Rest in peace.
-
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KickStarter Dex - a 2D Cyberpunk Sidescrolling RPG
- Thread starter StaticSpine
- Start date
CyberWhale
Arcane
Wait, what? How old was he? 24? 
almondblight
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2004
- Messages
- 2,623
It's clear when you play Dex that it's a game that a lot of passion has been put into; it's also clear that the developers wanted to do much more (separating stealth into visual and audio like in the early releases, a faction system for gangs that was mentioned in one of the updates). It's always sad to lose someone with that kind of drive.
Woah, what sad news 
That is truly unfortunate to hear.
Yes, that is horrible. So young!
And that game was already good on its own and a great promise of what the team could do with more funding.
If they can still do so after losing one of the most valuable team members...
And that game was already good on its own and a great promise of what the team could do with more funding.
If they can still do so after losing one of the most valuable team members...
circ
Arcane
The controls in this motherfucker GODDAMN. I know it wasn't perfect in the old days either, say 80s or 90s, but atleast they TRIED. This is just retarded.
circ
Arcane
Aaanyway, now having almost completed the gamu: Controls are crap, that along with the really poor platforming parts and total lack of precision count for pretty much all of my deaths. And it's not like you can't do that with platformers, even indie ones these days - plenty of platformers that have done it better. And I'm not sure who's calling it an RPG because it isn't one. Unless you consider everything where you can upgrade your damage and gain new skills an RPG. It does have a bunch of dialogue choices and thus different outcomes for quests - nothing major though, just more/or less money or xp. The outcomes aren't all that different though and not different enough for repeat playthroughs.
Graphics vary between crap and passable. The 2D pixel art is ok, backgrounds are better, but about half the animations could have used more work. Voice work is good enough for an indie title and they seem to have atleast used semi-professional recording or mixing atleast.
That said, story's alright, and even with the laughable platforming and combat - especially its idea of gunplay (that's crappy and pretty much the same no matter what weapon you use), it would have been ok but holy shit is the hacking minigame(s) especially shit. If I were to compare it to other 2D games with hacking (not necessarily with platforming), the old Neuromancer game, 2400ad (not sure that had hacking), it's just so bad. A better idea would have been to just have hacking be automatic without the silly arena combat. Even something like Shadowrun remake has better hacking. And hacking is a good 25% of the game or thereabouts.
At its current price point of about 20 bucks, I'd say wait for it to drop to $10 or instead pick up a far superior game - Beneath a Steel Sky. Kinda similar too.
Graphics vary between crap and passable. The 2D pixel art is ok, backgrounds are better, but about half the animations could have used more work. Voice work is good enough for an indie title and they seem to have atleast used semi-professional recording or mixing atleast.
That said, story's alright, and even with the laughable platforming and combat - especially its idea of gunplay (that's crappy and pretty much the same no matter what weapon you use), it would have been ok but holy shit is the hacking minigame(s) especially shit. If I were to compare it to other 2D games with hacking (not necessarily with platforming), the old Neuromancer game, 2400ad (not sure that had hacking), it's just so bad. A better idea would have been to just have hacking be automatic without the silly arena combat. Even something like Shadowrun remake has better hacking. And hacking is a good 25% of the game or thereabouts.
At its current price point of about 20 bucks, I'd say wait for it to drop to $10 or instead pick up a far superior game - Beneath a Steel Sky. Kinda similar too.
It's just a shame that the guy who created it died.
For a first game it was promising.
For a first game it was promising.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 36,682
Despite being compared to DX:HR, Dex is actually more like a 2D Bloodlines in that it's carried almost entirely by the setting. Whether melee, ranged, or hacking, all the core gameplay is junk (a far cry from the design elegance of Iji, a fantastic 2D game with a bit of role playing). The plot's not much to speak about and the writing's too wordy for its own good, especially for a fully-voiced game. Voice acting's a mixed-bag, but some of the stronger performances are brought down by the long-winded exposition dumps.
Miscellaneous things that annoyed me:
Even though I had a lot of problems with it and have no intention of going through it again, I think GOG should reconsider their rejection (at least when the developers can no longer sucker people into paying $20 for it). It's not outright shovelware (though it's certainly Eurotrash), and CD Projekt is no stranger to selling janky RPGs on their service (e.g. all the Witcher games, Inquisitor).
