Technobabylon

Technobabylon is cyberpunk-themed point-and-click adventure published by Wadjet Eye Games, so features many familiar voice actors as well as "Director's Commentary" from the lead developer, artist, sound designer, and producer Dave Gilbert.

The game mainly focuses around CEL who are basically like the police. An AI named Central who belongs to CEL helps them in their investigations. CEL Agents are smart and are often former scientists. Charlie, the main character, is reluctant to use implant technology whereas his partner Max has no problem. They are both assigned to the "mindjacking case" where several people have been killed and their memories stolen. Central leads them to an office building where the next crime is predicted to happen. I expected the game to go down the 'Minority Report' route with more predicted crimes but that wasn't how the game unfolded.

Charlie is blackmailed into retrieving something from another crime scene, with his late wife's embryos on the line. There's the usual twists and turns, the 3 main character's backstories to discover, and multiple endings.

The third controllable character is Latha, who the game opens with. Latha is a Trance addict. Trance is like VR and requires an Internet connection to fully utilise. After Latha loses her internet connection, she wants to leave the apartment to contact building maintenance, but the elevator isn't working; so she is trapped in her basic, rundown apartment.

The director's commentary states that this initial section was originally significantly longer, but they cut it down based on playtester's feedback in order to progress the story. Despite me being very experienced with these adventure games, I still got stuck there so it still seemed a very slow and frustrating start. There are definitely similar situations throughout the game.

One reason I found the initial section difficult was understanding what the Trance was, and what the "wetware gel" was. Latha remarks: "It's for connecting my brain's wetware to the external systems". Well, ok then. Wetware gel seems to be some kind of bio-electronic compound, and when placed on certain electronic systems, you can then communicate with the systems when you go into the Trance. Trance does not need an internet connection to interact with systems, but does to interact with others who are also in Trance. Puzzles with Latha throughout the game involved alternating between the real world and Trance.

I thought the game was good but there were a fair few annoyances in the final sections of the game. There are some really dark sections which makes it easy to miss interactable objects. One of which was positioned slightly below the commentary icons so was even more obscured.

There was another section where you use night-vision goggles to find the position of a guard behind a wall, but you see him behind the wrong wall. It threw me off because I thought I had to uncover this mystery person who should be trapped in a crate if he really was on the other side of that wall.

There was a weight puzzle where you had to work out Latha's weight. It turns out she weighs 45kg but isn't that the weight of a child?

In one dialogue exchange, your character tells someone with missing memories that they were in prison - to which they respond: "I was in prison!?" Then in the next dialogue when she remarks on their location being like a prison, he responds "I know prison all too well".

I really liked how the story unfolded but the game is held back by a few pacing issues, a couple of unclear objectives, and a few obvious errors.

This is one of the only games I purchased this year without any research beyond reading a few lines off Steam. I saw the style, I saw the genre, and I knew I needed to play this. Turns out, it was one the best games I played in 2015. If you’re a fan of William Gibson and enjoy point-and-click adventures, then you already own this game. The care and love put into the world bleeds through every pixel, environment, and character. Some have taken strikes against the game noting its length. Hey, my favourite song is under 4 minutes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t play it at least once a week. I often enjoy games that seem to leave us wanting more rather than just adding in gameplay or mechanics to artificially lengthen the experience. Some of the puzzles are overly challenging and a few of lines of dialogue may feel awkward, but for those who are looking for awesome Cyberpunk, this is where it’s at.