You may notice that Overdos3 gives a lot of 2's and 3's from our 3 star scale. This is because we are average consumers whom are not given games to play for free, therefore we tend to buy games, DVDs and see movies that we are pretty sure we will like. It is a nice surprise, then, when a windfall trade in of older games from our parents house allows us to try out something we hope would be good, but would never buy with our hard earned cash in a million years.

With hope in my heart that the reviews were wrong, I bought a copy of Damnation.

They are not.

On paper Damnation could be a great game. It seeks to marry Gears of War style cover based third-person shooting with Tomb Raider's platforming. I am pretty sure a good game could have come out of the Damnation design document, but ham filled voice work, stiff control, some of the worst AI in recent memory and weak visuals drag this game down to the depths of hell.

While most of these aspects can be chalked up to a low budget, the art failing is probably the area that is saddest to me because the cool steampunk syle art is completely lost in the low resolution mess that ended up on the screen.

The control works, but never feels fluid or natural, and the button placement is more than a bit awkward. To make matters worse the control gets complicated by the developers seeming to be 100% unwilling to use context sensitivity to stream line their control scheme. Add into this movement which allows for very little finesse, and you will find yourself constantly thinking about the controller and button placement rather than just having fun and playing the game

You could criticize the story of  Damnation, but any shooter can get by with a weak story if the voice acting is bombastic yet believable enough to enjoy. The voice work in Damnation sounds like it is sample tracks created by the developers and then left in the game once the budget had dried to a point past being able to hire professional voice actors.

What makes Damnation even that much more frustrating is that the path finding can be so broken. There are times where the game is pretty clear about where you need to go, but then others where indicators of your destination are sparse or simply not there. This adds an element of frustration that is the final straw which earns this game it's 1 star.

I might have never bought Damnation if it wasn't for a pile of NES accessories and games from my parents house, but after playing it I almost feel like I would have been better holding onto a junk heap rather than taking this waste of a few hours home with me.

1/3 stars