Telengard
Arcane
Compromise. I'll write a review of it and utterly trash it. Problem solved.So... In other words you think we should drop everything and do things because you asked us so nicely. Right, right, got you. Well, I'll be cancelling my free time on your account, sure thing.Why don't you write a review for it, friend? Or are you ready to pay one of us for our valuable time playing and reviewing the game of a completely different genre, for a completely different subsection of the site?Anybody pls do invisible inc review..So far this game murders witcher 3 retarded hunt
Rpgcodex is a place where we dont write reviews but get butthurt and write about objective standards of RPGs.
You know, it sounds like it's a good thing that nobody on the staff has reviewed Invisible Inc, since clearly we don't even know basic shit like genre distinctions.
Wouldnt it be nice to write reviews on request rather than discussing about objective standards or are u saying you write reviews only to yourself ..so then whats the point of a review then??
There you are, now Codex has a review of Invisible Inc. All is now right in your world.REVIEW OF INVISIBLE INC
by Telengard*
Where to begin with something like Invisible Inc by Klei? A cyberpunk, turn-based, roguelike stealth game. Just it's genre is hard enough to define.
But I'll start with the absolute weakest part of the game - the story. I did mention that the game was cyberpunk, but other than the presence of AIs, megacorporations, and the art style, you wouldn't know it was cyberpunk. This isn't so much a cyberpunk story as it is a cyberpunk setting. The sotry isn't grounded in cyberpunk, mostly because the story isn't grounded at all.
Now, someone over there at Klei can setup a good scene and can really write. But that happens in isolation from the rest of the work, and the overall story has never been Klei's strong suit in any of their games, from Shank to Mark of the Ninja. Their stories usually have heaps of style (which covers up a lot of the overall mess), but the structure and meaning and development and, well, everything except the style is usually just that - a mess.
Normally in a Klei game, that issue is so easily overlooked not only because of the style, but because the game's story is also evoked in lots of small, exciting ways outside of the usual narrative structure. Take, for instance, Don't Starve. Each of the characters says different things when they look at the various interactable objects in the game world, and those sayings all speak to character. But even better, the changes to beards and clothing as civilization deteriorates and then gets rebuilt tells a little tale all by itself purely in visuals. That's one of Klei's strengths, and why I say someone over there knows how to write.
However, for Invisible Inc, Klei chose to throw all that away. There is almost no personality outside of their artwork to your two chosen avatar-agents. When entering a level, one of them is randomly chosen to say an empty, throwaway (and oft repeated) line, and that is all there is to them beyond their one-paragraph dossiers. These agents start with unique skills and equipment, but "unique" is a relative term here. Just about everything any agent has can be reproduced through various items purchased and found during the game. Thus, the agents don't play different, don't talk different, don't act different - don't really act at all. They are more like dolls that you get to play with and mod rather than actual characters in a story. But then, they are not really characters either. They have no role other than as the Player's physical avatars in the gameworld.
Yet even stranger, your enemies aren't characters either. During the game, you spend all your time fighting a number of evil corporations. But in the end, every one of these corporations remains faceless. There is a dossier on each one, if you care to go into a separate section of the game and read it, but it doesn't really matter if you do, because you will only ever interact with those corporations on the most superficial level. This, despite the fact that there's ample space available for developing the character of the enemy. After all, a speech is given between every mission - ample opportunity for developing the character of the enemy.
Only, it never happens. The corporations have no place in the world beyond their security being foils to your goals. Neither do take any action during the game after the opening scene. They are not even a part of the story as it develops, being almost wholly written out. They are a non-entity. As much a non-entity as random bandits in the wildernesses of an RPG.
There are actually only three real characters in the story, despite the much larger headcount. There's the head of Invisible Inc, her hacker friend, and the AI you're trying to save. That's it. None of those are characters under your control. Thus, the only characters in the game are two background characters and the AI, and of those three, only the AI gets any character development time. The other two (who do most of the talking in the game), they are utilized mostly as info dumps in between missions, explaining the current situation to you. Which is something that I would even find acceptable, if these two characters were utilized in this way as a kind of introduction to the mission and/or the world, filling in details that the story sorely lacks.
But, no. Instead, Invisible Inc has taken the line of the popamole, and the only thing the speeches are used for is rah rah, you're doing good speeches; a remind about how super serious the situation you are in is and that the clock is ticking, and a restatement of your goal for the umpteenth time. In all of the seven mission briefings, only two key pieces of information are introduced. Everything else is just filler.
