#FF00AA

I don’t know if there’s somethig missing regarding the atmosphere, or it’s just me, so I won’t write about that (I never really enjoyed the Sopranos, for instance, and mafia flicks bore me to death, but I’m still interested in playing a hired assassin, in theory); what I can say, though, is that gameplay is not natural enough for me to get into it. When you’ve watched Alias for years, you’ve got some expectations when it comes to infiltrating and eliminating.

Why is it so hard to “aim” when trying to strangle someone with the fiber wire, and why does it become impossible as soon as the victim spots you? Why can’t you just smoothly jab a syringe intoyour target passing by a corridor, or swiftly plant a bomb under everyone’s noses? Why can’t you somehow block a door to hide a corpse? Why isn’t that fucking silencer more silent? Oh, I know why: because it would be too easy, and then it would be so much more work designing the missions.

That’s a pity, because they are interesting and varied, and the settings are beautiful — but, once again, the design is so artificial I feel as involved with the story and characters as if I were playing Tetris. The main thing I’d blame this game for, in the end, is pretending to be realistic and open-ended when it’s just a puzzle game where each puzzle has two or three scripted solutions rather than one. I think I’d rather have the unabashed linearity of a Tomb Raider game.

(The Alias universe and story, for all its flaws, could make for a terrific video game series, by the way. But that’s not how things go.)