I already waxed poetically about my fondness for taking past eras with fantastical surroundings and then putting it on its ear in my review of NecrovisioN, so it was with much excitement that I received Damnation, a pseudo-cowboy shooter that involves steampunk devices, robots fighting in the civil war and sinister overtones. Heck, I was practically thinking this was going to be a game like Darkwatch, and I was an excited game reviewer, let me tell you.

Then I played the game.

I hate to spell it out like that, but Damnation had too good of an idea for it to fall apart that way. In Damnation, the Civil War has taken a decidedly different turn. Most of the country is in the iron grip of a despot named Prescott, a arms dealer who sold to both sides. Prescott has pretty much ensured his victory by using robots and serum-injected soldiers to run roughshod over all opposition - which brings us to the "hero" of the game, one Hamilton Rourke. An outlaw gunslinger who is working with the resistance to usurp Prescott and his evil ways.

 
"If you cross this bridge, you need to pay the toll... .35 cents."

How this is done is primarily though a series of Spider-man like jumps and moves while climbing up or down insanely large structures. Our man Rourke does all sorts of jumps, swinging on bars, climbing poles, jumping off balconies and all sorts of other, kind of out of place acrobatics. I mean, our guy looks pretty muscular and carrying some heavy-looking weaponry. It just doesn't keep with the ebb and flow of the gameplay, he looks disproportionate and out-of-place. Don't get me wrong, it can be somewhat enjoyable to control Rourke this way, but I question his character design.

Now for a shooter, the dev team chose to make the game a third-person shooter. Not what I was expecting, but in all fairness, I have played some good games in this perspective. However, the game does not feel like it was given the full shooter treatment. For instance, the actual shooting that occurs is too stiff for its own good. You can zoom in a bit to refine your shooting, but still, the subtle nuances that better, well made shooters seem to possess are nowhere to be found. Jumping around and moving like a ninja is fun for a little bit, but when plugging bad guys with an uncomfortable or smooth shooting mechanic, plain stinks.

 
"It's the 1800's, but like my Harley?"

Now the story the game gives you is rife with suspicious pasts, and pretty soon you start seeing ghosts experiencing some odd things and still, the game's plot feels unfinished and weak. I'm not saying we need to have a fantastic plot, but I like it to make some sort of sense, I suppose I would understand more if my mind would not have wandered, but that's the price you pay with this one; it's tedious, boring and repetitive.

As if things could not get worse, Damnation manages to make the graphics stink it up even a bit more. For starters, pop-up menus that appear when you run over an item like to linger a bit too long, and they affect gameplay since you cannot see threats that are coming. Combine this with the design flaw of enemies getting stuck on the walls, being shot repeatedly in the head without dying and basic rudimentary physics that just decide to no longer apply.

 
"Now that's a paintball gun."

The game does allow for some co-op play, but it doesn't offer anything new or more rewarding to the whole experience. There is online play, deathmatch sorts of things, but insanely, the huge levels that are featured in the game are used to some degree in multiplayer matches, and that includes when only you and a couple other people are playing. No sort of adjustment, just you, one other person and miles (or so it feels like) of map. Ok, I'm fibbing a bit, there was no one else playing ... seriously, no one is playing online Damnation; it stinks.

And mercifully last, the game's audio is a complete train wreck. Sound effects cut out, voices don't match the gender; it's a nightmare of sound. Our hero's voice is trying to sound all Clint Eastwood tough, but in reality its laughable. Other characters seems to completely forget that they are running around a war zone with zero inflection in their voice. I know that if I had just dodged death 49 times, I would show some emotion.

Gameplay: 5.0
Moving around like some sort of spider monkey is the best part of the game, otherwise, the shooting is stiff, strafing is almost painful, the button configuration was developed by a chimpanzee on Ritalin.

Graphics: 4.0
Poor A.I., poor development of movement, everyone is kind of big and chunky looking - like one of my son's Rescue Heroes. Did I mention the framerate sometimes bombs out and stutters?

Sound: 3.8
Pretty poor quality control going on here. I suppose a man could sound like a woman screaming if he was shot, but vice versa?

Difficulty: Hard

Concept: 3.5
Another example of a good idea that was horribly, horribly mismanaged.

Multiplayer: 2.0
No one is playing this game online.

Overall: 3.0
Look, I haven't played a game like this in a long, long time. I am literally sad because it seemed like it could have at least been a solid shooter. But it fails on almost every level.