With Shadow Harvest the developers bit off more than they could chew. Such a porject would have needed more ressources to be successful. The potential for that lies hidden deep inside the game.
Boring and buggy third-person-action-adventure that features two different characters, one action-focus the other one stealthy. But the much too hard difficulty level and the more than stupid AI tear every bit of fun out of Shadow Harvest.
All I needed was 15 minutes and 3 checkpoints with this "**** really is so bad and the worst thing was that it did have some potential to start with and could have been a really good 3d person **** as it seems something went wrong and the final product is so bad that it even makes "Battle Los Angeles" look good!
Great idea, poor implementation. Developer support for getting the game working was prompt though when I had some physx issues preventing the game from launching. I wanted to like the game, but they designed the sneak aspect of the game very poorly and the engine itself was poorly optimized. I don't think the game is salvageable. Score is only a 5 because of how simple it was to get a hold of the devs for help.
Sometimes combining disparate elements can result in a product whose value is greater than the sum of the parts. Other times, not so much. Shadow Harvest: Phantom Ops showed promise in the premise but completely fails to fulfill its mission.
Black Lion took a bite of something that they could now chew – a
tactical stealth action game. And instead of a generic by-the-numbers
shooter, they spewed out a piece of garbage, complete with poor
graphics, amoeba-like AI and a horrendously dumb story.
When I got into my first battle in this game I really thought my neighbors lawn mower is stuttering.
And the graphics is not really better than the sound. Latest when you entering a building you will desperately try to enable Nanovision.
I truly like the switch-between-two-characters-idea and the different locations in this game, but the implementation lacks tremendously.
Though it might be unfair to compare it with a Crysis (the old and the new one and all without DX11!) - it's this kind of game approving why a Crysis deserves maximum ratings.
This game seemed to have many things that could have made it great but it stumbles and fails at every turn, which is a shame. The mouse sensitivity is absolutely horrible, your turning speed is always horribly slow, even with 100% sensitivity, but when you aim, there is no decrease in speed like most shooters so your aimer shoots around like crazy. The cut scenes are unskippable which is brutal because the checkpoints are so far apart that if you die in the beginning of a level you will have to sit through the boring scene again. There were lots of times when playing as the guy that your cover would obstruct an enemy and prevent you from hitting him but not him from hitting you! As the woman, the enemies are some of the biggest idiots, you literally can just run in front of them and they won't catch you (her sections are stealth-based) which is a shame, she has a lot of cool spy/stealth things like distraction bolts for her crossbow and sneaking up op people gives you the option to either finish them off or inject them with 'nanites' on death, turning the body invisible. In some sections stealth is literally forced, in that getting caught instantly ends the mission even if you kill the guy who caught you before he calls out. The enemies are literally hive-mind's, the moment you are caught even if the guy who saw you doesn't say anything, all nearby enemies instantly know where you are. The overall HUD layout is quite nice by comparison, looking at objectives brings up detailed information, and the night vision is quite well done, unfortunately the voice actors for both of the lead characters are absolutely horrible. The man's voice is not suited to the roll and he seems to phone in his performance, dragging down the horrible cut scenes even more. The female voice is a little more suited to her role, but still feels like she doesn't care about the part and is just reading lines. The story is slightly interesting the first time you watch it, however the lack of skippable cut scenes means that there is no replay value. One other strange thing is that playing as the woman, even if you have the weapon, your superior (on the headset naturally) has to 'unlock' everything, as if she couldn't just fire the bolt, or use the pointy claws on her arm. This is part of the tutorial of course but they had so many better ways to explain things then arbitrarily locking things and not making sense. Overall a good concept, and a great new HUD idea, but falls extremely short of that, and creates a huge mess thats not worth even $10
TL;DR - Don't Do It. I was looking forward to a sneaker/action mashup, and all I got was a half-arsed shooter. I would have forgiven this game if the stealth was any good, but it's just laughable. Enemies have don't see you when you're standing in front of them until their surprise meter runs out. You can stab people in the neck after sneaking up on them with your nano claws, but can't use it in any form of meaningful combat if you get caught in the open. There seems to be all of one line of dialog for enemies you catch off guard.
The list of inadequacies is a long one. Read the first line - Don't Do It.
Hideous unchangeable contrast/brightness, horrible controls, bad settings, mediocre graphics and unskippable cut scenes. Perfect mix of fail. it took me about 5 minutes to lose my nerve on this terrible excuse for a game. I am so sickened that i've paid something for this steaming pile.
Worst shooter ever made. i thought turning point was the worst but this exceed it in the first 30 minutes of gameplay. Everything is just so wrong in that game... i recomend NOT to buy that game
SummaryShadow Harvest is a highly immersive 3rd-person tactical action game set in the year 2025 on various current and future points of conflict around the globe. Featuring dual character control, amazingly realistic graphics and a refreshingly different storyline, Shadow Harvest is a completely new interpretation of the tactical-action genre....