It attempts to heighten the stakes through unusual design choices, which unfortunately do not convert into a pleasurable experience.
The short introduction tells you nothing about what is happening. One moment you see a robot lying on the floor and an obviously irate man activating some harmful files, and the next you are controlling that robot, designated CF5. Later, you discover that you are in a facility infected with a virus that has rendered robots dangerous. It is now up to you to fix this.
The gameplay is similar to an action shooter and is extremely straightforward, with no complex moves. Your primary focus will be on movement and shooting. Although this makes the game perfect for a gamepad, I preferred to play using a keyboard and mouse. It simply felt easier to aim.
Shooting all over the place is not advisable. The first reason is that firing too many bullets in a succession may overheat your gun, forcing you to wait before using it again. This might be a major issue when you are surrounded by enemies. The second and more crucial point is that you can carry a limited amount of ammunition.
If you run out, you are already dead because you have no other way of attacking. Ammo may drop from enemies and crates, but it is extremely rare. Your only hope is to find terminals where you can buy ammunition, which requires enemy cells. You get one ammunition per cell, although foes often drop more than one cell. One unusual design choice is that you can only buy one bullet at a time and not fill up your entire ammo storage. If you’re at zero, this can take quite a while.
Enemies are many types of robots. As you make progress through the facility, you will face several sorts. Most take many bullets to knock down, and there are even larger ones that are bothersome bullet sponges. Frontal attacks against these guys are frequently fruitless because you will run out of ammunition before they drop.
The best approach to defeat some opponents is by stealth. All you have to do is approach from the back and deactivate them. But stealth is not great. The first issue is that there are no visual cues to indicate whether an enemy sees you. There are far too many occasions in which you are "hidden" at first, just to catch everyone's attention when you take a step forward. You can’t extend your view beyond what you see on the screen, so there are surprises because you simply don’t know what’s in front of you.
The second issue is that explosive spiders appear unexpectedly near you. This happens at random and ruins your stealth or prevents you from retreating. Nothing is worse than rushing back with low health and having one of these spawn on top of you. Although they do harm other robots, it is a meager comfort.
Because enemies love to pursue you, the only way to escape and make them forget about you is to take the elevator or go somewhere they can not reach you. Elevators, in particular, are very useful since enemies will stop before them and become an easy target.
Death occurs frequently and is painful because you lose half of your cells. You can recover them by returning to the point of your death, but this does not help much when you have to deal with all of the opponents that respawn. The only good news is that healing items are plentiful and may be found in the ever-present crates.
Although you do not have to worry about saving because the game automatically saves when you reach a checkpoint, this does not help much. The worst thing is that respawn does not refill your ammo. If you save in a perilous spot with minimal ammo, you can easily lose a large number of cells trying to get away. Of course, it is easy to get them back. And to be fair, losing them is not that big of a deal because you only use them to buy ammo.
If that is not challenging enough, you also have to worry about the robot's battery. It depletes even while walking, and a larger portion is taken away when you conduct more energy-demanding activities such as sprinting. If you run out of juice, you die immediately. One move is to deliberately die right after a save point to respawn with full energy, but you will have to deal with respawned enemies.
The energy mechanic is quite divisive because you are forced to explore at normal pace and avoid dodging. The game tries to rectify this using batteries found in crates. You only need to shatter them by walking over them, and the battery will be grabbed automatically. These crates are the same ones that occasionally carry ammo and health, but you may not discover any when you need it most.
When combined with the shooting mechanic, you have restricted options. For example, you cannot run for a stealth strike because running wastes energy. Then you can not run away because you will die of weariness. When you run out of ammunition, your only alternative is to stand there and be killed by an enemy. You can run and try to find crates, but ammo drop depends on chance.
The game is divided into sections. Sometimes you are offered to go back to the previous one, but there’s no point. The goal in each section is to push through enemies and often linear path to reach a boss. Despite the absence of a map, the stages are pretty fine and manageable even when you have to find something. Annoyingly, all stages are very dark.
Most of the bosses are larger and more powerful robots that do not require any unique strategy. You simply shoot until they die. Only a few bosses have a technique for defeating them, such as the robot that only reveals its weak area after you destroy three holograms.
They are not particularly difficult, but the ammo mechanic ruins them. If you miss too many shots or do not bring enough ammunition, you will not be able to defeat it. Also, because bosses' strikes require a lot of dodging, you can quickly run out of energy. The rare crates in the boss arena can solve that, but if you run out of resources, you can simply stand there and die.
The first impression is not great, but as is typically the case with these games, you obtain a few of upgrades that marginally improve the experience. These are obtained from defeated bosses or along the path. So, for example, you can reduce energy consumption or temporarily transform into an extremely fast robot that does not require energy. However, this does not boost the overall fun factor unless you are tenacious enough to struggle through the game's design choices.
Sadly, the developer ruined all the fun towards the game with a bad stunt. The recent event promises 50$ gift card to the first 50 people who complete the challenge. This appears like a cheap attempt to lure people to buy the game, which isn't worth the price.
I decided to take part in their challenge with the review copy I received from the developer. After posting the visible achievement and my Steam name on their discord, I received no reply or message.
But later that day, when another member posted a screenshot that doesn't even lead to its own Steam account, they immediately receive the prize from the developer. When confronted, the "winner" said they have two Steam accounts because quote: "this is us account linked, i just have another one in different region to buy games cheaper".
I'm sure the developer will try to pull some excuse related to the image I took, but it's all irrelevant because they reacted to the image and didn't comment anything about it being wrong or invalid. A shame that someone would spend so much effort on a game and then destroy all chances.
This same message has been posted in game discussion with images.
