Posted June 17, 2016
Dex
Wow, what a surprise hit! I bought the game on Tuesday and completed it three days later, because it was so addictive. I actually interrupted my playthrough of Bioshock 2 for it, even though I was enjoying that, too. And although I had Dex on my general wishlist for some time, I hardly knew anything about it before the GOG release. But it was awesome! Very original and unique experience, despite borrowing from all kinds of game genres and cyberpunk tropes.
While playing it, I felt strongly reminded of the recent Shadowrun RPGs, regarding setting, atmosphere and music, it came quite close to what I loved about these titles, with the difference that it's all in 2D and that there is no turn-based combat. Instead there is real-time brawling, blocking, dodge-rolling (or a bit of shooting as well, if you prefer that, although to me it felt like the weaker option), some platforming with jumping and climbing and twin-stick-shooter hacking. None of those elements are particularly outstanding, but they work well enough and I agree with some other reviewer here on GOG who wrote that this game is more than the sum of its part. All these things together, combined with the RPG elements like quests, leveling up, skill point distribution, choices and consequences, and the option to solve quests in different ways, or approach situation by different means (melee, ranged combat, stealth, hacking, dialogue) made Dex a lot of fun to me. Not only can you try to sneak past enemies or take them down from behind instead of facing them head on, you can also hack cameras or turrets to work for you, or use a stun gun etc. (a bit similar to Deus Ex or BioShock). And while there is a main plot (which isn't that long in itself), the game is not all that linear, you're free to explore, take on the many side quests or just go wherever you want to go, so there was never a moment when I didn't know what to do next. I didn't track the time I spent with it, but apparantly the average playtime is about 15 hours. With the current sale price on GOG, I felt that was an absolute steal.
While I was quite amazed about the overall quality of this indie game, Dex can be a bit rough at the edges at times, too, though. Some minor things were very rare occurrences and just about lacking the last bit of polish (like displaying a prompt what key to use for interaction after you were required to interact with something for the first time; or failing to explain the red circle shields in Augmented Reality - you have to destroy them by shooting at them repeatedly, but contrary to other targets they lack a health bar, so that's not self-explanatory; or one time an enemy suddenly lacked his head for a moment or two), others are bit more problematic (like a certain confusion what platforms you can stand on and which ones are just background, or enemies incidentally lurking behind area transition doors with no means for you to detect them or defend yourself against them before they hit you - fortunately you can usually save anywhere outside of combat, so you can experiment with both of the above without losing progress by death - savescumming is your friend here!; also, combat can continue while you're frozen in dialogue, but that only happened to me in one spot - usually NPCs and enemies are separated in different rooms).
The writing was a little bit over the top and weird for my taste at times, but on the other hand I also kind of liked that the characters had their own strange lingo, it fit the cyberpunk setting well enough, and the characters were memorable. The voiceactors were quite alright, but often they could have sped things up a little bit. Dramatic pauses aren't as effective in a videogame where the complete text is already visible for reading ... Sometimes the backtracking was a bit much, especially in the beginning when I often went back to the only free focus recharge station to regain focus for hacking (similar to health in Augmented Reality). The quick travel map helped with that, but during that time I still wished there were more and better ways to regain focus (there are consumables for that, too, but not a lot). And the overall balance in the game was maybe a bit off. At first I thought combat was quite difficult and dangerous, but as soon as I bought the health regeneration augmentation, it suddenly turned into a cakewalk. Then, at the end it got rather hard again, but for all the wrong reasons, like a screen full of enemies with stun guns or sections where you couldn't use any of your powers or consumables acquired during the game. And the twin-stick-shooter mini-games overstayed their welcome a bit towards the ending. The conclusion of the story was also a bit messy and abrupt.
So, no, the game is not perfect. But despite the issues mentioned above it came quite close to perfection for me, and I didn't expect to enjoy it that much nevertheless. Even those more serious issues listed above seem like nitpicking to me when compared to the fun I had. I just loved playing it!
