Developer: Deep Fried Enterprises
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Platforms: PC, OSX, Linux
Tested on: PC
ROOT – Review
ROOT is an undertaking of corporate crypto-espionage in the form of a first person shooter that requires a ton of stealth or mass shootouts for the player to reach their goals. The clever designed hacker-inspired game allows players to play how they see fit but that doesn’t make the game easier as even the minor mistakes can have huge consequences to your mission.
Story
The narrative in ROOT is explained to the player gradually via incoming transmissions. An unknown entity begins the storyline by telling you that you’ve stumbled into a strange little war, one that has been going on for ages. The identity of this unknown entity is later revealed as SHELL, whom rambles to you whenever he wishes. More often than not, he is terribly boring while doing his best to provide hints, only to dismiss you later on for even listening to him.
In the end, the narration comes down to you being the expert hacker Edward Summerton who is trying to breach the networks of a mysterious and rather powerful corporation. The game itself, which you will play, is how he will succeed. The dialogues that are a large part of the narration itself are rather lame, especially because the script is supposed to be witty but fails miserably at even being remotely funny.
Graphics
With its abstract yet bright visuals, the game stands out in the stealth FPS genre although the graphics does the narration plenty of justice. As the corridors and basically anything else in the levels are supposed to present an intricate network, the visuals resemble something of an ’80s styled shooter – although more polished – while recalling a certain Tron-like perception. The design is actually quite alluring but it is also the key feature of the game.
What’s more to like is the fact that players can tweak the color scheme, which is a superb addition for those that are color-blind or those that simply want a change of scenery in the nearly-identical corridors.
Sound
The audio design is limited and sparse throughout the entire game. More often than not, the ambiance sound is being reused depending on the situation you’ll find yourself into, but the odd mixture of sounds fit the general theme quite well. The techno-like version of jingle bells really adds suspense to certain situations but you’ll find yourself lowering down certain music settings rather fast as the mixture of the odd soundtrack, the never-ending woosh of doors opening and the futuristic shooting sounds are bothersome after a while.
Gameplay
Those who have played a first person shooter before will have a feel for the controls as they’ve used the basics when it comes down to movement, combat and interaction. You can move around with the traditional WASD, lean left and right and of course jump with space. Crouch, dodge, sneak, it’s all there. Attack or shoot with the left mouse button while you can reload your weapon with R or you can switch between your weapons by scrolling the mouse wheel. Interacting with objects, such as opening doors or picking up random junk is done with F. It’s all pretty standard and straight forward if you’re somewhat familiar with controls in several types of games. An often overlooked feature is being able to tweak these settings to fit your own play style but luckily ROOT offers it.
ROOT is a stealth FPS which allows you to play how you see fit. On one hand you can play in full stealth-mode only knocking down guards with your blackjack but this doesn’t work all the time as certain rooms have tricky placed guards. On the other hand you can play full commando mode where you’ll shoot at anything that moves. The latter one is more fun if it were not for running out of ammo or alerting nearby guards. The best way is to use a perfect mixture of both play styles as this will make it much easier to advance in the game.
Each level is comprised of multiple corridors that feel like a maze and the similarities in the corridors can be a tad confusing. There are plenty of objects you can interact with such as computer screens, plants and coffee mugs but you can’t do much except throw them away again. Because there is no specific need to interact with these items, it feels like a misplaced feature. While the game sounds rather simple, it’s not an easy game to complete. Each level increases in difficulty and some levels have an extremely large difficulty jump when it comes down to the enemies you’ll have to face.
Unfortunately the game does not come bug-free. One bug that stands out is when you’ve knocked down an enemy and it’ll move with you. It’s one of those bugs that remind you an awful lot of the awful simulations such as AmpuTea.
Conclusion
ROOT has an interesting take on the inside of a network system with visuals in the likes of Tron and is surprisingly difficult to complete. The dialogues which are part of the narration are quite awful as the humor is nowhere near witty but the concept of the narrative is quite compelling. It’s different alright and challenging but it could use some more polishing when it comes down to the sound design and interaction of objects.
ROOT - Review,
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