The future certainly bleak no matter where we see or read it. Whilst arguably, global warming is the current “hot topic” (excuse the pun), there are other factors that screams out “Save our Planet”. We should be saying “Save us from destroy us” instead. Regardless, developer Chernov Vyacheslav played upon this “bleak” future and used a plot of a worldwide water crisis. The year is 2039 and the global population is sitting around 12.4 billion. That’s a very tall “prediction” to say the least as the World Population forecast stating in the year 2030 it will be approximately 8.6 billion and 9.8 billion for 2050. Whatever the case maybe, the backstory plays upon the lack of fresh water and mega corp SICON holds domination over it. Where you come in, playing as a mercenary, is hired to check things out with regards to SICON as the world is currently in a state of emergency.
In accordance to the Steam’s game page blurb, Westboro’s gameplay is an “Indie Point and Click action RPG with a unique real-time combat system”. Well, yours truly begs to differ as I cannot see much RPG nor the “unique real-time combat system”. With regards to RPG, there’s extremely small amounts of character development and zero stats management. The only “RPG” element is skill points allocation and there are just a handful of conversation trees to be concerned about. The vast majority of dialogues are simply a couple of sentences at most. Granted, there are choices made that dictates the game’s three endings however it’s still nothing to boast about.
At the start of the game, you need to select one of the three characters being Valkyrie, Recon and Spectre. Because there’s no manual (or lack thereof), it fails to explain the differences between all three characters hence it’s more of a “try before you buy” type of thing. I have played the game twice and choose Spectre and Valkyrie. Both have the same set of skills however it seems that the cooldown times for certain skills are much slower in comparison to the other two character. For example, the hit points regeneration skill for Spectre is somewhat faster than Valkyrie however it’s still mind-bogglingly slow regardless. That goes for all skills’ cooldown. Use them once then wait for eons before using it again or enter a new level.
About the second part of the “blurb” being the “unique real time combat system”, there’s nothing unique about it. Some examples of this “real time combat system” are Fallout Tactics, Cold Zero and even Diablo (and its many clones). The controls are a little clunky as sometimes you shoot the ground accidently as the dead body hasn’t “faded” out of existence yet. Also, being an isometric viewpoint makes it a little more difficult to judge corners. Granted that when going around a corner, the wall will “fade away” so you can see the “other side” however that can be very detrimental when viewing where the security camera is pointing at (as it fades along with the wall). So, expect a lot of triggered “alarms”.
I guess there’s nothing wrong triggering alarms as you’ll get a bucketload of enemies charging towards your location meaning experience points fodder however, because ammo is limited and the enemies seems like a never-ending respawning machine, it’s generally not a good idea to trigger any alarms. And about enemies respawning, this one is a real pain in the rear side as the “patrol” always respawn if you wipe that group out. Also, there are some maps that no matter who you kill, they’ll get replaced almost immediately. The only way to know whether the enemies respawn is a matter of trial and error; yet that will cost you precious ammo. So, you have this dilemma of experience points gained versus ammo wasting.
The enemy’s AI all have one thing in common – they will charge / shoot at you regardless. What this means that sometimes the AI will tumble over each other or even shoot each other because the “victim” just happens to be in front of the firing line – no mercy for all. I guess it can be quite comical seeing them tumbling over each other or even kill a fellow comrade just to get a piece of you. And speaking of combat, the melee attack from Spectre and Valkyrie is nothing short of brutal – almost instant death as the first kick knocks them down (yes “them down”, if you manage to kick one down and he just happen to be in a pack of, say three, all three will fall down – don’t ask why – just accept) then the second attack stomps their head thus “explodes”. Only the heavily armoured enemies need a good stomping before dying into a bloody mess. And it saves ammo too. Yet Recon cannot perform this stomping affect to my understanding.
Inventory management is something that needs improving. There are no options to auto categorise them and managing them to fit into a “net package” is painful. You can rotate them however it requires extra space to perform the “rotation” – meaning if your item is four squares in length, to rotate it requires a space of sixteen squares (as it literally requires all the space to rotate it from vertical to horizontal and vice versa). In addition to this, there are no options to sell your unused items (as cash is a rare commodity). Any unused items you need to drop them.
The mini map, whilst useful for the most of the parts, similar to the inventory management, needs improvement. Your icon in the map is not in its exact position hence requires some educated guesswork to where you are. If playing on easy or medium mode, there is a blue dot indicating an item to collect, whether to ammo, cash etc. The hard difficulty doesn’t have this feature and finding these items is almost like looking for a needle in the haystack. A way around this is to adjust the gamma (lighting) however you really shouldn’t have to go that far just to collect items in the game.
There are other variants with regards to combat that’s worth mentioning. Most items have alternate ammo types, some have built in flashlight (for better aim) and your character can couch for better accuracy. Also, there are a decent array of weaponry however, as mentioned before, the stomping manoeuvre is brutal as (except for Recon). And a final note to this, the “play dead” manoeuvre is a blast to muck around. It does absolutely nothing in combat however it does provide entertainment, especially if you perform a running start then “play dead” through a window and fall off the map (literally). Yeah, and you need to restart the game – still worth the effort.
Visually the game is pleasing to look at. It certainly does display the “dystopian” feel with the obligatory rain from time to time. The colour palettes are mainly fifty shades of grey (I have to say that) however there are splashes of colour like the flashing red light from the top of the police car and from the graffiti displayed about to name a few. There are a lack of voice acting in this game however this can be forgiven considering it’s made from an indie company. I prefer it this way than listening to very poor voice acting any day. However, a million kudos goes to the soundtrack as it’s truly beautiful to hear – ominous yet very effective for this game as it sets the mood for a dystopian world.
Like always, depending upon your gameplay style (run and shoot vs stealth) will dictate the completion time. During my two playthroughs, I have knocked off twenty-four hours. However, I’m known to be some sort of a perfectionist so I believe, on average it should take around ten or so hours. With a selling price of around $6AUD it’s very good value. There are also seventeen achievements to earn however you cannot earn them during your first playthrough as there are three of them that requires to complete the game with all three characters. Yet there are also some that requires to beat the game without dying and on hard difficulty at the same time and one that requires playing Valkyrie. I have played it twice and that was enough and earned eleven out of seventeen. Also, there are five steam cards to collect and all of them are pretty average at best.
So, what it all boils down to is the concept of a role-playing game and the advertisement of being a “unique real time combat system”. To summarise, in accordance to Wikipedia (just to name a single source), a role-playing game controls the action of the main character in a well-defined world with narrative elements, player character development, complexity, replayability and immersion. Of course, that’s a tall ask for any developers making a cRPG especially an indie company. Westboro doesn’t have most of this at all as it plays like an action game – that is, point and shoot for the most of the duration. Yet, because of the very cheap price tag, it tips on the favourable recommendation. Play it for the action and not for the “role-playing” and all should be fine.
6 / 10 (the price tag pretty much saves it)