The site’s hosted glimpses of peaceful games, unexpected titles, and hot upcoming projects throughout the week, but I’m winding down the summer’s previews with a little sci-fi. Luckily, I got a chance to play two of the indie realm’s most looked-forward-to games in the genre. Replaced appeared last week for its first ever hands-on opportunity, though I was equality excited to revisit the vibrant world of Hyper Light Breaker.
Replaced
I sat down with a choice before me. Controller in hand and ready to play one of the industry’s most anticipated games, time became a foe. It seemed, with the appointment length, I had three hands-on experiences to pick from, but really only enough time for one — maybe two.
The options before me boiled down to: combat, story setup, or mid-experience gameplay. Instead of resigning myself to missing one or more aspects of Replaced, I made my mind up to power through all three. No one could stand in my way.
Except a big, shielded baddie. He was totally happy to stand in my way as I jumped into the combat sandbox. The first thing I picked up on was the game’s heaviness. My actions felt weighty and my swings had momentum behind them.
It made the encounter with endless enemies feel somehow like the stakes were higher, like the hits would hurt. And they did, but I gave as good as I got. Especially when I’d fill a special move meter that, when triggered, let me pin an opponent to the ground, break his arm, and shoot him in the back.
However, humanoid foes turned out to be a lot less deadly than a nemesis I encountered in the prologue: Logs. Stupid logs. Before I had the displeasure of meeting the wooden obstacles with my face, I’d been working a typical shift at Phoenix Laboratory. My AI assistant and I chatted on topics like loss and emotionality which highlighted just how inhuman the seemingly intelligent voice was.
Then everything went wrong. The building came under attack, catastrophically fusing my artificial companion into my brain. After rising from the shock, I had a mortal body, but was no longer human. There was no time to think on that though, as the structure around me was beginning to crumble and hostile, armed forces began to target me.
I ran. Bullets whizzed past me as I made a death defying leap off a bridge… toward the game’s most deadly adversaries. I’m being a little unfair on the logs because my repeating deaths in this area seem to be the real fault of the game’s lack of clear communication.
It seems it wants me simply to just keep running at the fastest possible speed — jumping over hurdles as I went. That makes sense on paper, I’m an unarmed scientist after all. But in the game I kept wondering if I could try to hide or try to hit back or even slow down to avoid potential danger ahead. Hopefully, my struggles in this area provide good feedback for the team because having to restart the obstacle-course-like levels over stole the tension from the scene and replaced it with frustration.
Though my setbacks cut into my time, I still had a few moments to explore the world as I jumped into a later part of the game. Tempest — obviously an ally and a rebel — and I are set to go to the matriarch after a mission that royally messed our car up. I walked through city streets suffocating with destitution. Almost everyone I spoke with had a story and needed something from me — quests I would have to put off until a later date.
I reached the meeting Tempest had set up with the town’s matriarch, but she is anything but enthusiastic about the trigger-happy fighter’s plan. He presents to her a broken gun, a weapon he claims will change everything. However, the leader shames him out of the room with reminders of how he previously wiped out his entire squad with his recklessness. she then turns to warn me against participating in any more of his schemes. Replaced‘s demo ends here, but I’m fairly certain our protagonist doesn’t listen to the matriarch’s wisdom.
Hyper Light Breaker
Sitting across from friend and Game Informer video editor Alex Van Aken, I lamented this new slice of Hyper Light Breaker’s gameplay didn’t include multiplayer. However, I’m soon cheered by jumping into the world and discovering a new character to play. My last encounter with the game restricted me to a single protagonist, but now I had three to pick from. It wasn’t really a choice, however, after I learned one of the possibilities was a huggable, humanoid raccoon. I took a long minute praising the cuteness of my character before setting out.
The demo this time around was much more directed, making for an even better showing. I was told to kill an elite (a slime in a sea of slimes – and it wasn’t even the largest slime, so you know it’s mean) and then the area’s big boss for an arena showdown.
I’m getting ahead of myself though, because everyone knows that before you take on baddies of this magnitude, you need to go shopping. Unlike in my earlier experience, a few of the city’s vendors had opened up shop. The weapon dealer traded me a legendary sword and gun, the store across from them sold passive abilities – the one I gravitated toward increased my blade damage. I’m sorry to report, though, that the ramen vendor hadn’t opened yet. However, I’m assured it’s going to be the most important of all the merchants in this overgrown futuristic town.
After death, I was also able to stop by a decoder and pay to reveal various story elements from memories I’d picked up on my adventures. The one I was able to decode showed stilled images of a wolf tearfully watching a city get wiped from the planet in a flash. The creature then cover its eyes to avoid seeing a world where such things happen.
During my run, I came up into the world via an elevator platform, instead of simply appearing like last time. My guide set me off toward the elite slime closest to me. My raccoon’s gun – the fancy one I’d purchased – took a moment to charge before unleashing a devastating blast. It was great for a bunch of closely packed slimes, but not so great for highly agile enemies (we will get to that later). My sword cut the air with pleasing arcs and I never minded running out of ammo, as that meant a chance for an up-close blade dance. One of my new abilities caused a glowing rectangle to erupt from the ground, destroying everything in its path. Combat felt even better than I’d remembered.
Despite that, traversal was my uncontested favorite part of the demo. There are so many ways to feel slick. Dashing, hoverboarding (complete with tricks), and gliding all make getting around good, plain fun. Plus, bundling them together makes for wild results. To get to the boss arena, for example, I needed to do some platforming. So, I took advantage of an environmental jump pad and while in there air, I let loose my glider. I aimed straight into a rockface. The moment I hit rock, I triggered my dash to run up the wall and — if that wasn’t enough — I still had one last jump available to the make it to the top of the cliff.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t as successful in the arena as I was just outside of it. My giant foe cut me to ribbons nearly immediately. It turns out just standing in one place trying to charge a gun while an agile superpower launches toward you isn’t a great idea. No matter. I’m going to hang on to the belief that I would have done better than Van Aken if this Hyper Light Breaker gameplay had included multiplayer.
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