The only real plot movement in the story exists in the intro and outro videos. And the ending video is telegraphed so much, you already know every moment of it before you ever see it. It's a rather thin gruel to hang so much talking on. Let me restate that for emphasis - It's plenty of story to build a game around, but it's not enough story to build so much conversation around. There's just not enough meat, not enough action, for as much jawing as gets done in the game.
Now, a bunch of people's reactions are going to be - story doesn't matter, 'secially when gameplay is separate and is so good. But, that's bunk. When a game spends so much of its few hours running time and budget on a voiced and sometimes cartooned storyline, then story naturally becomes a major part of the game experience. And as a major part of the game experience, it's automatically a major part of the core experience you will have while playing the game. Once it's in, it's in. And it's too bad the ball is really dropped here by Klei, because whenever that story is playing, this game is stinking up the joint.
Still, there's the gameplay, you say. Yet even the gameplay is a letdown. And mostly that has to do with what may be a familiar modern "innovation" - releasing unfinished games. Like the early days of another Klei title, Don't Starve, there isn't a lot of variety yet in Invisible Inc. The game is fully playable, stable, and finishable. Yet at the same time, it's kind of empty. Like Don't Starve, Klei has plans to flesh things out with free patches (and probably some paid), but in its current state, the game is like a very stable and polished beta version. These unfinished gamma release games are becoming ever more common these days, and Klei is much more honorable than most other developers doing the same thing. But still, it is that same old unfinished feeling.
Like a lot of roguelikes, Invisible Inc is short. But unlike a lot of roguelikes, there isn't yet a lot of variety here in that short span. Because here, every level is an office building, every office building uses the same wall paneling and basic structure, every room in that level is filled with much the same common furnishings no matter where in the world you go, from China to France to Brazil. There are very few enemy types, and you may not even see every type in a run. There is little difference from one room to the next within a level, as each room is populated with objects of the same type in the exact same way.
So, to sum up, what you've got on your hands here with Invisible Inc is a repetitive, shallow story with currently repetitive, shallow level design that is filled with repetitive, shallow enemies.
But now, then there's the gameplay. The gameplay itself - that has some great highs. When sneaking around office buildings, dragging around a prisoner you're interrogating, security hot on your heels. There are great moments here, the likes of which are rare to find in games these days. However, there are just as many terrible lows. And many of those lows are caused by the randomized levels.
Randomized levels and roguelikes go hand-in-hand. But randomization can cause issues when it's not carefully controlled. And with Invisible Inc, there's some control, this is a polished gamma release. Yet still, it is noticeably not full controlled randomization. And nowhere is this fact more evident than when you examine the levels themselves.
Game balance is often a problem with randomized levels, but as long as it falls within a certain framework of difficulty, people usually accept the weakness, in exchange for the benefits that randomization brings, such as the game playing differently each time, adding to replayability. People accept that sometimes with randomization a harder level will precede an easier, instead of the normal vice versa. But they will only accept that to a degree, and things are sometimes way off here. Such as an early level I had generated where three enemies were in a room right off the entrance - a room that I didn't have to go into. And then a fourth enemy lay elsewhere, staring down a dead-end hallway. Finished that level without interacting with the enemy even once - totally challengless. Or another generated level, where three enemies stood one right after the other in a line behind this long, two-square-wide pathway in a three-square-wide hallway - their backs all to me. And that's not even on Easy. I flipped it to Easy for a bit for review purposes, just to see what was what. And a number of enemies were standing facing the wall, or were on patrol ending their turn facing one wall in a room, only to turn around and march over to the opposite wall and stand watching it for the next turn, and back and forth. Now, that's Easy. Dumb Easy.
And the opposite can hold true, of course, where a level is hugely more challenging than the one that comes after it. Such as a level I had that was a hugely-long, winding corridor, with both exit and entrance next to each other at one end and the goal room on the other end. Not a problem in and of itself, but consider this is a game with a time limit alarm level ever raising. Even going flat out, ignoring all safes, no stealth, getting from one end of the map and all the way back before the alarm was already at peak was very nearly impossibility. Try to do it stealthy without running everywhere, and the alarm is automatically maxed before you ever have a chance to get out.