Dreadlock's next piece of Eurotrash is some ghost VR nonsense, so "Yeah, RIP."
Miscellaneous things that annoyed me:
- Infuriating how your focus only regenerates to 25, it meant constant backtracking to a refill station in some spots because losing time is still better than losing money (in the form of limited-use programs)
- The quest log would occasionally mess up and give me the wrong entry
- The part in the GSV-2 mission where you have to hack a computer then kill some guys four times kept brickwalling me; I found out through the internet that one can fix it by saving then loading that save after you kill the guys.
- Obnoxious "trial" padding in the final area where you briefly have to control people who aren't you. Hated it in kotor 2, hated it in Witcher 2, hate it here.
- Also a really lame health sponge final boss that you have to beat through circle-strafe-shooting-for-several-minutes. Yes, really.
- It uses the Unity default of saving directly to the registry instead of a folder - what the hell?
Even though I had a lot of problems with it and have no intention of going through it again, I think GOG should reconsider their rejection (at least when the developers can no longer sucker people into paying $20 for it). It's not outright shovelware (though it's certainly Eurotrash), and CD Projekt is no stranger to selling janky RPGs on their service (e.g. all the Witcher games, Inquisitor).
Dreadlock's next piece of Eurotrash is some ghost VR nonsense, so "Yeah, RIP."
Currently 75% off on Steam. Will have to go for it.
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
I finally got it, once it hit a nice sale on Steam. It's not bad, though I'm fairly early in the game yet. The setting and atmosphere are fantastic. Love the little bits like the whore playing with the hem of her miniskirt or a rat running from a dumpster. Question to those who have played it more - is it worth it moving from melee to guns if I've already invested 3 skill points into melee? I fucking suck donkey balls in hand-to-hand combat.
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Nah, stick to one school only - getting to those high ranks quickly is very important and you won't have points for something extra until the very end of the game. It's gonna get much easier once you max out melee. IIRC, it gives you an unblockable attack and it makes the combat rather trivial. Not to mention that shooter is quite horrible and, if you wish to have the easiest time in combat, battle hacking is a much better thing to go for.
And now you can get it for free as part of GOG's fall sale. I gave it a shot, and I liked it a lot, finished it in two days. Let's first address some of the previous complaints: There were only two or three minor bugs. I had no problem with the sound effects, but if you do, there's a very detailed sound menu with different slides for master, music, sfx, ambient, voice, and gui. I think it took me about 15h to finish the game on a completionist run, so don't expect a full-fleshed RPG. But I highly recommend that you get it from GOG right now, it is quite a gem.
Okay, so what does the game get right? The basic formula of crossing a 2d brawler with a Deus Ex style RPG-light feels very unique and is just plain fun. Some of it reminded me of Shadowrun on the SNES and Blizzard's Blackthorne, minus the stiff controls --- the controls for (melee) combat are sufficiently responsive to make for some fun brawling. The atmosphere, art design and soundtrack are also great, although one doesn't get much of a feeling for the world despite a plethora of emails and news paper articles that are sprinkled across the world. This might also be one of the few games that doesn't turn hacking into a mini-game or just another iteration of the main game with a cyberspace reskin. But the hacking is nonetheless the part where we have to start talking about the shortcomings of the game:
Hacking: Hacking is realized as a twin-stick shooter spin on Asteroids where you navigate a little spaceship through corridors while shooting enemies. But there's simply not enough variety to keep this fresh. You only have your main attack and three alternate attack types, and the enemies and obstacles stay pretty much the same throughout the game. The level design of these cyber hallways is really monotonous, it feels like they kept reusing the same modules and just recombined them in different ways. There's also serious design flaws. For instance, most turrets are placed around corners where they cannot shoot the player but the player can still shoot them. It's also possible to shoot off-screen enemies without being attacked. The designers should have borrowed more ideas and design techniques from games like Gradius and Gun Nac, with temporary power-ups, agile enemies with many different movement patterns, and moving levels that require precise maneuvering.
Ranged Combat: Incredibly boring, and clearly just an afterthought. Skill improvements only give you damage/accuracy modifiers and unlock shotguns and submachine guns at the halfway point, whereas the melee skill unlocks new attacks and combos. The controls for ranged combat are also odd, as one has to keep ctrl pressed while moving the mouse to aim. I don't think the game could have been turned into a fun 2D shooter a la Abyss without ruining the melee aspect, but at the very least skills should have unlocked alternate attack modes, allow certain guns to shoot down cameras, and so on.
