20.6 hours played
Written 1 month and 5 days ago
Sadly, a bit of a cautious recommendation.
As somebody who really enjoyed the first game, Into the HIVE! starts off strong. A mix of the same old characters you've come to enjoy and love, in a new conspiracy ripe with twists, turns and interesting new animals to meet. If you've played Zipp's Café, it sets up the scene for this game, and The Wild Gentlemen continue it well.
The addition of a splash of colour in this noir world is a welcome surprise. The voice acting is excellent, and the lines while cliché are very appropiate for the setting. Into the HIVE! introduces quite a few new characters, a lot of which have interesting personalities and stories. You can tell a lot of care was put into creating the game.
Unfortunately, and this seems to not be an unpopular opinion, the game falls off hard after the end of the third chapter. Many of the story beats that have been set up suddenly make place for a rocky ride towards an ending that I felt was very out of place and left us with more questions than answers. I felt unsatisfied as suddenly most of what we were working towards is swept under the carpet and left unaddressed.
It feels rushed, and the lack of polish especially towards the end of the game contributes to that. I ran into quite some spelling mistakes, differences between the voice lines and the written text, and some voice lines missing entirely.
If you enjoyed the first game, Paint it RED!, and want more Chicken Police in your life, I would not hesitate to pick it up. The first part of the game was very enjoyable, enough so to forgive the lackluster final stretch.