Not bad; not great at all
This game had the potential to become a real classic but numerous design flaws hold it back. But In Cold Blood does have redeeming factors, some of which actually significantly redeem the game; unfortunately without a good, solid foundation no game can be better than "OK".
For starters the game's plot is interesting. Not ground-breaking by any means but I found it to be told in a cool way and it had some fresh ideas. The pacing, however, is just awful. Can you believe that Metal Gear Solid, a game which has huge hour long cutscenes, actually moves the game and story forward faster?
The story is basically reserved only for the cutscenes and dialogue with NPCs and the rest of the game is padded with tedious puzzle solving and horrible action elements. I have no idea why they made the broken gun mechanics and turret movement controls such a huge focus of this game. I actually thought this was going to be a stealth game when I started playing it, because the first level does have some prominent stealth elements (at first). You infiltrate a Volgian refinery and the very first guard you run into you can actually interact with. You manage to BS your way out of being killed by saying you're delivering something I think and need to take a shower. Then when I made a mistake later on and got shot I actually thought that was this game's way of saying: don't get detected. But the game shifts the focus from stealth-oriented gameplay to action-oriented gameplay almost immediately in the second level. You will get killed a whole lot when guards run into the room and it takes you two whole seconds to turn and face them and by the time you've readied your gun you're already dead. They really should have taken some cues from MGS, which does the whole action-stealth thing so much better. It would have really helped to either make a stealth game, an action game or an adventure game because they really don't know how to mix those elements correctly. Oh, and it can be done. The Penumbra series and Amnesia: The Dark Descents are a testament to that (though my definition of action in this case is a bit different, I'm not talking about the gun-spraying combat-type action).
It's also very lacking as an adventure game. Other people have pointed out that the puzzles are very badly designed because you need to *know* about something before you can do it. Sounds logical right? But the reason it's stupid is that computer terminals have no function until an NPC tells you they do. This design is really maddening and every time I accessed a walkthrough to find out what to do next the solution was always what I was trying to do only I needed some exposition first in order to do it.
It has some very cool moments though, which I won't spoil, but you will know them when they occur. I recommend playing it if you played MGS and want a sort of poor man's version of that; I'm sure you'll enjoy it, but it does have a lot of flaws that keep it from being enjoyable (hell, almost keep it from being playable).
11 gamers found this review helpful