A Cyberpunk Loot Shooter Lost in the Shadows
As a genre, I’m getting pretty tired of the whole cyberpunk thing. However, it appears that I am out of step with the whole video game industry who still seem to be in love with the idea.
At least that’s seemingly the case for Megame and their game, CyberCorp.
Billed as a “brutal, fast paced isometric Loot Shooter in a cyberpunk world”, and claiming inspiration from Destiny and The Division, the question I’ll attempt to answer is whether it succeeds in matching its lofty aspirations, or whether it turns out to be another also ran. Are you ready to go to a cyber shaded future, again?
Lost in Translation
Being inspired by massive games like The Division and Destiny, both very good looking games who set their stall out with huge 3D worlds, you might expect CyberCorp to do something similar. Well, you’d be not only mistaken but perhaps even disappointed to learn that this game has none of those features. Featuring an isometric camera, and small, tight areas in which to engage in combat, this is about as far from Destiny as it is possible to get.
Granted, it all looks nice enough, if a little generic and strangely detail light, but it very much comes across as just a general impression of corridors. The enemies that you fight are likewise all much of a muchness, either being melee or gun based, and they all appear to have been cloned at some kind of bad guy production facility. All in all, the graphics do the job, and the camera manages to show you what is going on to a large degree, so it basically works.
Sound is another area where CyberCorp kinda works. While the story is presented in (badly written) text boxes, the rest of the sounds are battle related, with gunfire and swishing swords uppermost. Again, it does what it says on the tin without ever straying into exciting or interesting territory.
A Threadbare Narrative
Story? Yes, there is one of those, but in keeping with the theme that is developing, it is light and mostly absent.
We work for a company called CyberCorp, and in our hot little hands is the most dangerous weapon ever made, apparently: a remote control combat shell. Basically, we are controlling a robot as it runs around the levels shooting and chopping at anything that looks at us cross eyed. We begin by trying to track a gun runner, and then things spiral from there, with cleaning up the entire town the main goal. For that to happen, you’ll need to be able to stick things out…
Lonely Looter Shooter
Gameplay-wise and the first thing to address is the co-op option that is given prominence on the Xbox store page. Normally here I’d write about my experiences of playing the game with others, but sadly this has proved problematic, as during my testing period I’ve not managed to find a single co-op partner ready to play the game. It may have the best netcode in the whole world, but with no one else playing, I have no way of knowing. Hell, even with cross-play turned on, it appears the future is a lonely place.
Moving on to the solo game then (and why couch co-op isn’t an option I do not know) and here the news is a bit better. The levels all have an objective, each of which seems to follow a similar pattern: get to where we are going, get to the objective, then survive long enough for the random thing we are meant to be doing to complete. It’s like surviving while Ghost unlocks a door in Destiny, for those who know.
Survive for long enough, the level will be complete and we get to go home for tea and medals.
Gear Up for Battle
One interesting mechanic is the gear that pops up during level exploration. Being billed as a Looter Shooter, you’d hope and expect that there would be new gear available as you go along, and here the news is positive. There is a lot of different gear to collect in CyberCorp, and different rarities as well, all the way up to Exotic level stuff. Finding and equipping this gear changes the way that the game plays a bit, and while the correct answer to a problem usually remains “shoot it or hit it”, at least with different gear you can tailor your loadout to your preferences.
A Generic Shooter with Lofty Aspirations
And that’s about it for CyberCorp, to be honest. It runs at a decent pace, it has lots of gear to find, and while the comparisons to the games that are claimed as source material are somewhat stretched, they are just about there. The problem is that CyberCorp is just not interesting or particularly fun to play, and in a games market as crowded as the one on Xbox, a game has to have something stand out about it to push through.
CyberCorp, sadly, gets lost in the background noise and ultimately fails to deliver anything exciting.
Important Links
Loot, Shoot & Reboot Society! CyberCorp Unleashes Isometric Mayhem on Xbox & PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/loot-shoot-reboot-society-cybercorp-unleashes-isometric-mayhem-on-xbox-pc/
Buy CyberCorp on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/CyberCorp/9P814JNRHPFC
