This actually feels like more of a design flaw rather than a considered gameplay mechanic, so there’s every chance Clear Sky will find this balancing issue resolved in an update. It’s hard to forgive a problem that’s not yet been solved, of course, and the difficulty level therefore suffers from an unevenness that’s something of an unwelcome and unexpected deviation from the uniform gameplay quality of the original.

I don’t proclaim to be an FPS expert – that’s for damn sure. But there was another anomaly that I can only chalk down to a design foible rather than my own rubbishness. The familiar Bandits, who can be found policing crossings and gateways and so forth, seem to be given a distinctly unfair advantage. Fair enough, you can blast your way through them, which I did more than once before discovering the issue. Let them approach you to try and negotiate your way through, and they’re simply given free rein to rob you of… well, everything, and leave you standing there an impotent and bare level one plebe.