I have been looking forward to Hard to Be a God for maybe a year. So it is with a heavy heart and a heavy hand that I write these words. Hard to Be a God is hard to even like.

The story is decent, what you get to see of it, as it's based on a book by authors Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky, perhaps the most famous Russian Sci-Fi authors ever. Whether you have heard of them or not doesn't matter, you can learn more about them here.

Now, on to the travesty that has been made of their work, Hard to Be a God. The really sad thing about it all is that it took me less than 5 minutes of playing to realize there were some serious problems with this game. Don't let the first couple high scores fool you, in the end it's all downhill.

Graphics: 80%
It's a nice looking game. Really, they did a good job of making rich environments, interesting items and surroundings. Of course the graphics aren't amazing or surrealistic but they manage to convey the sense of the world. Though some things, like water, are awfully static and not what we would expect from a game these days. Of course a lot of the graphics are used to herd you into locations instead of actually engrossing you in the game world. A pity really.

Sound: 90%
The sound is equally good. Sure some of the voice acting is over the top and totally stereotypical, but it still fits. The environments are also aurally robust and really draw you into the game. Chickens cluck, wolves howl, crested crocodiles growl... They did a great job on this aspect of the game and should be applauded. The music meanwhile oscillates from 'battle' to calm and peaceful with little to no variation in between. It would have been nice if there had been more diversity in the musical field for the game.Of course when you get into a heated battle you tend to block out the music anyway.

Gameplay: 30%
POW! BLAM! Holy Ball-Dropping Batman! Where do I begin? How about the fact that when you walk down some stairs your character sort of floats down to the ground. If you run off the stairs you're basically running in mid-air like Wiley Coyote. Then you have the camera angle. It never quite gets close enough to be 100% comfortable and actually look around in a first-person view. Even at its closest to your character it's still at a strange angle that makes you sort of guess at things. Then, when the developers wanted you to follow a path, they really wanted you to follow a path. So much so that they built barriers around the paths so that you can ONLY take the path. No taking a quick shortcut through the woods in the game, not unless there's a quest that needs you to go into that area of woods which will then be impassable on all sides but the side you entered from. You might as well take away the ability to even control the character, put him on a conveyor belt and just have us hack away at enemies as we mosey on by.
There are all sorts of things like leveling up and choosing your skills and abilities as you go that I never really got into. The game just couldn't keep my attention and at times almost put me to sleep. Plus the lack of an autosave means if you forget to save and god-forbid, you should die? Go back to the last save point, which for me always seemed like 20-30 minutes of gameplay. Infuriating!

Cut Scenes/Video: 40%
Talk about poor acting and animations. The cut-scenes don't even leave the game engine. Ok so they don't leave the game engine, it's not such a bad thing and makes the transitions fairly seamless. But they're just not any use and this is where the voice acting really started to grate on my nerves. Plus the movement of the NPCs is haphazard and unrealistic with flailing arms and aimless wandering about. I mean if you're going to make some scene that players need to watch at least put some effort into making the characters in the scene believable and behave realistically. Don't have all the NPCs sort of wander zombie-like, unless of course they're zombies. Plus they sort of float, by that I mean when they walk they skim the ground instead of actually looking like they are on it.

Controls/Interface: 50%
Target lock? Whoever heard of such a thing! Just sort of point your camera in the direction of an enemy and let loose with the arrows, bludgeons, swords or whatever you've got at hand. You're sure to hit him sooner or later. The middle mouse button is mapped to a 'finishing blow' but fudgeall if you ever have time to use it. Just about the same goes with the special which is mapped to the right. It's more like twitch twitch, tap the left button again and again and again ad nauseam. Hell you might actually spend more time and gain more enjoyment out of reading the black and white manual that is supplied with the game. Then you can see all the cool features that you don't have time to see when you're playing the game. For example I found out. there's a bar and each time you kill the bar fills up and then you do double damage until the bar empties again. Sounds cool, sort of like a bloodlust, only you never have time to look at the bar and infrequently have multiple enemies enough to fill the bar and then take advantage of the benefit. The interface is fine but at times almost too small to the point where you miss things that are happening in it.

Summary: 58%
Man did these guys totally screw up what should have been a great game. At this very moment I'm actually fighting to keep my eyes open because it nearly bored me to sleep. I see no reason why any of you should invest time or money into this game. It's poorly made, the quality assurance was lacking and while the story might be great, you rarely get to actually see it in the game. As soon as I nab some screenshots this game is getting uninstalled and thrown into the 'won't even give away in a contest' pile that I have on a shelf near my feet. Yes, I really think it's that bad. The more time I put into the game the more I wondered why I wasn't getting a body wax or something equally fun and painful which would have been a better use of my time.

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