This actually pains me to write, but this is quite literally the worst game that I have ever played.

Well actually, I can't even really class it as a game so it is the worst *insert what it is here* that I have ever paid money for.

The really sad thing is that I have really been intrigued by the whole concept. A game that you play as a deaf man that then you can play through once finished with audio? Sounds like an eye opening experience that would give you an insight into what real people deal with every day in the same vain that Hellblade did with psychosis. Sign me up!

But the problem with that is that it doesn't give you a feeling of what a real deaf person would go through, it gives you an artists impression of what a deaf person deals with. So artistic in fact that the guy hear's random synthesised tones in place of voices and the heavy thud, thud of his own feet via an internal sound. I am pretty sure that most (I would say all but you never know) deaf people don't go around with a Roland DX synthesiser in their brain. I might be wrong though since I am not deaf. Ultimately what the weird synth tones leave you with is a complete confusion as to what is going on, which is super weird considering that main character that you control is able to communicate and understand people perfectly (presumebly through Lip reading) so he is having whole conversations with people that you as a player are just completely lost on.

There in lies another problem. The cut scenes seem to go on forever and since you can' hear a thing, you end up losing interest pretty quick. Most of them seem to be pretty straight forward too, bad man is bad, mother is dead, woman (I think sister) is beautiful so there is really no need for them to have multiple cut scenes hammering the same few narratives home.

All of this being said I enjoy playing narrative driven games so I was still trying to "enjoy" what I could from the experience and was eagerly anticipating the gameplay to become more involved. But it never does. Your playable moments are pretty much just fight scenes that are a 2 button bash fest of punches and kicks, with 2 buttons for grab and evade, though neither work very well in an actual fight. The camera swings wildly on it's own and so targeting becomes an issue when your character suddenly spins on the spot mid "combo" leading you open to attack. "combo" is in speech marks too because it is literally a 3 punch hit, the most basic you would get in an actual combo driven game. Even gameplay this basic though can sometimes be fun and so I tried to battle through, trying to think back to such games like Final Fight and Streets of Rage to prove to myself that a button masher beat em up can be fun. The difference is though that those games worked. The collison detection seems way off, so coupled with the swinging camera you can actually 'punch through' your enemies and come out the other side having not hit them at all but now your back is open to being attacked. That is....... wonderful. Another note on the "combat" is the weird hidden voice mechanic (basically a rage mode) that it never explains how to use other than some blinking stick figure lights on the pause menu. If you never pause (like I didn't) you don't even know it is there. I got half way through the game before I realised you can charge it up to then hit a massive punch that...... seemingly does the same damage as a normal punch. I'm not even kidding here, the enemies would get back up after me using the mode whereas I could knock them pretty much straight down just by bashing my basic x, x, x attack. Another thing that makes the combat annoying as heck is the random flashing lighting and overpasted video clips that de-rail your attention mid fight and make it so that you get hit whilst you are looking to see what the hell just flashed up. One of the biggest let downs for the combat for me personally is the boredom of doing the same thing over and over. The same three enemy skins attack you, same formation, same outcome. Next comes a guy with a vest and a knife. Then the first three. Then vest man. Then the first three but doubled, then two vest men. And so on and so on. There is literally no originality in the enemies that I have seen and they are all the same basic model, same animations, even same colours. It is an obvious cut corner that again makes me feel like this is not a game, but rather a college students "look what I have done" for some summer project. Finally, the coup de gras and final nail in the coffin of the combat is the fact that you get stuck on walls and furniture should you be near them in any way. This got so bad that I just plain gave up when I got to a boss, the leader of the hispanic thugs. I am guessing I am 40-50% through the story at this point, but the boss just became unbeatable in a not fun way. Not because he is tough or that there is any skill needed, but because my rage mode would run through him without hurting him, and inevitably I then get stuck on the wall in the middle of the room where his TV and obnoxiously gold statue of himself is. With my back to him, the boss hits me with a take down and that's all she wrote.

So my total experience of the game has been painful, and that is an understatement.

I never bought into any hype, I didn't look at reviews, and I didn't listen to negative critics. I just saw a concept that I thought was intriguing and I wanted to try it. As someone who enjoys narrative driven movies and interactive games, this fails to really fit into either category.

It isn't an interactive movie because the movie parts are fixed. I can't class it as a game as the game part has no real gameplay.

So what do I class it as?

Only one thing rings true to me.

It's a waste of money.