Replaced Review – A nostalgic cyberpunk homage that has a few ideas of its own | games

FOr all of cyberpunk’s cautionary tales of shady corporations and transhumanist idiocy, it’s the genre’s compelling imagery that looms largest in the popular culture imagination. Petroleum torches light up the always rainy Blade Runner city of Los Angeles. In Neuromancer, the sky is “the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.”

It’s replaced, a new 2D action platformer from Belarus-based Sad Cat Studios, that relies on the steel and sprawl that the genre is known for. The game also introduces a wrinkle to Cyberpunk’s old and somewhat familiar visual palette: it bathes the screen in softly diffused sepia and warm primary colors, especially in the densely populated residential areas you can explore. The mood is comforting rather than ominous, comforting rather than clinical, as if this dystopian sci-fi had been touched by an unexpected hand – the hand of godfather Thomas Kinkade.

These soft, nostalgic images bring a simple and emotional story to life. You control a lanky mathematician named Warren who works on a powerful artificial intelligence system for the Phoenix Corporation. But something goes wrong in his lab, and so the program blends into Warren’s flesh body. Terrified, this new entity of man and machine runs through the collapsing facility, jumping over obstacles, climbing pipes and dodging hovercraft with orders to shoot to kill in the nearby jungle.

For its first 45 minutes, Replaced plays out as a successful action-platformer to such a cringeworthy degree that I wondered if it had a single idea of ​​its own. But, in the end, you will reach a refugee camp located inside an abandoned train station. This place is bustling with activity, home to many displaced misfits with hearts of gold. The game slows down, allowing you to roam freely rather than being pushed forward (or sideways). You see how these people live in extreme poverty in the post-nuclear war era in the United States in the 1980s. Lights twinkle in the tents that protect them from acid rain; If they’re lucky, it’s a pillowy snowfall from these atmospheric skies.

It’s a shame, then, that the irradiated wilds you venture back into often feel so generic. Warren, now wearing a Deckard-esque coat, wields a club and a pistol, beating the Mad Max-esque comrades into oblivion (the final execution stunt, which sees the protagonist fire a pistol at point-blank range, is both incredibly cool and a bit grim). Through graffiti-lined alleys and rusty industrial spaces, Warren swings across railings and climbs over boxes until he can reach higher ledges. Sometimes the beauty of the game gets in the way of its functionality: the scenes are filled with so much detail that it can be difficult to know what to interact with.

The most memorable part of Replaced is Warren sneaking back to the high-security facility where the adventure began. You sit in tall, swaying grass and wet swamps while being chased by futuristic helicopters that could end your life with one thunderous bullet. A huge wall looms in the background, appearing as an imposing black silhouette. For most of its 10-hour runtime, Replaced seems content to reiterate dominant cyberpunk ideas in a beautiful pixel art style without adding much in the way of its own elements. But this massive military fortification makes the game expand its scope, strongly evoking the Mexico-US border wall and the West Bank barrier.

Here, the game confidently steps beyond just a more sinister fantasy style. Every fatality presented is starkly charged with the understanding that a deadly cyberpunk future has already arrived.