Developer: Flat Earth Games
Publisher: Flat Earth Games
Platform: Pc, Mac
Tested on: Pc
Metrocide – Review
Metrocide was developed by Flat Earth Games and is a top down assassination game. Flat Earth Games’s previous release was Towncraft. Say what you will, but it’s quite a shift in gameplay and overall setting, going from the life of a farmer to the life of the assassin. Metrocide is also their first game on PC, as Towncraft was available on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Story
You are T. J. Trench – both male and female assassin’s have the same initials – and you need a way out of town. Things have gone south, and you aren’t planning on enacting your will anytime soon. So it’s up to you to start a fundraiser to collect the cash and get out of town. A fundraiser of blood, because you need to kill people to make the money for your ticket out of the hell you are in now. The story itself is told through comics, which makes Metrocide’s story consistent. It’s gritty, just like the game’s setting.
Graphics
Metrocide’s top down perspective gives you the chance to anticipate the situation. It helps you prepare the kill and dispose of the bodies. It’s always raining, which creates an oppressive feeling that haunts you as you wander around town. There are cameras everywhere, you are being watched wherever you go. It should make you feel safer, but it has the reverse effect. Then again, you are a killer looking for your next target, so maybe you shouldn’t feel to safe. The fact that anyone you cross paths with can end your life and you have no visual cues on their intentions adds to the tension. There are no cars left and all traffic flies overhead. When you leave a body and the police get to the scene, you’ll notice that afterwards, there will be a chalk outline where the body used to be. There will be dead dogs in alleyways. Other things are littering the streets, but the pixel art doesn’t render details too well and you’ll sometimes be left wondering what it is that you are looking at.
Sound
The soundtrack starts playing at random intervals. It is quite ominous and leads you to believe something bad is going to happen, when in reality nothing does. Other times, your assassinations will be accompanied by the sound of rain. The only voices are metallic ones which you’ll hear coming from the drones. The gun sounds are quite generic and the only really special one is the gun you get at the beginning, its loading sound amplifying right before you fire the shot. Sometimes you’ll walk past billboards and find rather disturbing adverts. In other games, the jokes are light hearted and you might shrug it off, but here it only amplifies the depravity.
Gameplay
The goal of the game is to get out of town. You do this by killing people. You go to one of your contacts in the city and browse his list of contracts. You pick one and you finish their lives. It sounds easy, but it really isn’t. Before you’ve even started to scout for your victim, you can look at their stats in the list of contracts. There are a couple of things to which you need to pay attention. They can be just your normal person, without a care in the world, and they won’t be much of a problem to dispose of. that case, the monetary reward won’t be too great, but the case won’t be much of a problem so it shouldn’t yield too much of a reward.
Other targets can just be visiting and give you a time constraint to work with. Then there are those who are paranoid and don’t like being followed around. Sometimes targets are armed. Some missions might not just be killing the person, but also disposing of the corpse. Failing to do so will come at the price of the payment. Other targets might have an item of interest which you’ll need to acquire after the kill.
A target can be any of these combinations and the more combinations, the better the money. Money buys you guns among other things, but buying and owning certain guns is also illegal. When a police drone hovers overhead and blinks yellow, that means that they are scanning you and when you are holding an illegal gun, they’ll take it away, along with all the money you have on you.
Killing targets isn’t always the most difficult part of the mission: you also need to get away with it. Pulling out a gun is an offence and random people might shoot you for it. Shooting someone in plain sight will most definitely get you killed. Hanging around crime scenes until the cops arrive will get you killed. You have to pay attention to your surroundings, alleys you can run into and how many people are around. Preferably there’s only you and the target, but as you progress in the game you’ll notice this won’t often be the case.
Should you find difficulty in isolating the victim, however, you can always use some tools to turn the tables. You can use mines to blow them up or a distractor to lure them into a deserted alleyway. You can also EMP a cleaning drone, for example. These are just a few of the tools you can use, but doing so is the same as pulling a gun: you might not want to do it in the middle of the street. There are 3 areas in the game and should you think that the game is too easy, you can always set the difficulty to hard, but know that when you die, you ‘ll have to restart the entire level, losing everything. Other modes in the game are Blaster Only, so no other guns allowed, Score Attack, in which you try to get the highest amount of currency and Dead Trench Walking. All of these are unlocked as you finish the game.
Conclusion
Metrocide is all about survival of the fittest. Play it safe and play it smart and you’ll come out on top. Be clumsy and messy and you’ll have a hard time staying alive. You might die everytime you pull a gun but you need the money to get out of town. This creates a tension and it’s this that makes Metrocide shine. The controls are easy but the kills never are. Definitely worth looking into if you are looking for a challenge.
No Comments