CORPUS EDAX

I want to see the best in Corpus Edax, but it's difficult to recommend. I adore Thief, Deus Ex, and the recent revival of janky retro indie ImSims, but CE is just feels vastly underdeveloped in every aspect. It makes a perfunctory effort to include all the different elements of an archetypal ImSim - RPG skill mechanics, options for stealth, hacking, rhetoric, and nonlethal approaches to problem solving, large nonlinear environments - but doesn't stitch them together into a coherent whole. The result is a janky brawler with occasional Deus-Esque gestures when the developer remembers to include a computer to hack or a lock to pick or a speech check to pass. Sparse environments undermine both the combat - which depends on having a steady stream of bricks, shivs, and metal crates to beat up enemies with - and the exploration - which rewards you only with money (useless), skill books (useful but kind of undermine the player's build choices), or codes to storage units in the game's otherwise empty hub zone... which contain money or skill books. The combat is clearly the focus but even it doesn't feel great. Upgrading your combat skill rewards you with new combos, but (as far as I saw) outside the tutorial you can't specifically see what inputs trigger each combo, and the animations are so unreadable I couldn't even tell when I'd successfully done one. I mostly got through each encounter by just spamming random keys or kiting enemies to a cliff and power kicking them off one-by-one I can forgive a lot of jank, especially in an ImSim, *especially* in a solo dev project, but nearly every physical interaction with the world of Corpus Edax feels bad. Half the time I loaded a save, something would go wrong - doors would lock themselves, cutscenes would break, objects would persist between saves or vanish entirely, my character would be stuck in a pose or state they couldn't move from... it took me eight or nine tries to complete the game's final encounter, and not because the combat itself was difficult. I hate to recommend against something with the ambition of Corpus Edax, but other than the occasional high point of kicking a dude through a window, it just isn't very fun.

The best way I can describe Corpus Edax is missed potential strong enough to beat Goku. The game is conceptually very interesting, melee focused imsims that aren't stealth games aren't a thing you see very often, but this game's cons unfortunately much outweigh its pros. I'm just gonna list out the cons because goodness me this game: 1. My first critique is with the enemies you fight, they all fight the exact same way and use the exact same enemy AI, even the "bosses" are just the same repeat enemy but with bumped stats, it got tiring being spammed with the same enemy again and again with no variety after the first hour. 2. Enemy spam, dear god every level is just "here's 20 guys in one level, there is no solution other than fighting them or using this game's jank stealth system that can't even work correctly because these levels are mostly corridors without hiding spots." 3. The combat, ironically for a melee RPG, the melee combat feels sluggish and like the animations are straight up lying to you, the only times combat feels good is when you have a weapon in your hands, because your fists feel like you're having a pillow fight rather than punching them. It doesn't help that blocking also just reduces damage taken instead of stopping it, and the moves you use your power bar for feel inconsistent at best and useless at worst. Group combat using your fists feels nigh impossible because you will just get grouped, jumped, and immediately knocked out, without the damage output to actually thin enemy numbers. 4. WHY THE ♥♥♥♥ IS THERE WEAPON DURABILITY? I wouldn't mind weapon durability if weapons weren't so spread out and they didn't shatter like glass after a few swings, as prior mentioned your fists do like no damage but weapons won't work either because they break almost instantly, why is my iron pipe breaking almost instantly, and why can I watch a guy mine with an energy pickaxe for 10+ minutes without it breaking, but the moment I get one and hit someone with it a little, it instantly shatters. 5. This game isn't an imsim. I'm serious, most problems only have one solution and the game is incredibly linear. I actually had hope, because the first hour does give you problems with multiple solutions, but by the third mission from the resistance their will be one solution, violence, the RPG elements might as well not be here because if you aren't leveling strength and athletics you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ yourself for no reason, and before you say it, yes, this game obviously wants to be an imsim, it even has the imsim classic of box stacking in the tutorial, a mechanic you will literally not use again. 6. This game is buggy, couldn't go thirty minutes without something breaking, even almost had my save bricked because of a quest objective not triggering properly.

The combat mechanics are really, really fun. I just wish the rest of the mechanics were as thought out as that. The early levels are really interesting and well thought out, but as you reach the end game it feels as if the dev ran out of time or energy and it started becoming quite linear. It's a nice attempt at an immersive sim, but despite having a couple of really interesting systems to play with, it fumbles it in the end and ends up relying a bit too much on the combat. While I really enjoyed most of it, my only real negative is one point near the middle of the game where the game really REALLY wants you to demand sex in exchange for saving a woman's life, and it was SUPER uncomfortable. Specially since at one point harassing this woman was the only possible speech option, which makes it... weird. I don't even know why it's a thing but yeah. That's kinda the vibe with the story as well, it's sometimes really interesting, and then it kinda just drops it and says "ok whatever, awkward, let's move on" and that kinda shows in the end as well. So, yeah. It's worth it for the combat, but don't expect a super deep story/simulation. It's really fun, but limited.

