Snatcher in Review
They say that the classics never really die, and I’m a pretty large believer in such a saying. I know I’m a bit late in the reviewing game for Snatcher, but it’s such an amazing masterpiece by Hideo Kojima, whom you just may have heard of from his slightly popular Metal Gear Solid series of games.
The game puts you in the shoes of Gillian Seed, an amnesiac who was recently assigned as a JUNKER in Neo Kobe. JUNKERs basically specialize in hunting down and destroying deadly bio-roids known as SNATCHERs. The ‘first’ SNATCHER appeared in Neo Kobe a while before Gillian was ever assigned as a JUNKER, and it was later discovered that these SNATCHERs kill a member of society, destroy the corpse, then assume their role in society by attaching artificial skin to their machine frame.
These SNATCHERs look similar to the T-800 robots from Terminator, but are obviously quite different. The SNATCHER’s main method of attack is a laser weapon inside of it’s mouth, but obviously, being the machines that they are, also possess above average speed and strength. It’s speculated early in the game that SNATCHERs only target VIPs of society, people of high standing exclusively, so they are in places of power.
Gillian’s job as a new JUNKER is to find and eliminate these SNATCHERs via investigations. The way JUNKERs operate is similar to a police force; they have to have a ‘scan warrant’ in order to biologically scan an individual which proves that they are, without a doubt, a SNATCHER. In order to obtain such a warrant, there has to be strong evidence suggesting that an individual is a SNATCHER. Due to this, much of the game is based around following leads and gathering evidence that links certain people to the SNATCHERs.
All and all, the game starts out a bit on the slow side, but there’s always an eerie feeling surrounding it, and you never quite know what you’re going to come across. There are plenty of shocking moments in the game, and true to classic Kojima, plenty of twists in the plot and political overtones.
It’s very refreshing to go back and play a game of the past, only to find out that it was way ahead of its time, and that it’s still a very competent game, even by today’s standards. The story-telling is absolutely excellent, although there are some pretty cheesy lines in the game, but the voice acting is done surprisingly well for a game of 1994, (1991 if you’re going by when it was first released).
Probably the most annoying thing about the game for me, was that a lot of the investigations depended on looking at an object multiple times, or investigating something multiple times in order to get ‘everything that was needed’ from said object. It’s kind of frustrating, especially when there’s no indication that you should search the object more than once. There was multiple times in the game where I thought I was stuck, but came to find that all I had to do was look at a piece of evidence I had, and then the plot began to advance again.
Moving past that, though, I found nothing glaringly wrong with Snatcher. It’s a fantastic romp through a gritty cyberpunk environment, with plenty of flavor and intrigue to keep one going from beginning to end. I personally played the six to seven plus hour game in one sitting, but that was only because it felt like a good book to me, and it was really hard to put it down.
Though it’s much like an old-school point and click adventure game, there’s also a handful of shooting sequences, which, if you’re playing with a gamepad like I was for the Sega CD version, are kind of awkward at first, but eventually you’ll get used to them. You basically move your crosshair around a grid-like system, using all the directions, plus diagonals, in order to aim your weapon about the screen. It’s something new that I hadn’t seen before, and for what it is, it gets the job done.
Overall, if you’re looking for a classic adventure game with great pacing, story-telling, and suspense, Snatcher fits that bill in spades. It’s a fantastic game full of interesting characters and ideas, and is definitely worth a play through if you’re a fan of Kojima, cyberpunk, or adventure games in general. Highly recommended.
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