Destroy Us All

 
 

NeoTokyo Review

Once again, I’ve been slacking on my updates, and since there’s a handful of things I’d like to get up here content-wise, I’d best start crackin’ at it, yeah?

First on the list is a mod for Half-Life 2 that I’ve been playing quite a bit lately, and was just released a few weeks ago. The common descriptor seems to be ‘cyberpunk Counter-Strike’, which I think is a fair, albeit simple, method of explaining it.

NeoTokyo is a first person shooter modification that is heavily influenced by the works of Shirow Masamune, namely Ghost in the Shell. If you haven’t ever seen or heard of anything related to Ghost in the Shell, I’d highly recommend you check out either the first Ghost in the Shell movie, the seasons of the show (Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex and 2nd Gig), and possibly the second movie, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. The second movie wasn’t all that great in my opinion, but I digress.

This mod doesn’t really offer anything dramatically new to the shooter genre. It sticks to a tried and true, round-based formula that I’m sure anyone who’s played Counter-Strike would be familiar with. It’s a bit more slower paced than Counter-Strike (CS), but the similarities are there, none-the-less, though in this day and age, it’s hard to get away from comparing a round-based shooter with CS. There’s a few changes to the formula, such as the addition of Therm-Optic camouflage and vision modes, as well as a ‘single-flag’ style of capture the flag, called Capture the Ghost. Both teams attempt to locate and secure the Ghost, (which is basically an AI inside of a resilient plastic shell made to look feminine), and either capture it, or kill the opposing team. The person holding the Ghost gets the advantage of seeing the location of the enemy players to recon to their teammates, but other than that, it’s nothing you most likely haven’t seen before.

So why, you might ask, do I enjoy this mod as much as I do? I’m glad you asked, as it’s something that development teams tend to overlook. Art. I’m not referring to ‘latest n gratest graffix texnowligy’ (that was painful to type), but actual, and genuine art direction. The maps in particular display this very well, as almost every single one of them are breathtaking in their attention to detail and sheer beauty. There’s maps that are strictly city and technology based, with computers and cool steel corridors, but there’s also more serene maps with zen gardens and vegetation, complimented by a gentle mist that really set the mood and make you pause and take a moment to look around. It’s one of the few mods that I can say is an absolute joy to just run around in by myself and look around. Similarly, the character design is also pretty top notch. There seems to be a bit of a bias toward Jinrai, the rebel soldiers in green camouflage, but overall I think both sides look good. Some might complain that the player models might look too similar, but they’re really not that hard to tell apart. Unless of course, you’re using two of the three vision modes, which I will touch on in a bit. The weapons are interesting to look at, but are mostly overshadowed by the quality of the maps.

The gameplay, as I said before, is nothing too different than what you might be used to, however, there are a handful of things that deserve mention. Each ‘class’, (Recon, Assault, and Support), get a vision mode exclusive to their class. Recon gets Night Vision, which in my opinion is fairly useless in it’s present form, Assault gets Motion Vision, which illuminates moving targets, regardless if they’re cloaked or not, and Support gets Thermal Vision, which causes all targets to glow with heat signatures, except for those who are cloaked, who show up as dark silhouettes, it can, however, see through smoke. The problem with the Assault and Support vision modes, is that sometimes it can be hard to differentiate friend from foe, especially when rounding a corner and seeing a signature in front of you, leading to teamkilling more often than not. This is somewhat alleviated by the IFF (Identification, friend or foe) system set in place. Every one of your team members that are visible have a slightly transparent blue or green, depending on your team, cross over their person. However, once they get far enough away, these crosses will fade from your HUD, causing you to lose track of them. This is somewhat alleviated by having squads. You can have up to seven people in a squad, and the squads go from Alpha to Echo. Every member in your squad has a more solid cross over their person and you can see them regardless of where they are on the map. This is extremely handy and there really is little excuse to not squad up, as knowing where your teammates are can be vital.

During play, you have a limited selection of weapons to choose from when you just join a server. There’s no money system in place, rather an XP system. You get XP for surviving a round, killing an enemy, helping a teammate escort and secure the Ghost, and for acquiring and/or securing the Ghost. If your team captures the Ghost, everyone on your team gets a small XP boost, but it quickly adds up for repeated captures. As you gain XP, more and more weapons will unlock for your class. Recon, who is great for infiltration with his/her longer than average cloaking ability and unlimited sprint, mostly has access to SMGs, both suppressed and unsuppressed, light sniper rifles, a couple unsuppressed assault rifles, and a shotgun. All of which progressively unlock as you gain XP. Assault, with average cloaking and limited sprint, however, has access to unsuppressed SMGs, a shotgun, and a suppressed and unsuppressed assault rifle from the get-go, progressively unlocking more powerful assault rifles, an automatic shotgun, and a bolt-action sniper rifle. Support, who has no ability to cloak or sprint, but can soak up a lot of damage, gets access to a similar, but more limited, selection that the Assault class gets access to at the beginning, with the addition of a semi-automatic rifle. Most of the weapons are surprisingly well balanced, and have different strengths and weaknesses. Suppressed weapons, for example, distort your cloak less than firing an unsuppressed weapon, firing rapidly with semi-automatic weapons causes your grouping to get rather wide, and suppressed weapons, (and shotguns obviously), have a harder time penetrating surfaces. My one complaint with the weapons are that some are too easy to use for the power. The bolt-action sniper rifle, for example, is practically a guaranteed one shot kill and just requires pointing and clicking, no drawbacks involved. This makes camping a lot more appealing to people, especially since it’s a round-based game where you have one life per round. With the addition of cloaking, it’s much more common.

That aside, NeoTokyo is a refreshing take on the semi-tactical shooter and has a lot of good things to offer a player. For one, a rather polished first release, which is rare, as well as the aforementioned incredible attention to detail. Poke around on the site and see for yourself, everything about the mod oozes with style if you ask me, right down the soundtrack. If you’re a fan of shooters, especially Counter-Strike style shooters, Shirow Masamune’s work, or just cyberpunk in general, I would definitely give this mod a look. I think you’ll enjoy it as I have.

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