Dex

This utter *gem* of a game has a lot of charisma and soul, being a sort of cyber punk version of Child of Light, an 'rpg lite' with a decent focus on combat, platform skills and exploration. Similar to CoL, once you get the hang of combat not much challenges you, yet similarly the sheer fun of pounding everyone in sight and exploring the well presented and interesting world keep you engaged. I would very much like to give this game a 4/5 rating, however even in the patched Enhanced Edition there persist game breaking bugs with the GSV-2 Hacking level, I tired of repetitive save/loading and completely retrying the level over and over, some people make it past this by doing such and sadly for some of us just the same bugs persist. Whilst I would love to rant about how a smaller team more than 20 years ago could produce Another World (currently $1.99 on GOG!) and Flashback (I can't find this on GOG, sadly) with zero bugs and the same if not more gameplay elements, I do recommend DEX to anyone who has $7.99 left in their game budget this week. If you can avoid/handle the bugs, DEX is a very fun game to play.

This game reminds me of Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive from 1994. If you like that style of game you should like this a lot too. It's a 2D side scroller/Action-RPG with "hacking" and dialogue trees. There are a couple WIKI articles out there to help you make it through the game but I am happy to say that most actions you take and things you say have predictable outcomes so the online guide _probably_ won't be necessary. I did experience some minor animation bugs like the character not moving when she was in her DLC costume and crouch walking and sometimes the stealth kill animation was glitched but it still worked. p.s.: I just spend my weekend playing this game. After 21 hours I finally beat it and can go to bed. p.p.s.: The voice acting is done well.

Much to my surprise, Dex is quite a good game. Despite the platforming/beat-em-all/shmup elements, Dex is a close cousin of Deus Ex – expect violence and stealth, exploration and conversations, takedowns and expensive ammo, and even an ending that is actually a credit to the game. While the stealth doesn't quite match that of Deus Ex & co, Dex has a number of ideas that just work: Augmented Reality and its application to both infiltration and fights, the omnipresent and somewhat threatening Augmented Reality viruses, the simple but well designed shmup cyberspace and the occasional cyberspace-within-cyberspace, etc. I definitely recommend this game. I hope to see a Dex 2 within a few years, with a somewhat more detailed world, more opportunities for Augmented Reality, both for Dex and for her enemies, more varied cyberspace, etc.

Summary: Great visuals, audio and writing. Gameplay can be frustrating at the start. + Great story that grips the player despite using elements we've seen before (e.g. The Matrix, Deus Ex, ...). It's reasonably deep and presents a fair bit of food for thought. + Atmosphere is dense and fitting for a dystopian future. It's not all drab only though; some fun encounters and quips lighten the mood. + The game looks fantastic. Every zone has its own distinct style, you can almost smell it. + The audio is similarly stellar. Music is top-notch, as is most of the voice-acting. + Quests are varied and fun, and most importantly, many of them allow several different ways of solving them. + Solid character development both from a mechanical (skills) perspective and a roleplaying perspective (conversation choices) o Gameplay is somewhat fiddly to get into and can get rather frustrating at times. In the 'real world', enemies like to stunlock you until you figure out what the hell you are doing, and in the virtual world, the game throws endless masses of enemies at you. o The story is linear, but thanks to the various options presented in conversations and ways to solve quests, it has some replay value. o Game has medium length (probably around 15-20 hours for a completionist run). - The ending felt rather rushed. Particularly one ending could definitely have done with a better epilogue. - Shooting is... meh. No cover, no strategy, just war of attrition. Melee is much more fun. Verdict: 9/10 ~ 4/5