Hi Ubi-forum-goers
I would like to share my thoughts on LOM DLC.. to anyone who cares to read. enjoy.
Started off great, got me in the mood, the voice acting was familiarly good, Dylan Taylor (Hurk) and Steve Byers (Nick Rye) I felt acquitted themselves nicely.
Erica Lindbeck (ANNE A.I.) has a powerfully alluring voice, someone needs to hire this actress for more A.I. voice work & IRL, very fine.
The sound effects were good across the board.
Sound in general.. I would have liked more spacital placement from the engineers/sound producer, I have 7.1 headphones and the stereo's not the best I've heard, rotation was good, however clarity at distance was very poor.. I'll go ahead and guess *someone* .. don't know who.. decided *at some point* to mix the audio down to stereo only; before the final mix. Once its mixed to stereo, it can't be mixed up without introducing the original channels.. soo..
Model textures and monsters were excellent. Animation was fair to good. I did not encounter ANY bugs throughout the DLC.
The main questline, erm this is where we ran into trouble.. firstly I was fascinated by the hurk's body quest, thinking the reward would be; Hurk mind controlling the robot hurk while being out with me shooting things. This I feel would have added a huge dimension to the game and also the ending. The main quest was quite boring for the most part, some moments of excitement and interest.. but that was more to do with the combat system (throwing Crabmonies at a queen while dragging agro) than the plot itself. The voice acting carried the plot more than anything else.
The ending.. oh wow, I just completed LOM and then came here to write this. Could have been better is an understatement.. and the final twist of the knife; no continue after completion. oh flip wow! It would have been an easy fix too if you didn't want to leave Nick and Hurk on Mars.. just have the player play as Larry, who didn't die but ran away when he found out about ANNE. His mission could be to re-start the teleporter by getting 100% completion before he could leave for Earth (and even after that he can teleport back).
This is a very short DLC, *VERY* short and now lets me know that Ubisoft may be going in that direction.. so I'll hold off on the season pass next time, see what the DLCs are like first. I haven't completed the Vietnam DLC or even started the Zombies DLC.. but I get the idea due to Lost on Mars.
Weapons were fun, the gravity belt useful & fun, none of the weapons felt OP, but I didn't get to try every weapon. The area inside felt large but once you looked on the map felt tiny, missions were surprisingly few.. at one point I stopped to *really* look at the map and despite my guess of being 1/3rd the way through, I had completed all but three bases without noticing, and then on to the final mission.
I'll go into more detail about how I felt about the ending..
Abrupt, cold, unfeeling, slightly cheated.. if you give a player a rip roaring ending, *I feel* it covers many faults and while not 'all is forgiven' it helps.. LOM did not do this, so much so it felt like you were throwing me out of the game, and the utter cheek of no continue mode.. wow. You *really* wanted to ram it home; 'get out of my game' .
Is the message I got.. with the combination of no continue and *that* ending.
Are you announcing Hurk will never be in another future Far Cry? .. Then I suggest Danny McBride, who's on screen many personas Hurk was written from. Write Danny a new character .. say being Hurks cousin or something, coz thinking about it, Ubi should put some cash in that man's pocket.
To sum up, fun combat and monsters, good textures, amazing acting from Erica, by the end I felt like Hurk, having feelings for her voice..
Then.. bad missions, little to no plot, abrupt ending with no continue.
2 out of 5.