1Up gave this one a "B" rating. That must stand for "Be a dear and rent me, because my multiplayer sucks"

I sent a game back to gamefly on monday and moved this to the top of my list, so barring any weirdness it should be here friday or saturday.

Lucky! I am too poor for purchases of anything these days. I can't even justify the monthly GameFly fees at this point... Stupid student loans!

I rented it today, we'll see how it goes.

I put about an hour and a half into it and so far it seems pretty much what I expected: fun but does nothing particularly special. I'm actually liking the cover system, it seems to work a little smoother to me than Gears and Gears-clones. The aiming is actually pretty decent too, since I'm having little trouble using it, and as a traditional PC gamer that's usually the part I struggle with the most. Graphically, it looks great, like a UE3 game without some of the graphical oddities. It makes sense since the developers used to work on all the Unreal Tournament games. So far the "you can only hold a gun for 30 seconds at a time" mechanic feels pretty retarded though. But yeah, I don't see cutting dudes with my blade boomerang getting old anytime soon.

Overall, I'm glad I made the purchase and supported a smaller Ontario developer.

I'm going a bit sour on the game. All the ingredients are there, it just feels really, really linear and clunky in ways that dull the whole experience. I gotta play more before I can really lay it out.

If you're into story and characterization, then this game is going to leave you horribly disappointed. It has some great atmosphere at times, but the story seems to be the laziest way they can explain away why you have a Glaive shooting out of your hand and why everyone's hostile towards you. Missed opportunity there.

I think my initial positive impression is wearing thin. All the puzzles are simple timewasters that are glaringly obvious. It's like you hit a dead end right after you see a huge flame. And unfortunately those puzzles actually just help remind me of the limitations of the engine and physics in the game. I have a glaive on fire that just cut through the goo stuff, but now it misses hitting an enemy because there's a tiny piece of wood in the way.

I think I'm actually not going to finish the game and get as much trade-in value as possible by returning it this week. I don't like how your glaive has such a small range, so you end up getting close enough to be spammed with grenades, which wouldn't be so bad if you could blindfire or have a reticle without aiming in, but you don't, so you have to show your face for a few seconds to aim in, get the colour to match, and let go before they have a chance to throw another grenade at you. And most of my deaths or close-deaths tend to occur on how the enemies constantly end up getting close-up to you and you have one weak melee move with poor hit detection, and I usually manage to survive by hitting that one button over and over again without even paying attention to what's going on the screen. It seems like such a strange move to have a game that relies so much on close combat moments and yet contains a design for close combat that belongs in a game where it would be your last resort.

Those two things combined with the fact that the guns you have are kind of crappy and the good ones can only be held for 20 seconds, and it feels like most of the tense challenge of the combat is coming from the fact that the game is nerfing you rather than areas that require real tactical thinking.

And seeing as how all the reviews say the story remains that poor to the end, I'm not even compelled to go forward yet another generic-looking corridor or sewer.

I'm sorry to hear the negative reviews...this game was in development for so long and had a lot of hope. Too bad...

It might be worth playing if you're looking for the sort of entertainment it can provide, and the glaive certainly provides enough of a different concept to keep things interesting for a while. Clearly there are some people online getting a kick out of the game. It's just that as the game continued on, I realized this game plays exactly as all the preview coverage suggested - something that's been retooled constantly for four years to adapt to changing popularity in the genre - so it has a whole lot of awesome ideas and most of them feel half-baked. Maybe it'll sell decently enough that they can have a more focused sequel.

Also, the "store" seems really unbalanced and iffy. Since everything is so expensive, you can't really go back on your choice, which means you might get stuck with having your new gun be worse than the one you previously had.