Cyberpunk, as a genre, means a lot to me. It’s one of the last true new genres created within the past 50 years, and it started within my lifetime. Neuromancer, Shadowrun, Deus Ex… these stories felt new, weird, and tapped into something in my youth that I never knew I needed… but totally did. Suffice to say, I love cyberpunk, and I’m always looking for a fresh take on the genre, be it book, comic, film, or game. Enter Dex. It’s a game that seemed promising from what little I knew about it, and I went in with eagerness and an open mind. I’m sad to say that it ultimately failed to deliver on several counts.
Dex is an open-world, side-scrolling cyperpunk action game with RPG elements. You play as Dex, a young woman who awakes in a room with killers at your door. You make your escape, and trawl through the future city of Harbor Prime in search of answers. While close-quarters combat is taught early on, guns are made available for long-range battle, and there’s a heavy emphasis on hacking via point-and-click exploration around the environment. The plot is loaded with tried and true tropes such as conspiracy theories, underground groups, etc. The art style is unique and striking, but doesn’t always stay consistent; varying between eye-grabbing and amateur. There’s lots of potential on display, but nothing ever really comes of it all.
On the positive side, the city is well-designed. It seems huge and foreboding at first, but quickly becomes manageable once you know where you’re going, as should be the case with a well-crafted open world. I also give the game points just for trying to do something original; it’s not every day an open-world, 2D side-scrolling cyberpunk action game comes around, and it’s a format I’d like to see improved upon.
Man-o-man… where do I start with the many problems this game has going for it? The voice acting and character design overall comes off as tone-deaf and poorly-acted at best, and dangerously close to racist at worst. One of the very first character you meet will make you cringe the second she opens her mouth to speak.
The combat system is often times both equally frustrating and broken. Punch, roll away, repeat… that’s all you need to know. The guns work far better, as you can stand far enough away from an enemy and shoot them without any fear of retaliation. Seriously, most of the time- especially on stairs- enemies would just stand still and let me shoot them. The story has all the right components, but doesn’t know what to do with them, leaving you with dialog you’ll be itching to skip at every turn. The hacking mechanics are… poorly thought out, to be polite. I did as little of it as possible. Seeing that this is a cyberpunk game, that’s terrible to say.
Unfortunately, I could go on. Suffice to say, Dex is a game that should be avoided by most. For those looking for an interesting proof-of-concept, however, if you can work your way past the many negative features, there’s some interesting stuff presented within Dex.
