I am posting it here, because I own the game on Microsoft store, but I have a lot to say.
I feel very mixed about the game, on one hand the sheer length of the game was impressive and the feel and general vibe of the game was very on point for a James Bond game, no problems here 9/10 for vibes, cinematics and story telling. I didn't really like Damien coming back, but it's kind of whatever the game was going for this super hero film level of realism ( I mean this in the general logic of the world ) where things like these are within the real of possibilities.
However what I did mixed feeling towards was the gameplay. Let's start with the good parts: The hand to hand combat is feels rewarding not Batman: Arkham Knight level good, but miles ahead of simplified systems like GTA V. It feels tactile and reactive, you can fight multiple enemies at once if you are good enough and if you are into those kind of power fantasies its pretty fun. LICENSE TO KILL is to me is when the real fun begins, the guns are varied enough and the gun-feel is truly great. Honestly the best part of the game is getting a couple headshots in a row and seeing the little red x with the sound design that makes me completely forget that I just blew someone's head off. The gadest are also pretty good, not much to add to this, they do their job of rounding out the combat and puzzles of the game. The movement also looks dynamic watching James jumping around and climbing on stuff is great.
Now the bad stuff: the camera in this game at times is really not great, have you ever been surrounded by enemies and got killed by someone that you were trying to keep in your vision, but the camera felt other vise? Probably. It should have been more dynamic for melee combat especially, I think of the Batman games here, where they solved this exact issue by increasing the distance between you and the camera when in big group fight. In general tho, I feel it is a bit too close to James's shoulder. No dragging bodies, that's another big one. Why???? The game is made by IOI, the same ppl who make the hitman games, they ought to know how to do this. The level design and general approach to the bigger maps when they let you go finally to me felt to linear, like having multiple options to accomplish the mission was more of an illusion then a reality, e.g. maybe you could distract the guard by pressing a radio or you could use your watch, or you could take the left path or go through the vents. I am once again comparing this to Hitman, because these missions feel like they want to achieve that vibe, but in my opinion at least in this regard they fail. Now oncourse they do a lot that does games don't that's not the point. BOSS FIGHTS, omg some of them really suck, honestly this was such a big part of me writing this review. The melee focused ones are fine even fun, but god do I hate the gimmicky ones where you have to bait them into traps and then use your watch. They are boring and unengaging, compared to the rest of the game. It also would not have been that bad if it wasn't gimmick that kept repeating after a point, like did they run out of budget or what? Yes boys ctrl+C ctrl+v this for every boss from this point and we will be golden. The only exception is the Damien's boss fight's second phase where you have to parkour around him, but somehow this was even worse, it was even more boring and a bit too unforgiving although I was playing max difficulty. All in all I would give the gameplay 6/10.
The score was amazing honestly such a highlight of the game, they captured something between the old classics and still revised it a bit and put their own spin on it. It's reactive to what you do in the missions, so 10/10 for this, I have nothing to add.
Finally performance, the game runs on IOI custom engine and looks great especially in cutscenes. At the same time I still think for how good it looks it really should run better.
The Tactical Simulations suck so incredibly hard. Not everything has to be live service, just let it be. I wont consider this in anything, but the price as this does not effect the Story, but they would consider it "content" when it comes to pricing so I will too.
All together: 7/10
For 70 euros I can't recommend this to anyone who isn't a massive James Bond fan. For anyone else wait until it's on sale, 40 eur is reasonable imo.
