Conclusion
Time to sum up the game and I’d like to say that Aurora Watching is flawed in places but worth buying if you’re a fan of the stealth genre, but I can’t. There’s just too much wrong here to make it a worthy purchase by even those who light their cigars with £20 notes. The AI is unbalanced, the central characters move way too slowly, the pacing of the game is off by a mile, the cut scenes are poor (with a strange fascination on characters stubbing out cigarettes!), the weapons balancing is poor, the aiming system leaves you totally exposed and dying and just about everything you need to be in place for a half decent stealth game is either not here or in place and skewed in some way.
I haven’t even mentioned the inventory system that prevents you from quickly switching to a decent weapon when your favourite runs out of ammo, or the top down view that serves bugger all purpose except to confuse the hell out of you when you accidentally hit the space bar. I haven’t mentioned the later levels where the story turns from being a Tom Clancy-esque plot to standard zombie-cyborg stuff or the totally arcadey mini-games where the camera view and draw distance both conspire to keep you re-loading the level until you finally blunder to the finish… I haven’t mentioned any of those as to be honest there’s enough been said already to make it obvious that Aurora Watching is less enjoyable than it should be.
Pros
Erm…
Cons
AI hearing stupidly selective
AI hawk-like vision
Aiming system forces you to take damage
Weapons wholly unbalanced
Unoriginal storyline
Frustrating game mechanics
Less fun than hypothermia.
