Damnation’s story is a fairly generic. It takes place after a 40 year extension to the civil war because Prescott Standard Industries supplied steampunk weaponry to both the Union and the Confederacy. PSI’s mission is to restore order by crushing all that stands in front of them. You play as Hamilton Rourke. A once veteran soldier turned rebel that has set out to lead a group of rebels against PSI and find his lost fiancée that went missing during the war. For the most part during the game you will not be alone. You’ll have a few AI buddies tagging along, who can get knocked down forcing you to abandon your fight and backtrack and save them. Your AI partner is generally as unhelpful as possible most of the time and they will get right in your sights and not move at times.

 

 

The gameplay is nothing you haven’t seen in other games before. The objective of the game is to make your way through each level by getting to the top as you climb ladders, ledges, swing reversing your body to reach the upper ledge to activate the next level. The levels are quite lengthy but probably the most positive part of the game. Luckily you get a break in action with some vehicle sections where you ride around on a insane looking motorcycle that handles like a brick and race through a few canyons while doing some death defying wall rides. For these parts your AI buddies will climb aboard the vehicle and provide covering fire as well. Wait you forgot to let your passenger on? Don’t worry, they will teleport on in a few seconds.

 

The shooting along with the enemy AI in the game is just ridiculous. I have never played a game where simply firing a gun is a mission of its own. Even the normal enemy AI takes ten plus shots to kill so eventually if you keep spraying bullets in the right direction for long enough the enemies will just kill over where they stand. Most of the time your enemies will not even react and just stand there and let you shoot them. Another shooting nuisance is the utter lack of any sort of cover mechanics which is very frustrating.

 

Damnation offers several multiplayer options. Co-op can be played either via split screen or on Live and there are some multiplayer options such as the traditional deathmatch and CTF modes for up to 8 players. Problem is these online matches use the same massive maps that you played in the single player game which are quite large for multiplayer.

 

 

Graphically Damnation looks like an Xbox game or something you would see on the last generation console. The boxy character models, horrific frame rate sputters, characters popping in and out of existence or glitch through solid objects and loading screens pop up half way thru a stage. The list goes on and on.

 

The sound doesn’t do much better when the characters seem like a lifeless robot or match their gender when they scream. There are so many issues that it just makes me laugh. Like when the motor sounds of the motorcycle stop in midair during a jump or the misplaced enemy death cries. The weapons don’t sound much better as they seem to ‘Hiss’ when fired. It’s a complete nightmare honestly.

 

The achievement list seem to be one of the better things about the game as it provides a nice spread of single player, co-op and online tasks all of which are more than attainable with a bit of effort. The problem is there is literally no one playing the game online so you will have to find a group of players in order to get them done. Thankfully the difficulty achievements are stackable too and you can unlock "Insane" difficulty from a cheat code that does effect the achievements.

 

 

Overall it hurts me to write reviews like this. The game had excellent ideas and potential and it actually won some award in an Unreal development contest but you wouldn’t know it by playing it. Simply put, the bad outweighs the good in Damnation. Maybe a rental or a bargain bin buy at the absolute best.