Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘SYSCRUSHER’
Rounding out page 50 of the bundle with science
SYSCRUSHER is a sci-fi FPS created by DirigoGames, the indie dev from the USA that brought us STOWAWAY way back on page 29. This time players are not running from what they fear, but instead are taking back a city from the very thing that is causing it.
Players follow the nefarious System Crusher (or SYSCRUSHER for short) as they are tasked with taking out an admin tower in the city. This tower, complete with an adorable emoji face, looms over everyone in a dystopic society to maintain order and it is up to us to remove it.
Players start with a laser pistol and battle through dozens of corridors and pathways against various robot enemies in an old-school FPS style. There is no need for reloading, but ammo does deplete over time and needs to be collected.
There is no running button. Unimpeded movement will slowly speed up the player to the point that they are now a high octane arena shooter.
The levels are mostly flat, but have various platforms and vertical locations to promote different ways of approaching the problem. There might be a way to stealth if one is clever enough, but I just went in guns blazing; more fun, if I’m honest.
While there is no ‘running’ button, SHIFT has not been neglected as it is the button to activate slo-mo mode. This puts players in to a bullet-time like state, slowing everything down so that they can shoot the heads off robots and fight off giant bosses without losing too much health. The meter is displayed at the top and refills when not in use, but it can definitely help when shots come thick and fast with no time to react. I did not find myself relying on it all the time, which is actually a good thing; best to treat it either as an emergency button or as a ‘I wish for this to become way more cinematic’ kind of moment.
While it barely lasted 45 minutes, in that time SYSCRUSHER was able to create a world, multiple characters, and a core gameloop that actively had me more engaged than I was expecting. The world is simple in a dystopian way, but that’s all you need; just a cool cyber world with a bad robot at the centre spouting off nonsense about humanity lacking control. It doesn’t take much to get me to shoot robots, but it definitely help that the shooting actually felt fun. I ended up leaving the game feeling like there was more that I had not found thanks to the multiple paths, yet I knew that there was nothing more I could get out of it besides the satisfaction of blowing up a mega robot.
If you love retro FPS games that get to the point and have you just go ham, this is a great game to pick up.
Software will come out tomorrow. I was thinking it might get done today but I’m a tad distracted…
