Satellite Reign Review (Strange Century)
This is the spiritual sequel to Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, two fantastic Bullfrog Productions games from the 90's. These games dove headfirst into the idea of controlling cyborg agents in a futuristic cyberpunk city, free to roam and pick off targets (both people and locations) as you wish while using fun and interesting weapons, gadgets and body augments. This was designed by some of the same people behind those games, so it feels true to that original vision and you can tell it was a passion project.
It's a game that takes some planning and thought, and will reward you for having the right equipment and a good way in and out of your target. That being said, there's plenty of fun to be had when your plans go awry and you're thrust into the middle of a firefight, scrambling to find cover and figure out a new escape route as you're steadily becoming overwhelmed by enemies.
The atmosphere in this game is amazing, and stays consistent throughout the 4 main city areas you steadily progress through. The music is great, with some lovely ambient tracks for when you're moving through the city's open areas, and also some solid synthwave tracks for when combat begins.
There are some rough edges here and there, mostly to do with AI pathfinding occasionally getting stuck on objects (which can usually be fixed by blowing up said objects). The UI is a bit clunky when it comes to selecting which ability you want to use. There are hotkeys for each one regardless of the agent using it, which does help once you've played for a while and get to know them.
I think a lot of the complaints about the game come from people not understanding just how important the different abilities are that you can unlock. True, there's no pause mode or speed control available from the start, but your support character gets an ability that slows time, and this works well as a panic button to give you a moment to figure out what you want to do next without being shredded to pieces by gunfire.
The Hacker's Hijack ability is also crucial to the game's progression, because it's not just how you're able to upgrade the clone bodies you use for each of your agents... it's also how you can accumulate your own little army of soldiers and units to roll on through the tougher areas (and get through locked doors quickly and easily).
There are also plenty of ways to tackle each objective/location, so you almost always have more than one option and won't ever run into a "this sucks because I'm not equipped for it" situation.
Unfortunately, the devs closed up shop sometime after the release, so we're unlikely to ever see anything more from them (a sequel to this could have been amazing), but nonetheless, I recommend anyone who enjoys somewhat slower-paced action to give it a try. It's even got co-op play where you each take control of one or more agents, which I haven't tried but seems like an intriguing way to play a game like this.