The game is being compared to Chronicles of Riddick. For good reason, MachineGames was born from Starbreeze who were the developers of the Riddick games.
Consider the games that MachineGames has released to this point, I listed them here with their MetaCritic Scores:
Exclusive Series X to win. My god is this ugly Could swap the logo and re-use it as an Austin Powers limited edition console.
d-pad.life
Their output has been in decline; this game will live on the Indiana Jones IP, because it still has cachet. So, despite it being pretty, which was never a question for MachineGames, they do well with that technical aspect of development, look at the actual game mechanics.
This game appears to be a mix of Wolfenstein stealth mechanics with more melee a la Riddick games and exploration (which to be fair Wolfenstein has a bit of as it is not wholly a corridor shooter). Combine that with the argument MachineGames has used for Wolfenstein on how you are able to take out NAZI's in close quarters in stealth mode to this game and they state, it is because NAZI"s are dumb. Does that work for you as an explanation? How dumb can the AI be, before you start to mock it as you play it and it turns into a boring drag?
As for the puzzles being easy, that is definitely a "Modern Audience" need. I remember Naughty Dog (forget if it was in the UC2 or UC3 devlogs) discussing how to thread the needle on how to make climbing spaces and puzzles approachable in the way Apple makes their iPhone user interfaces approachable, but not blurt out the hints right out of the bat. That should be tuned in this game from telling you nothing to you asking for more help if you need, as for the mechanics of a puzzle, I don't know, hire someone who is really good at making tavern puzzles boxes with a level modeler to make them more challenging. Looking at Uncharted, none of those puzzles were very difficult, unless there was some object hidden in the environment that you overlooked. Since this is vidya and not real life, you cannot actually interact with every item in the environment, so the designers do have to prioritize items that can be affected by the player character. I want to point out there are people new to Valves Half-Life 2 who need coaching on the physics puzzles, I know this because I helped someone through it way back on GameFAQs in the forums as they were playing it. That was over 15 years ago.
That does point to two things. A lack of talent or a concerted effort to make the lowest common denominator feel smart or at least accomplish the task to move on to the next area. We have video proof that they finally are making an Indiana Jones game for the Modern Audience. So what does that tell you?
Will this game have staying power? Probably not, no one is talking about Wolfenstein II: New Colossus or Wolfenstein: Youngblood in the way people talk about Wolfenstein: New Order and Old Blood. Even then, it is in the niche FPS enthusiasts who are able to compare and contrast the fast action, balls ahead battle mechanics vs. the forced stealth and punishing waves of enemies if you do not go about an area as the Developers wanted. This is pretty much how New Colossus is to be played, so much that even Jeff Gertsmann suggested you just put it on easy and play it that way when they were talking about it on the GiantBombcast. He was speaking to Joe Q. Public with that advice as you can go on youtube and watch people play that game on the highest difficulty and complete it, however, the balance was lost vs. was was introduced in New Order. You could choose stealth over action based on how you wanted to play, but in New Collossus, if you attempted to use the tools offered BJ Blaskowitz in any given area, you would be punished for not playing it the same way, sneak around, take out the officers who have the alarm and then either exit or mop up the limited troops who were not able to bring in waves of their friends while your ammunition stores rapidly deplete. Repeat for the entirety of the game.
I bring this up because giving Indiana a bunch of weapons to choose from, including NAZI wunderwaffen to dual wield would be directly contradictory to how Indiana Jones fights. He has his fists, his whip and a .38 Revolver with 6 rounds of ammunition.
So, what else would you do to make the game more interesting? Mystery, physical puzzles, mind twisters?
I still want to see how close my scoring comes to what the actual scoring from both reviewers and users on this game say, in a year or at least once Playstation gets their version.