Level design: The biggest contrast to Deus Ex is the very linear level-design. Most of the game takes place in a city hub, but the individual parts aren't tightly integrated. Instead, you mostly have a sequence of sectors that are arranged in a left to right fashion. There's very little cross-cutting between the sectors, and verticality is also sorely lacking. While understandable for a hub, these design flaws also carry over to the missions proper. There's very few branching points, and side branches are rarely deeper than a single room. This is obviously not Super Metroid, but I would've expected a degree of complexity that's at least comparable to Mark of the Ninja. It's particularly frustrating because the game opens with a neat three-way split: 1) lockpick a door if you have the required skill level, 2) do a quest to get the key, or 3) take the long way around through a hazardous area. The rest of the game never rises to that rather modest level of openness again.
Enemy XP: Even worse in DXHR because there's no XP rewards for ghosting. So the game actively encourages you to take down enemies that you could easily sneak around. A classic case of RPG tropes screwing up gameplay.
Pacing: Since most of the game is set in a hub, you get the usual pacing problems of hubs. The main game doesn't progress much for a long time while you're busy dicking around with side quests until the last 10% of the game, which then rush you through a few more missions without much of a build-up. And those final missions feel very rushed. The very last level takes you to the moon, where the only thing you do is walk into another room, play two virtual mini-missions that are about 2 screens each, before you finally do one final hack that ends with a 2-button choice for what ending you'd like to see.
Replay value: Deus Ex can be played over and over trying all kinds of approaches, e.g. a run with no skill upgrades except for Environment. This is not the case for this game. The only major gameplay difference is between melee and ranged combat, and the best is at best a supplement to melee. There's also very few story choices as far as I can tell, so the only reason to replay the game is because you crave a few hours of cyberpunk fun.
Despite these shortcomings (some of which would be so easy to fix!), this is a typical indie game in that a good core is hampered by sacrifices in complexity that come with a small development budget. But it's definitely one of the most fun games I've played in the last few years, and I was actually disappointed that the game didn't go on for another 5 hours. I even feel a bit bad that I got it for free, I'll probably gift it to a friend just so that I can reward the developers.
Okay, so what does the game get right? The basic formula of crossing a 2d brawler with a Deus Ex style RPG-light feels very unique and is just plain fun. Some of it reminded me of Shadowrun on the SNES and Blizzard's Blackthorne, minus the stiff controls --- the controls for (melee) combat are sufficiently responsive to make for some fun brawling. The atmosphere, art design and soundtrack are also great, although one doesn't get much of a feeling for the world despite a plethora of emails and news paper articles that are sprinkled across the world. This might also be one of the few games that doesn't turn hacking into a mini-game or just another iteration of the main game with a cyberspace reskin. But the hacking is nonetheless the part where we have to start talking about the shortcomings of the game:
Hacking: Hacking is realized as a twin-stick shooter spin on Asteroids where you navigate a little spaceship through corridors while shooting enemies. But there's simply not enough variety to keep this fresh. You only have your main attack and three alternate attack types, and the enemies and obstacles stay pretty much the same throughout the game. The level design of these cyber hallways is really monotonous, it feels like they kept reusing the same modules and just recombined them in different ways. There's also serious design flaws. For instance, most turrets are placed around corners where they cannot shoot the player but the player can still shoot them. It's also possible to shoot off-screen enemies without being attacked. The designers should have borrowed more ideas and design techniques from games like Gradius and Gun Nac, with temporary power-ups, agile enemies with many different movement patterns, and moving levels that require precise maneuvering.
Ranged Combat: Incredibly boring, and clearly just an afterthought. Skill improvements only give you damage/accuracy modifiers and unlock shotguns and submachine guns at the halfway point, whereas the melee skill unlocks new attacks and combos. The controls for ranged combat are also odd, as one has to keep ctrl pressed while moving the mouse to aim. I don't think the game could have been turned into a fun 2D shooter a la Abyss without ruining the melee aspect, but at the very least skills should have unlocked alternate attack modes, allow certain guns to shoot down cameras, and so on.
