Dex

I played this on Linux and spent 17 hours on it, over a weekend, which is quite rare for me, as I tend to lose interest or get busy with other stuff quite quickly, but this game kept my attention and I enjoyed my time. I can't recall having played anything in this exact genre before, but I don't think there are any groundbreaking new ideas or mechanics in this game, just an immersive and entertaining story. Get the game on sale and you wont regret it.

Dex is a side-scrolling RPG where you play as a woman named Dex, who one day is mysteriously hunted. You can free-roam in the city and do sidequests, as well as setting up your skills and implants to make yourself more formidable in combat, hacking, or a better talker. But personally, I prefer to play this game stealthily, as you can perform instant takedown on most enemies. While I love cyberpunk games, Dex strangely flew under my radar until I decided to try it recently. And it was surprisingly great, the 2D artstyle, the atmosphere, gameplay, and story. This version already came integrated with the Extra Outfits DLC, which makes the game considerably easier and more fun with their unique looks and buffs. Especially as a stealth player, as one outfit allows unlimited cloaking until you decide to do some action. When a mission asks you to go to an enemy hideout or take you off-city... you know what outfit to wear. My biggest complaint about this game is how the protagonist almost never speaks, despite the game being fully-voiced. She only speaks on several cutscenes, and normally her dialogue is only through text. Kind of a weird choice honestly, especially since she doesn't have that much dialogue compared to other NPCs. There are also some minor bugs like health suddenly dropping after loading new areas, but the regeneration implant makes that no big deal. If you're a fan of futuristic RPGs and cyberpunk aesthetics, especially ones inspired by Blade Runner, you should give Dex a try. For me, it's like playing Deus Ex but 2D, so if you like that seemingly discontinued franchise, this game will kinda fill that hole in your heart.

I'm having a good time. It's not the best game in the world. Story and side quests are sometimes a bit confusing, Atmosphere is very good. Gameplay is fun and challenging, sometimes a bit much for me, but it makes victory sweeter and the hardest challenges are usually optional.

NOTE: This rating applies only if you wan to play in Linux, or be able to switch savegames between platforms. I started playing this game in Linux, but I cannot continue because there it's utterly broken. Controller support is there only by name. Pad buttons are inadvertently swapped (I guess mis-read from input), some buttons are simply ignored, and others cannot be reconfigured (the UI ignores you). This brings me to text placement in the UI. It is also broken: text that needs to be scrolled during a conversation simply spills beyond the box that it's supposed to contain it. The same happens in the longer settings pages, like keyboard or controlled bindings. Then I decided to try in Windows, but oh my. After spending some painful hours with keyboard+mouse in Linux, now I cannot take my savegames to Windows, where I would continue playing with proper controller support. The developers were lazy enough to store savegames using unity3d's (the game's engine they used) player preferences support (designed to store only that, simple preferences). This means there are no savegame files you can move across systems, so I cannot continue from my previous savegame on the saner Windows port of this game. As a note, the player prefs values for savegames have different formats for windows and linux, and I just have better things to do than playing detective to discover how to convert the values between platforms. Honestly, I think I'm going to just forget this game, since I don't want to spend more hours just to catch up with my previous progress.

Like Deus Ex bred with Streets of rage. This was soooo worth the money, and left me wanting to experience more games like it. Five stars!!