...what?
...
...Oh. Right. Forgot about Doom. Uh...anyway, now I have Sith lightning. On Mars.
Isn't life absolutely grand?
Also, because this is set on Mars, we can do the "Mars in Fiction" Drinking Game. As I give an overview of the plot, take a shot every time you can point out a cliche.
You step into the shoes of Zachariah, a young man of questionable skin tone and hair cut, who is destined to become a Technomancer. Technomancers, which are totally not Jedi, are apparently a psuedo-peacekeeping brotherhood (again, totally not Jedi) on Mars. Mars itself was settled by various corporations that all battle one another for control using tactics that would give Vampire: The Masquerade players the squeest of squeefits, and they battle over a single substance - water.
...okay, you guys seem good and schnockered, so let's get into the gameplay. You have three distinct styles of combat: melee and shield for your bruiser, melee and gun for the sneaky type, and staff for those who want to take the whole space wizard thing far, far too literally. Combat is actually pretty involving and even to a degree enjoyable. The problem I have with it is that it's honestly trying to do too much. It's good to branch out and try different things, but it feels a little bizarre to have so many options when you're only really going to choose one style and then have that carry you through the rest of the game.
And then you have your Technomancer powers. You have the electrical powers. Enjoy them. They are fun...at least until you run into enemies who have electrical resistance. Nice job, morons.
Also, while the combat can be fun, and does take more than a few pages from the Batman: Arkham Asylum school of combat, it unfortunately forgot to read up on the nice part about how to dodge with any fluidity. Zachariah, with the press of a button, will go spinning through the air like a prima ballerina, dodging whichever way you point him. Which, again, goes to show that even being a magical space wizard means you still are worse at combat than Batman.
The difficulty is really weird and seems to spike at bizarre moments. For example, early on I had to get through a door to speak to a local crime boss in the slums. Choosing the badass approach of killing the men and then kicking the door in, I did...and got my ass handed to me. During my second attempt I tried the far more cowardly approach of hitting them and then running back...only to find my enemies weren't pursuing me beyond a certain point and when I returned, they ignored me and I could go in to see the Boss as though I had defeated them. Yet another time, I went up against a group of at least twice that many and had no problem at all.
And I did not adjust the difficulty in any way during this whole time.
I've seen some reviews that praise the environments, but I really can't agree. They look nice enough, and I'm not going to get onto the fact that things on Mars look rather red and brown and dull-looking, but it is notable when it takes a page from the books of several other sci-fi series, going for a very Total Recall meets Blade Runner meets Firefly sort of look to things. Again, not bad, just...not anything particularly unique.
Which brings me to the crafting. Don't really see a need for it, nor for a resource system. Maybe I'm just still a bit peeved at Fallout 4 for trying to drive me completely insane from a lack of adhesives.
The game also touts a karma system. After defeating enemies in combat, you don't actually kill them due to some Technomancer vow of protecting the sanctity of human life or something like that. However, Zachariah can net Serum - the form of currency on Mars - with every person that he does kill, which can be done with a button press after you've beaten them with a stick, beaten them with a mace, or stabbed them and riddled them with bullet holes. And that's not even getting into those that suffer from extreme electrocution.
I sympathize with them as I look at the minimap interface, which does very little to differentiate markers for where you're supposed to go. I'd almost rather have no markers than all than a bunch of identical ones that point off in different directions. And yes, some of them point to different entrances to a same section, but that does all of jack and squat to help me out. Skyrim did this far better, giving you one and letting you follow it for quest objectives.
This game also has dialogue trees and the like that we're supposed to be invested in, but there's really no real reason to do so apart from answering the lingering questions of "What the hell is going on?" and "Why do I care?". Granted, this is common, but it could flow a little bit better in the narrative rather than me having to hunt down answers. It wants to be like Bioware, which branching dialogue options and but didn't bother to set up the investment I would have had in one of those games.
Again, I stress that this isn't bad. It's okay, but it feels rather somewhat unfinished. If the interface were cleared up a bit and the combat made to steal a few more pages from Batman, it would be rather solid. It doesn't have much going for it in the uniqueness department, alas, which does hurt it, but I won't really call it bad.
The Technomancer is not available from Home Focus Interactive and Spiders for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.
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