26 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 2.2 hrs on record
Posted: 11 Oct, 2017 @ 5:07am

TL;DR: This game is basically a nice and at times aesthetic point'n'click if you GET YOURSELF TO ABSTRACT FROM THE SETTING AND IDEOLOGY IT TRIES TO PUT ON YOU.

The art and the animations felt somewhat shaggy, although certain (read - most) backgrounds have their charm. This is not really a problem, however, as art aesthetics is not the only thing that makes a game (I mean, just look at some of the ASCII roguelikes out there, not like they try to give you the best view possible, while still being remarkably good). I got used to it pretty quickly, even though sometimes I felt like playing a paper-scrap animation for the sole reason of character drawing techniques being just... different from each other and the background (sometimes they would blend in with the background, making things even worse).

The music is somewhat unremarkable, but it went well with the atmosphere, so I can't really complain.

Now, for the setting:
While I totally dig the hippie terminator joke, I do not see reason to actually give a "battle robot" whatever emotional responses since it obviously hinders its productivity and value.
Also, sentience and consciousness does not equal same said emotions, so yeah, basically robots turned out to be whiny humans. Pure logical sentience is achievable, unless you want to harshly discriminate against people suffering from psychopathic tendencies (you wan tell me dey no sentient, you whatever-ist???). All in all, the transhumanist point of view (which is nearly vital for cyberpunk) is completely missed.
Next thing we know, we encounter a "princess" or whatever telling us she wants to bring on some sorta socialist/communist tendencies (oh yeah, let's just take from the rich and give to the poor, I mean, I'm just a stupid uneducated princess so I totally do not know how badly it went down in history countless times before). That was the point in game which made me cringe so much I saved the game, pressed ALT+F4 and couldn't carry on since.

So far:
Well I could say I like the game, but it feels so unpolished in terms of narrative that I couldn't even count it off as satire or genre deconstruction. We have a serious gritty "badass guy" protagonist who got fired because he was "too good for them", and as we watch him do stuff, we don't really see exactly where all that cool comes from. Not even a hint. To put it simply, this strength of character usually renders a person a "pathetic wimp". I could go on about whatever other character I've encountered so far, but the point is already made enough for my liking. The only remotely fun character for me was the thief from the very beginning, and even they went down pretty quickly due to their humanlike down-to-earth reasoning. Oh, and also the junkie by the club, he was pretty neat.

P.S.:
I did not seem to encounter any bugs while playing the game (wait, or did I? Probably had something to do with unwieldy controls or the UI). I also wish the devs all the best and hope they account for whatever they deem or realize wrong was with this one when they're on to making a new one (encouragement!).
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1 Comments
jungle.james 22 Oct, 2017 @ 7:48am 
I also liked the junkie by the arcade but the reason I'd gone with reviewing the game positively is that someone felt the topics discussed were worth producing a point and click about it.

Yeah, it has a communist sentiment to it but it's a sort of imagining of as you said it, a deconstructionist account of modern day absurdities like DRM cigarettes.