I knew just by looking at this set up that he would rush towards the cover south of him, set up camp, and just wait for me to march right into a firing squad of death. But even worse than that was the fact that he also had a camper's dream just south of him. As can be seen above, my opponent's starting location put him in a virtually unassailable corner. Upon seeing this set-up, I knew I was screwed.
This is also a "dark" game, meaning that after the initial set-up, we can't see each other's units without LoS. Here's the set-up:Īs usual, I'm green and my opponent is red, and we each have two machine gunners, one grenadier, and one shotgunner. Take, for example, the following multiplayer game where I pulled off a win without losing a single man. I mean, short of revisiting the original DX - something I just have no interest in doing - what other cyberpunk games do we have?īesides, who needs an excuse to play FS! The game is fantastic above and beyond any cyberpunkery connections it might have. What a surprise, right? Don't blame me, blame the dearth (but soon to be flood) of cyberpunk-related gaming. Speaking of cyberpunk gaming, I have been spending some time in Mode 7's excellent Frozen Synapse. Isn't it remarkable what a good game can do? How it can fire the imagination and send you off on an intellectual journey that you never expected? That's why I'll always be a gamer. (Remind me to revisit the strangely alluring Ghost in the Shell anime.)Īnyway, those are just some ruminations I had as I begin to dive deeper into a sub-genre I never paid much attention to. I tell ya, after living on the thin gruel of what passes for sci-fi these days, tasting a rich cyberpunk stew can be heady stuff! Exciting, even. I am discovering that cyberpunk seems to be immune from this corruption and manages to successfully harken back to the sci-fi of old when the genre was as concerned with societal commentary and detailed technological prognostication as it was with telling a good story. If you look at such prominent 'sci-fi' as Star Wars and Avatar, you realize that you are really looking at a genre that is now populated by far more fantasy tropisms than it is by the dreamy-eyed Cassandras who once made up the heart and soul of science fiction. I say "used to" because a lot of science fiction does not do this anymore, at least not beyond the trite predictions of "robo.", pardon me, "droids" and "space travel" (and really, are those even predictions anymore?). Speaking about "magnificently broken societies", cyberpunk also does something that science fiction in general used to be known for: it tries to anticipate the future.
There is far more Sam Spade in a good cyberpunk tale than there is Cmdr. Cyberpunk is heavily driven by character and vibe, and by creating believably flawed anti or reluctant heroes who need to survive in a magnificently broken society. What I am finding so fascinating about cyberpunk is that, at its heart, it has more in common with The Maltese Falcon than it does with Battlestar Galactica. I think cyberpunk is so thinly represented for the same reason that quality sci-fi in general is under-represented in mainstream culture: you can't just slop it together with CGI or wring it out of a ridiculous after school plot line. Perhaps Jack Womack was correct, maybe 'cyberpunk' never existed as an actual sub-genre, but merely as a marketable idea inside the heads of lazy lit journalists? Could be.īut I don't think it's that. Cyberpunk is a strange genre in that is seems to have legions of fans, but is thinly represented in literature, movies and gaming (gaming - how ironic). Lately, I've been taken a liking to the cyberpunk genre in general. I think my excitement for DXHR extends beyond the game, though. It certainly sounds likes a great game, and I hope DXHR can fill its shoes (PC Gamer's review would indicate a big yes on that ). I never played the original DX - my head was too buried in wargaming at the time to pay attention to a sci-fi shooter - but after reading a bunch of DXHR-inspired articles about what made it so great, I can see it's enduring popularity.
I confess to being more excited than I thought I would be. After four years of development, and countless video teases, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is almost out the door. You know what I'm talking about: probably the biggest game launch of the year.
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