TL:DR
Buy it!!! :P
Wow, what a surprise hit! I bought the game on Tuesday and completed it three days later, because it was so addictive. I actually interrupted my playthrough of Bioshock 2 for it, even though I was enjoying that, too. And although I had Dex on my general wishlist for some time, I hardly knew anything about it before the GOG release. But it was awesome! Very original and unique experience, despite borrowing from all kinds of game genres and cyberpunk tropes.
While playing it, I felt strongly reminded of the recent Shadowrun RPGs, regarding setting, atmosphere and music, it came quite close to what I loved about these titles, with the difference that it's all in 2D and that there is no turn-based combat. Instead there is real-time brawling, blocking, dodge-rolling (or a bit of shooting as well, if you prefer that, although to me it felt like the weaker option), some platforming with jumping and climbing and twin-stick-shooter hacking. None of those elements are particularly outstanding, but they work well enough and I agree with some other reviewer here on GOG who wrote that this game is more than the sum of its part. All these things together, combined with the RPG elements like quests, leveling up, skill point distribution, choices and consequences, and the option to solve quests in different ways, or approach situation by different means (melee, ranged combat, stealth, hacking, dialogue) made Dex a lot of fun to me. Not only can you try to sneak past enemies or take them down from behind instead of facing them head on, you can also hack cameras or turrets to work for you, or use a stun gun etc. (a bit similar to Deus Ex or BioShock). And while there is a main plot (which isn't that long in itself), the game is not all that linear, you're free to explore, take on the many side quests or just go wherever you want to go, so there was never a moment when I didn't know what to do next. I didn't track the time I spent with it, but apparantly the average playtime is about 15 hours. With the current sale price on GOG, I felt that was an absolute steal.
While I was quite amazed about the overall quality of this indie game, Dex can be a bit rough at the edges at times, too, though. Some minor things were very rare occurrences and just about lacking the last bit of polish (like displaying a prompt what key to use for interaction after you were required to interact with something for the first time; or failing to explain the red circle shields in Augmented Reality - you have to destroy them by shooting at them repeatedly, but contrary to other targets they lack a health bar, so that's not self-explanatory; or one time an enemy suddenly lacked his head for a moment or two), others are bit more problematic (like a certain confusion what platforms you can stand on and which ones are just background, or enemies incidentally lurking behind area transition doors with no means for you to detect them or defend yourself against them before they hit you - fortunately you can usually save anywhere outside of combat, so you can experiment with both of the above without losing progress by death - savescumming is your friend here!; also, combat can continue while you're frozen in dialogue, but that only happened to me in one spot - usually NPCs and enemies are separated in different rooms).
The writing was a little bit over the top and weird for my taste at times, but on the other hand I also kind of liked that the characters had their own strange lingo, it fit the cyberpunk setting well enough, and the characters were memorable. The voiceactors were quite alright, but often they could have sped things up a little bit. Dramatic pauses aren't as effective in a videogame where the complete text is already visible for reading ... Sometimes the backtracking was a bit much, especially in the beginning when I often went back to the only free focus recharge station to regain focus for hacking (similar to health in Augmented Reality). The quick travel map helped with that, but during that time I still wished there were more and better ways to regain focus (there are consumables for that, too, but not a lot). And the overall balance in the game was maybe a bit off. At first I thought combat was quite difficult and dangerous, but as soon as I bought the health regeneration augmentation, it suddenly turned into a cakewalk. Then, at the end it got rather hard again, but for all the wrong reasons, like a screen full of enemies with stun guns or sections where you couldn't use any of your powers or consumables acquired during the game. And the twin-stick-shooter mini-games overstayed their welcome a bit towards the ending. The conclusion of the story was also a bit messy and abrupt.
So, no, the game is not perfect. But despite the issues mentioned above it came quite close to perfection for me, and I didn't expect to enjoy it that much nevertheless. Even those more serious issues listed above seem like nitpicking to me when compared to the fun I had. I just loved playing it!
TL:DR
Buy it!!! :P
Post edited June 18, 2016 by Leroux
