Dex

I was looking for a short game for relaxation after some disappointing experiences with other games lately. I decided to try out Dex and my expectations were not disappointed. This, though, may also be a point of critique: As I said: I was looking for a SHORT game, and while the game's length satisfied me very much, it might be a bit too short for its price. On the other hand the art style and presentation as well as the quality voice acting do help the game create a consistently appropriate atmosphere befitting the genre. The quests show a nice degree of variety, immersing the player into the lives of multiple believable characters. Some, maybe all, allow for several different approaches. Still, I'm not absolutely convinced they are enough to motivate multiple playthroughs, but those are imho not necessary for a quality game. Once more I realized minor issues with controller-settings in a game: Some gamepads don't allow for enough buttons to be mapped, leading to trouble playing the game via gamepad. In my case, I was halfway through the game when I found out why I was not able to use guns previously: the button they were mapped to was not recognized by the game. Also, my second stick would not react properly during the hacking passages, making the beginning a very rough experience. Still, despite its drawbacks: - short playing time - gamepad issues - little motivation for multiple playthroughs Dex was in my opinion worth its money due to + beautiful art style + great and entirely voice acted dialogue + variable possible ways to approach missions + nice customization options befitting the game's atmosphere and + and a well thought out and presented cyberpunk-scenario which + serves to tell a compelling story. Altogether it was a very enjoyable experience, justifying an above average rating in my opinion.

Similar to FlashBack, we have mystery, hero who must fight to survive, micro economy and rough environment. We got also steampunk theme, live city with all his problems, implants, alternative paths. This game hold up me up for 15h, it was worth.

I didn't really know what to expect from Dex. An unusual mix of side-scrolling, RPG, and cyberpunk that nonetheless not only works, but is enormously good fun. Once you get used to the side-scrolling controls, Dex takes you into a world that is perhaps a little cliched, even predictable in places if you're familiar with the genre, but we get so little in the way of decent cyberpunk, I can't help but fall in love with it. It simultaneously manages to take me back to old days of Beneath A Steel Sky and more recent and more combat-oriented games such as Deus Ex or Shadowrun. That alone is to be appreciated. The characters and voice acting are well done, particularly for such a small studio, and the game helps you build your blue-haired protagonist & beautifully voiced Dex your way. Do you favour stealth and alternative entrances or combat and out-and-out slugging? Silver-tongued dialogue or brute force? The missions are nicely varied both in content and approach, giving you a real chance to tailor the resulting experience to a given style and role. The soundtrack is wonderful, and really helps build that dystopian vibe. While small, the wonderful world built has nothing spare about it - everything ends up having a purpose, which is a joy to encounter as you progress further into the game and go 'oh, so that's what that is for'. I'd like to see more of this, please, Dreadlocks. Even just more of the same would be just fine.

The good: What’s the game like? It’s a nice 2D side scroller which happens to have an ok fighting and shooting mechanic. The story has enough depth for at least 2 play throughs – one to do the main campaign and a second to complete all the side missions. Now is the game as well written as something like Deus Ex Human Revolution? No it’s not as well written, the story is much shorter and the ever present movie sudo technical talk is present (it will annoy you if you’ve studied IT). But what is here is well executed and a lot of fun to play. The story length is about as long as all the missions that take place in the China level in Deus Ex Human Revolution. Like Deus Ex there is a lot of reading emails you managed to pull of peoples computing devise – this adds to the unaverse building and helps you figure out new secrets. There is a quick save option which you can use any time to save your progress which you’ll want to use as you can get stuck in places if you run out of resources. Running out of resources only happens if you suck at playing the game like I do – I don’t often play 2D side scrollers so I’m not very good at them. The music is well designed and adds to the atmosphere. You’ll want to turn up the audio level for the dialogue because the music tends to overpower it. The bad I did notice a scaling issue where the pixel art was a little stretched – I am running a 16/10 monitor. The story and game play just start to get really enjoyable and then the game ends - your left with a “I want to see more” feeling. This wouldn’t be so bad if there was a new game plus mode. As I tend to build all-rounder characters in RPG’s I didn’t get access to some of the abilities until close to the end game. Hacking turrets and cameras can be frustrating – you get swamped by the anti-intrusion enemies. Most of the time I just avoided trying to hack the turrets and cameras because it was way too difficult. This was a mistake because you need to be able to hack turrets and cameras in the end game or you won’t be able to preceded. What makes this worse is that your given a part tutorial for the computer hacking and not one for the hacking of turrets and cameras. Conclusion: All up is a fun game. It’s not perfect but I can forgive it because most of the time it is fun and the story was really good. If you plan on getting it get on GOG and not steam because the GOG version comes with all the DLC and a lot more goodies.

Despite the game being inspired by Deus Ex, it has a really solid story. You play as Dex, a blue-haired female who for unknown reason became a target of The Corporation (how original) and the famous hacker known as Raycast helps you escape and join with a group of hackers who are against the corporation you ran away (Seriously, give a name so others won't be confused next time). Little did you know that there's more than just good hackers vs evil corporations, as in this game, no one is actually a villan, just people with their own point of ideology and thinking. The game is very short when you follow the main story, but the side quests are more fun to do and have multiple ways to end. In fact both main and side quests have consenquenes on your actions which you will not expect. It also rewards you for doing things that the game hadn't mentioned, because you found it on your own. The graphics is pretty strong in this one, the character sprites are very detailed and pleasing to look, but suffers from meh animation in most parts (Such as the dog's running animation, it just bothers me) and there is one moment where they just straight up went lazy and didn't make new sprites in near-end game. The gameplay is pretty good, you have multiple ways to deal with the enemy and the hacking part is much more fun to do than in Deus Ex series, while being an essential part to your survival. The melee fight sometimes sucks though, as you may have to guess when, the enemy will start attacking you faster before you even block it sometimes. The soundtrack is great and memorable, I still have the main theme stuck in my head along with Highrise one. But the sound effects are lacking, such as when the enemy gets hit, knocked out or die. Even our heroine suffers from that problem as well. There are bugs for sure, but so far i haven't ran into anything major, cept the fact that the Wireless Xbox One Controller's D-Pad does not work! Overall, the game is solid despite some problems.