealth mode crouch walking at a snail's pace to try to avoid mercenaries. Similar to the plot device in Inception about the subconscious being able to protect itself by manifesting resistance, well the same applies in Get Even with certain memories having a high concentration of mercenaries as a means of the memory supposedly trying to protect the truth.

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And whence holding game that shooting these mercenaries is a bad thing because it disrupts the memories and distorts the truth even more which is kind of hand because the combat is fucking awful. Once you're detected, enemies can see your exact position at all times and you're killed in seconds from gunfire.

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In fact, you killed so quickly it begs the question as to why they even bothered to include combat in the first place.
This would be fine if the stealth wasn't so average but it's that kind of thing we've seen a hundred times before, you know where you just crouch down to activate some kind of stealth motor then you try to stay out of an enemy's line of sight as you sneak around them to reach the next checkpoint.

On very rare occasions you can modify the environment with your phone to add or remove certain items or objects to your advantage which is ultimately wasted potential is it just happens too infrequently.
An important plot device is a weapon known as the corner gun which is just a gun that aims around corners allowing the player to fight without exposing themselves and yet it's a little bit redundant because as I said we're told early on in the game that getting into gunfights is bad thing.

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Close-range takedowns are available as another option, you know that old gimmick where you walk up behind someone press a button and get this preset animation, but there's no non-lethal means of doing this so your only option if you're trying to get the best possible outcome is to simply avoid everyone entirely which is easier said than done.

Overall the shooting and stealth are just janky and sloppily thrown together and it's clearly an element of the game that's received the least amount of polish. I'd say about two-thirds through the game there's a bit of a shift in the way combat and stealth is approached but it still hands down the weakest area of the game and it really didn't need to be.

More refined shooting and stealth mechanics would have made those moments in between the exposition a lot more enjoyable but as it is, it's just a chore before you can get on to the next part of the story.
This is one of the main areas of the game I think that hints that this really hasn't been made by a huge triple-a developer along with certain aspects of the presentations.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

The game runs on the Unreal 4 engine and for the most part, it looks decent enough. Some of the outside areas and a few of the areas inside the asylum and abandoned buildings genuinely kind of look photorealistic at times. The character models during some of the flashback sequences look almost too realistic in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they've actually scanned in real people instead of modeling them from scratch.

On the flip side though you'll see environments that honestly look last-gen and some of the models for anyways look pretty horrible as well there's also some blurry text to work here and there with half-assed lighting that looks really dated. I don't know if I'd say the visuals are bad but they're definitely inconsistent and inconsistent probably the best word to describe Get Even on the whole.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: 64-bit Windows 7, 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1) or 64-bit Windows 10
Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 / AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 40 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: 64-bit Windows 7, 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1) or 64-bit Windows 10
Processor: Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz / AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 480, Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 40 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible

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REVIEW/RATING

Graphics 7/10
Sound 7/10
Gameplay 7/10
Controls 7/10
Effect 7/10

OVERALL REVIEW/RATING

7\10

DEVELOPER

The Farm 51

PUBLISHER

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment

GENRE

Action

MODE(S)

Single-player

RELEASE DATE

21 Jun, 2017

CONCLUSION

Get Even is a hard sell, that story is definitely its biggest strength and if you're the type of person who doesn't mind spending upwards of 10 or 15 minutes having plot elements divulged in great detail well then you're really going to soak the whole thing up and have a pretty good time. The system they use when you finish the game for going back and collecting all the clues you missed I think could be a bit more intuitive and I also wish the game had a few more options for tackling stealth but all things considered I really do think the story carries the whole thing along enough that it's possible to see past some of the game's shortcomings.

If you're the type of person however who likes their games to have a bit more meat on the bones and is expecting lots of intense challenging stealth action gameplay, well then you're going to be disappointed. This is absolute bare-bones run-of-the-mill stealth slash combat that you're ever going to see in a shooting game and it really is a shame that this aspect of the gameplay is so sloppy because if it had a bit more polish it would have really propelled the game to another level and made it I think one of the best first-person shooters of 2017.

As it is, it's still an entertaining game but it's a classic example of style over substance but strangely enough it's one of those rare occasions when that's not actually an entirely bad thing.