Such issues will, of course, probably eventually be ironed out in one later patch or another. But their presence only adds to the general unfinished feeling that permeates the game. Add in enemies that have visible sight cones and really basic patrol routes, and there are very few surprises in the game. Then cap it with windowless offices, small rooms, and isolated areas, and you have a stealther that is often more puzzler than strategy game. There's still buying equipment and upgrades and the risk/reward decision for fully exploring and looting a level vs increasing threats from the automatically-raising alarm level. But it's only when you drop the ball or when the enemy gets a scanner on you that the game actually comes out of its puzzly feel and into stealth and strategy. And I was always glad when it did. Those are the moments when the game shines. Unfortunately, with the way the randomization works, you can make an entire run without ever having a single one of those moments.
The action is all about turn-based movement across a grid. Every character can move so many squares each turn, that number being upgradeable through the purchase of various augments. However, despite being turn-based and having varied movement points, this is not AP style turn-based gameplay. Everyone gets one full move and one attack each turn, though as with movement speed, they can alter this to a certain degree through augments. What this means is, the enemy move on the turn along a fixed patrol route with the vision cones visible, you learn their pattern, and you send your agents around them by hiding behind office furniture and moving when security's vision cones lie elsewhere. Augments and equipment can alter this gameplay a great deal, from cloaks briefly making a character invisible to gunning someone down with a 2-shot rifle. But the core gameplay remains hiding behind office furniture and peeking around corners.
The tension that builds around moving from cover to cover during these moments of safety is often very exciting. But that excitement does wane due to a lack of variety. The game is in sore need of some change-ups doing a run. Just sticking with the office theme - great rooms, lobbies, interior windows, metal detectors, car parks. Areas which would not only have unique graphics, but more importantly would make you change up your playstyle in order to meet the unique challenges involved. Just a slight break in the routine. Or even break out of the theme, since corporations don't just own offices, by any means.
The most well-developed part of Invisible Inc is the equipment and mods. These are numerous, nicely detailed, and sometimes game-changing. Unfortunately, most of the really interesting stuff are rare drops. So, hitting every store available in the game and even going on special store runs, I still had seen a couple items only once after a number of successful runs. Thus, most runs are encountering the same-old same-old, rather than offering you opportunities to look into different playstyles. To explain further, during a run in FTL, you probably won't have an opportunity to find or buy every possible item and weapon, but you will have at least a couple of opportunities to purchase something that will affect how you have to play. Cloaks and bombs, lasers and drones. During a run of Invisible Inc, you may never find any such changing items, only numerous copies of the same basic items you already have. I once found three basic needles on the same level, and cracked the store on that level, only to find the store selling two more of them. And then I went to the next level, and found two more. Isolated instance, yes, but similar things happened on more than one occasion, even if not quite that stark.
Once again, the game is in need of more variety. This time, variety in items. Which seems a strange thing to say, after saying there is a lot of equipment in the game. Except that it is not variety itself that is lacking, but variety of function. If there were more items with unique attributes, then it would be more likely that you would find one during a run, and that would in turn give you the opportunity to open up a different way to play to win. Because if that path never opens up, then you're trekking through the same office corridors, facing the same enemies, and using the exact same equipment and tactics you used a thousand times before. Which is not really what roguelikes should be about. If the developers want to play over and over, then there should be variety to support you in your multiple runs., allowing you to explore the same small amount of content in different ways.
And for Invisible Inc, one day there will probably be that variety, once Klei gets done adding content through patches and DLC. They have shown themselves to be good about fulfilling such promises, with games such as Don't Starve. In its current state, though, Invisible Inc is a very bare-bones game with a huge amount of polish and a slick interface. Polish is good. But variety is important to, especially in a game only a few hours long. So, if you're interested in the game, I would recommend holding off purchasing until the gamma release period if over and the full game is available. That way you'll know what the final product looks like when you plunk your money down.
Finally, it should be mentioned that, across the internet, Invisible Inc has been drawing a lot of comparisons with Ye Olde Shadow Watch. And right so. They are both rouguelike, turn-based stealthers with alarm levels and small teams of agents who go out and sneak through a bunch of office buildings within a near future framework, all capped by one final large level with extra work involved that must be completed under a harsh time limit. Of course, Shadow Watch actually has a story instead of a bookend, and theirs is even a roguelike story that changes each time it is played, and it evolves partly depending on your choices. Then it's team members that have much different abilities and thus actually have to be played differently, and thus you have to play each level differently depending on what team you choose to assemble for it. There is variety there, which invisible Inc is lacking. Of course, in Shadow Watch, you can safely eliminate the enemy, so that game doesn't have that same tension thing going for it on those occasions when you're being tracked by security in Invisible Inc. But in its current half-finished state, that's the one and only thing Invisible Inc has on its progenitor.
* You didn't think I was joking, did you?