I struggled through the bugs and awkward minigames to finish the Corpus Edax as an exercise in stubbornness, but in the end, the game just isn't very good. Credits are worthless but everywhere; combat in the game boils down to fighting the same 3 types of enemies the same 1 type of way, and the "hub" is an empty location you only spend about ~45 minutes in before you get railroaded into a series of very linear levels that culminate in the credits rolling. Combat, which the game features heavily as its primary way of interacting with the world, is not very interesting. The story goes nowhere and left me quite disappointed -- especially since the backstory and atmosphere of the world seems so incredibly interesting in the beginning. In fact, my thirst to know more about the world is what encouraged me to power through the awkward combat encounters and poor pacing. There are NPCs everywhere, but they only differ by what clothing they're wearing. No matter where you meet them, they'll utter the same handful of lines and seem oblivious to the fact that you murdered your way to their current location. Everything feels very much like the skeleton or foundation of a very much larger game that simply isn't present. I can't recommend it. I can only hope that something amazing spawns from the corpse of Corpus Edax in the future.

This game isn't necessarily "good" by a conventional metric. I could endlessly criticize its surface-level imitations of complex systems, its boring and poorly-told story... The “immersive sim” aspects largely fall flat when the game attempts to create a tangible world that you can interact with in engaging ways. But I don’t wanna talk about that. On a moment-to-moment basis, it succeeds. I love this game, I love how utterly awkward and hilarious it is! Just something about the absurd ragdoll physics, the unfitting, overly realistic animations (that look like they were ripped straight from Mixamo), the clunky-feeling combat. Every other fight unfolds like a bit from The Three Stooges. It’s so good. Enemies fall over each other, beat each other up, trip over random objects, kill themselves entirely without the player’s input. I haven’t laughed this hard at a game in a long, long time. You can buy canned beans in these vending machines, which are common in every map. So I ended up with about 20 cans in my inventory at some point. For a good portion of the late game, my main strategy was to drop all of my bean cans onto the floor and throw them at the enemies. They’d trip over once and then constantly stumble onto them over and over. I’d just sit back and keep throwing more cans. lmao. Corpeus Ex succeeds at allowing the player to approach each fight with their own absurd strategy; its emergent design shines when you ignore everything surrounding it. This game would have benefited from scaling down its scope and really focusing on the moment-to-moment combat. The rest is filler. Here are some of my favorite moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWOu_Ev6ELA

Just terrible. Controls are janky, combat is without feedback and barely works, stealth is non existant, enemies are overpowered, items are bland and boring, skill system is useless.

I enjoyed the game but when I bought it I was expecting from the demo that you had a chance to join the "evil" faction rather than be the average "I'm a rebel that will fight for the freedom" type of story. Combat is fun but saying it's a lifesim is saying that call of duty is a strategy game.

I WANT to give it a good review, I really do, but here's why I didn't: First off, the game is super janky, reloading saves can sometimes break the game, especially at the final bossfight. The combat system can be so easily exploited to the point where it becomes a joke and the entire game is a cake walk, just pick up any prop and use it to push enemies. Even better, get a corpse and do the same, that way the corpse never breaks, resulting in an infinite force field + weapon that can deal with any and all enemies. Even the bossfights can be cheesed this way. Second off, the story is mediocre at best. Very generic, very bland. Big corpo bad, revolution good, fight for the people. No nuances, no interesting characters, in fact, theres almost 0 character development in anything. At most, its a sandbox game where you get to mess around with the game system. Thirdly, the game is quite short. I finished it in 6 hours while exploring every single part and quest line. I've probably missed a few things, yes, but still, I spent at least 1 or 2 of those hours just looking around, not to mention the time spent figuring out what im even supposed to do. For the normal price tag 6 hours of gameplay is honestly not worth it, you can finish it in a day. It would be worth it if the game was THAT fun, but it honestly isnt. And lastly, it just isnt that fun. Take other games in the same genre, Peripeteia, Deus Ex, and many others, they have hours upon hours of gameplay. This game barely feels like a completed game, honestly. It feels like a long demo. I did play the demo in fact, when it first came out, I was excited about it since it seemed interesting, but since the demo, barely anything has changed. TL;DR Game has potential, but it falls extremely flat. Too short, janky, extremely exploitable with horrible writing/storyline. BUT, it has potential, there IS fun to be had. I bought it when it was on sale, for the sale price, its worth it, for the full price? Definitely not.

Fun physics based brawler with elements of Deus Ex's variety in approach.

The character can carry ??? cans of beans (I got to ~60 with no end in sight) but only 4 syringes. 10/10