![]() Opacity in games can be a magical thing but, more so than any other style of design, the refusal to elucidate and handhold absolutely demands that the underlying systems function properly. A bug had diverted me from the main quest by sending me on a wild chase for an object already in my possession, then, once resolved, another bug completely blocked any possibility of progress. As I removed the surrounding clutter, it became obvious that the item wouldn’t respond to the cursor, even after multiple reloads. After an eternity of aimless wandering, revelation struck unexpectedly: in a corner of a buggy inventory I unearthed the code wheel I needed to progress, buried under a combat knife and some laser-gun charges which overlapped on the same slot. If I scoured the length and breadth of the city wasn’t I bound to stumble on that elusive quest thread? But a ludicrously zoomed-out map that refuses to pinpoint your exact location sabotages any attempts to search Calitana’s mind-numbing maze. Why spend points on Burglary when you can just bash your way in? Why invest on Hacking when you’re either straight-up given the codes to operate a terminal or blocked from accessing it, whatever your level of ability? The absurdity was exacerbated by the game’s insistence on recognising only maxed-out scores: for my first build, I had spent one-third of my available points on the relevant social skill, yet I never once passed a basic communications check to pump the locals for rumours. ![]() But the promise of complexity was consistently betrayed by a set of abilities that the game would trivialise so regularly as to render your choices moot. This felt not like a fully fleshed futuristic dystopia but more like a glitch in the matrix, the same assets (visual, linguistic, aural) used over and over again, ad nauseam. Attempts at conversation with the local residents produced the same set of mistrustful responses. But soon every building started looking the same, and the haunting main tune would grate after its umpteenth repetition. I tried ogling the sights and immersing myself in the mood. But Calitana is a tedious labyrinth crowded by countless clones of the same handful of generic NPCs, a place where nothing of note ever happens unless you count looting unguarded crates or picking fights with families of rodents, an environment so utterly devoid of even the most rudimentary snippets of narrative that it registers almost like a parody of a modern open-world game. I didn’t know where to turn to next (certainly not YouTube where, a month after its release, not a single full-playthrough video has been uploaded). I’d been following the game’s cryptic hints as closely as I could, but found myself lacking the items necessary to progress, or even a clue on how to procure them. Then, suddenly but not at all surprisingly given Mechajammer’s rickety state, I lost track of the main quest. I was getting a feel for the city and even discovered a black market where I could purchase survival essentials. I had dispatched some high-ranked lowlifes and was establishing a network of contacts. The previously scattered squad had reunited and set up a base of operations. So much for open-endedness.įor my third effort, I went with a combat-focused build and things were progressing smoothly – for a while. Ditto my second attempt, after recognising that my stealth-oriented character couldn’t hope to survive the hazards of Calitana. Only my first playthrough was cut short by a series of persistent bugs in the game’s saving system that, along with a downright antagonistic interface, left me uncertain as to where I was, what I was supposed to be doing, and whether I’d lost something essential along the way. This was a world I couldn’t wait to dive into. Kevin Balke’s John Carpenter-like synths add to the overall atmosphere. Preliminaries done, you step out into the gorgeously dreary urban sprawl, a futuristic hellscape of sickly lamplight greens, rotting-plank browns, and the blazing remnants from the latest outbreak of random street violence. Now you have to help the castaways survive the marauding gangs and rabid wildlife as they organise their escape from Calitana.Īn arresting opening is promptly followed by a satisfyingly complex character creation system whose range of upgradeable skills hints at depth and open-endedness. ![]() That was the plan for your makeshift squad until fate intervened, and the vessel transporting them crash-landed into the outskirts of a crumbling city run by crime syndicates. The studio’s adept at delivering engrossing fish-out-of-water narratives, and Mechajammer’s premise is no different: in the distant future, the unemployed and insubordinate are forcibly enlisted to fight Earth’s endless wars against its colonies.
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