This is just not good. And I don't get it. On one hand it tries really hard to be a remaster, despite having to do some insane effort trying to replicate everything inside of Unity... on the other, because it tries to stick so close to the original, everything that it gets wrong is just sticking out so much more and it fails to replicate many elements correctly.

What we end up with is a game in this tragic state, where on one hand you get all of the problems of original game - the wobbly per vertex animations, the less than stellar shooting mechanics and damage model (which was improved, by not by much), the junky Quake 2 AI feel. But on the other hand you also get the game where none of the things that Unity is good at are allowed to shine and at the same time all of the common pitfalls of Unity (like non-interpolated movement for the camera or other characters) are still present. Essentially - everything is wrong. Some things are just a tiny bit off - just enough so, that you notice - like the AI that seems to now run way too much and not want fight a lot most of the times or how the cutscene play out. Others are massively off - like pretty much everything related to sound balancing or conversation system that now seem to trigger everyone nearby to a point, where it's pretty much impossible to hear what NPCs say to you, when there is more than one of them.... or ambient sounds and music missing due to different approach to sound... or light flares (not lens flares!) being way too big... or movement itself that now clearly uses a capsule collider making precise platforming so much harder than it was (especially when combined with low frequency at which it updates).

And I truly believe, this game would be better off, if it threw the entire idea of remaster out of the window and tried to be more of a remake that tries to hit the key points of the original but no longer worries about sticking to close to original and actually tries to modernize the gameplay. This would also lean better into Unity's strengths of its material systems, shaders and lighting - which as it stands, seems to only look diffuse textures and prebaked, low resolution shadow maps.

As it stands now - there is a very long and difficult road ahead for the developers, if they and the publishers are hoping to get this to a point, where this is at least "a worthy alternative to the original". For now this definitely can not get my recommendation. And it sucks, cause that's 2 remasters in a row that I am disappointed with. Turok 3 done by Nightdive presented a significantly higher quality, but was extremely light on concent and terribly overpriced. This? This at least has a significantly more reasonable price as of now (which is 25% off = 69 PLN), when you consider the amount of content Kingpin has, but due to poor quality it just can not get my recommendation either. And for people who want to experience Kingpin - there is no doubt - play the original! This needs so much more work! So much, that I don't hold my hope that it will ever be fixed. It is comparable I guess to initial release of XIII (remake) and that required moving the entire project to a new developer and over a year of reworks to get it to a good state.

-- EDIT --
Light flares have been significantly improved in patch 1.0.2.

This is just not good. And I don't get it. On one hand it tries really hard to be a remaster, despite having to do some insane effort trying to replicate everything inside of Unity... on the other, because it tries to stick so close to the original, everything that it gets wrong is just sticking out so much more and it fails to replicate many elements correctly. What we end up with is a game in this tragic state, where on one hand you get all of the problems of original game - the wobbly per vertex animations, the less than stellar shooting mechanics and damage model (which was improved, by not by much), the junky Quake 2 AI feel. But on the other hand you also get the game where none of the things that Unity is good at are allowed to shine and at the same time all of the common pitfalls of Unity (like non-interpolated movement for the camera or other characters) are still present. Essentially - everything is wrong. Some things are just a tiny bit off - just enough so, that you notice - like the AI that seems to now run way too much and not want fight a lot most of the times or how the cutscene play out. Others are massively off - like pretty much everything related to sound balancing or conversation system that now seem to trigger everyone nearby to a point, where it's pretty much impossible to hear what NPCs say to you, when there is more than one of them.... or ambient sounds and music missing due to different approach to sound... [strike]or light flares (not lens flares!) being way too big[/strike]... or movement itself that now clearly uses a capsule collider making precise platforming so much harder than it was (especially when combined with low frequency at which it updates). And I truly believe, this game would be better off, if it threw the entire idea of remaster out of the window and tried to be more of a remake that tries to hit the key points of the original but no longer worries about sticking to close to original and actually tries to modernize the gameplay. This would also lean better into Unity's strengths of its material systems, shaders and lighting - which as it stands, seems to only look diffuse textures and prebaked, low resolution shadow maps. As it stands now - there is a very long and difficult road ahead for the developers, if they and the publishers are hoping to get this to a point, where this is at least "a worthy alternative to the original". For now this definitely can not get my recommendation. And it sucks, cause that's 2 remasters in a row that I am disappointed with. Turok 3 done by Nightdive presented a significantly higher quality, but was extremely light on concent and terribly overpriced. This? This at least has a significantly more reasonable price as of now (which is 25% off = 69 PLN), when you consider the amount of content Kingpin has, but due to poor quality it just can not get my recommendation either. And for people who want to experience Kingpin - there is no doubt - play the original! This needs so much more work! So much, that I don't hold my hope that it will ever be fixed. It is comparable I guess to initial release of XIII (remake) and that required moving the entire project to a new developer and over a year of reworks to get it to a good state. -- EDIT -- Light flares have been significantly improved in patch 1.0.2.