Level design: The biggest contrast to Deus Ex is the very linear level-design. Most of the game takes place in a city hub, but the individual parts aren't tightly integrated. Instead, you mostly have a sequence of sectors that are arranged in a left to right fashion. There's very little cross-cutting between the sectors, and verticality is also sorely lacking. While understandable for a hub, these design flaws also carry over to the missions proper. There's very few branching points, and side branches are rarely deeper than a single room. This is obviously not Super Metroid, but I would've expected a degree of complexity that's at least comparable to Mark of the Ninja. It's particularly frustrating because the game opens with a neat three-way split: 1) lockpick a door if you have the required skill level, 2) do a quest to get the key, or 3) take the long way around through a hazardous area. The rest of the game never rises to that rather modest level of openness again.
Enemy XP: Even worse in DXHR because there's no XP rewards for ghosting. So the game actively encourages you to take down enemies that you could easily sneak around. A classic case of RPG tropes screwing up gameplay.
Pacing: Since most of the game is set in a hub, you get the usual pacing problems of hubs. The main game doesn't progress much for a long time while you're busy dicking around with side quests until the last 10% of the game, which then rush you through a few more missions without much of a build-up. And those final missions feel very rushed. The very last level takes you to the moon, where the only thing you do is walk into another room, play two virtual mini-missions that are about 2 screens each, before you finally do one final hack that ends with a 2-button choice for what ending you'd like to see.
Replay value: Deus Ex can be played over and over trying all kinds of approaches, e.g. a run with no skill upgrades except for Environment. This is not the case for this game. The only major gameplay difference is between melee and ranged combat, and the best is at best a supplement to melee. There's also very few story choices as far as I can tell, so the only reason to replay the game is because you crave a few hours of cyberpunk fun.
Despite these shortcomings (some of which would be so easy to fix!), this is a typical indie game in that a good core is hampered by sacrifices in complexity that come with a small development budget. But it's definitely one of the most fun games I've played in the last few years, and I was actually disappointed that the game didn't go on for another 5 hours. I even feel a bit bad that I got it for free, I'll probably gift it to a friend just so that I can reward the developers.
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
How do you walk on this game? I know that shift allows a sort of 'walking' animation but it's actually for blocking.
You can really tell my computer needs replacement when even 2d sidescrolling rpgs/platformers ala flashback have input latency up the ass that screws me over variable to how complex the scene is.
You can really tell my computer needs replacement when even 2d sidescrolling rpgs/platformers ala flashback have input latency up the ass that screws me over variable to how complex the scene is.
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
These fucking blackholes in the later VR 'hacking' segments. Why is no one complaining about this? Can you destroy them somehow? One of the segments on the critical path of the GSVII mission has one VR segmet where you have to navigate through a series of blackholes with very small margin on error, and sometimes you have to activate turbo movement, which naturally makes you overshoot.
How did people even finish this? I'm certainly not going to unless i find i cheat to disable these things.
Pity, it's a enjoyable game. Voice acting especially is professionally done and a great deal of it reminded me of the best areas of flashback, if with laggy controls due to mostly bad computer.
How did people even finish this? I'm certainly not going to unless i find i cheat to disable these things.
Pity, it's a enjoyable game. Voice acting especially is professionally done and a great deal of it reminded me of the best areas of flashback, if with laggy controls due to mostly bad computer.
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
There are two versions of the game, a older one, that is called Dex or 'Dex Complete' and a new one, 'Dex Enhanced edition' or similar. I wouldn't be surprised they fucked up the radius of the things and never playtested there. Seeing on ytube the walkthrough of the old version, it seems to me they're either larger or more effectful.
zool
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2009
- Messages
- 900
Just finished my first playthrough with the Enhanced Edition and the latest patch that came out on November 21st. Didn't have a single bug and I really enjoyed the game, especially the very nice 2D art. Some of the hub musics are cool too and the voice-acting ranges from acceptable to surprisingly good. All in all, I agree with Roguey's assesment that it is closer to a 2D Bloodlines than to Deus Ex.
So, if you're a fan of Bloodlines, I definitely recommend you play this one, it will bring up some warm memories (though it is obviously much inferior to Bloodlines).
So, if you're a fan of Bloodlines, I definitely recommend you play this one, it will bring up some warm memories (though it is obviously much inferior to Bloodlines).
almondblight
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2004
- Messages
- 2,623
A demo's now available, for anyone interested.
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