Technomancer, The (Video Game)
Ted Hentschke
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Developed by Spiders
Published by Focus Home Interactive
Available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One
Rated M for Mature
This might make me kind of a hipster douche, but I kind of love Spiders. Perpetual purveyors of B-tier RPGs, their games are unfailingly just slightly above average. Their consistency is like clockwork, so you always know what you’re in for with a Spiders: clunky combat, inconsistent voice acting, poorly translated dialogue, superfluous mechanics and systems, and a large and complex narrative. Despite all the shortcomings, Spiders earnestly tries with a tenth of the budget and staff to make games that rival major RPGs like Dragon Age. They always fall short, but there’s a charm to their effort that shines through.
What’s more, they always make interesting worlds, well worth the asking price. Well, at least worth the sale asking price. My metrics on these things will forever be skewed by the glorious splendor of Steam sales. Even though Of Orcs and Men still retails for $30, it’ll always be that loveable $6 title I picked up when it was 80% off. Sure, the voice acting seemed to be done by several people all having different conversations with vastly disparate understandings of the English language, but the charm of the orcs being the good guys was more memorable than the entirety of Dragon Age 2.
So here comes The Technomancer, next in line of the Spider RPG legacy and sequel to 2013’s Mars War Logs. While taking place in the same world, the two aren’t directly related, so don’t feel like you have to go back and play Mars War Logs to know what is going on. The Technomancer explains basically all the backstory in the opening cutscene, and from there the charm in the narrative comes from fleshing out the world. It’s a fundamentally simple story. People now live on Mars, where apparently mankind can solve the “no breathable atmosphere” problem but not a water shortage. What little water there is is controlled by corporations, who serve more as nation states than businesses. These corporations fight over water, much to the dismay of the average Joe just trying to run his dirt smuggling business.
Wouldn’t be dark sci-fi without mutants straight out of my nightmares!
You play as Zachariah Mancer, a lightning shooting Technomancer living under the Abundance corporate machine. As the game opens, you are just completing your training, ready to start your life as a Technomancer Master and Lieutenant in the Abundance army. From there, it is up to you to decide who to ally with, and how you will shape the future of Mars.
The game does a good job of easing you into the faction system, but there is a lot to see and do in every town. Each faction has their own motivation and objective, making it impossible to be everyone’s friend. Aside from the warring corporate factions of Abundance and Aurora, there are criminal elements like the Vory, the ASC army, the Ascension paramilitary force, the Opposition, and half a dozen or so individual relationships to improve or ruin.
This is all just in the first zone. It took me 11 hours to get out of the starting area and into the main game. The main quest is about 20 hours long, and it could easily rocket up to the 50-60 range if you pursue all the side content. There’s a ton to see and a lot to do, and by sheer scale of content it matches the games it seeks to rival.
Or, we can all just sit in the rover and talk about our feelings. The world is truly my oyster.
Unfortunately, size isn’t everything. Given the complexity of all the different factions, it’s confusing just who everyone is and who they support. It took me several hours to figure out the difference between Abundance, Orphis, Ascension, and the army. It’s easy to understand that the Vory are bad guys, but weave in that they are also the suppliers of the Opposition and you are left with some pretty compelling grey area. It can take several mountains of dialogue trees to sort it all out, but when you finally do the world feels more alive than most video games pull off.
It’s helped out significantly by an aesthetic that takes the normal cyberpunk formula and heaps on about four extra layers of grunge. It might be the future, but after being cut off from earth for so long, mankind has forgotten how to make all of its nice things. Homes and cities are built out of the repurposed wreckage of the past, and even military grade weapons might just be industrial wrenches with some extra bolts strapped to them. Last names have reverted back to function, with “Mancer” being the catch all for all Technomancers, “Seeker” for researchers and explorers, and “Rogue” for the criminal element. For a Tech-wizard from the future shooting electricity at mutants on Mars, it feels very primitive and tribal. This is the kind of world building I come to Spiders for, and they delivered in spades.
Did… did no one tell him that his holy scepter is just a pipe with a saw blade on it?
Where the game fails is mechanically. For a world so rich and begging for exploration, actually doing so is a chore. From dialogue to combat, there will always be some kind of annoying obstacle that will test your patience. Say you are tasked with quelling a mutant rebellion. Each of the four objectives can be solved with force, but you want to go the good route. So instead, you’ll have to pass a crafting, medicine, and charisma check. It only takes a single level of each for a success, so it should be pretty easy. Plus, if you don’t have the requisite skill, you can equip a chestpiece that boosts it enough to pass. Sounds simple, right?
Well, the big problem is that there’s no way of knowing what you will get into before you get there. So now that I’m there, I have to run all the way back to my global inventory locker to pull out the three shirts I need, run all the way back, complete the quest, and run all the way back to my inventory to put the shirts away. I could just keep the shirts on me at all time, but I only have so much inventory space, and each crafting item takes up weight. Plus, this is only an early game level one check. Later in the game, it might be a level 2 or 3 check, meaning I’ll have to bring a companion as well if I want to boost my stats up. In non-city missions, you set your team before you leave, meaning you might get all the way through wave after wave of enemies, reach a door you realize you can’t unlock, have to leave the area entirely to go back to a city, and then come back to do it all over again. It’s all just incredibly frustrating and obtuse.
You will learn to despise this prompt.
And that’s not even mentioning the combat. I don’t expect a terrible amount of action from my RPGs, but The Technomancer is mind meltingly dull. At any time, you can switch between three different combat styles: knife and gun, club and shield, or staff. No matter which you choose, they all follow the same formula of hit, dodge, break their guard. The AI is incredibly simple, so you can easily get into the rhythm of hit, hit, dodge, and repeat until credits. It would be the perfect plan if it wasn’t so unresponsive. I would frequently dodge, only to get wedged into a small corner I couldn’t get out of. There I would twirl helplessly, praying to whatever Techno-God would hear me that one of my ineffectual companions might actually do something. Even on normal you die in a few hits, making for what should be a tense and rewarding experience. Unfortunately, the mechanics just don’t live up to the design, making actually playing it more frustrating than anything.
But wait, there are also Technomancer powers! Trained for years, the Technomancers are born with the gift to harness and expel electricity. There’s a branching lightning bolt, an electric punch, electric armor, electrified weapons, all at your disposal. Or, you could cast the AOE lightning storm that sucks people in and finishes with a room-clearing explosion. They all require the same amount of energy, so it’s all up to you to if you want to deal 30 or 300 damage.
All Hail Dark Lord Lightning-Spam!
Everything else in the game is just so much fluff. There’s a crafting system to upgrade weapons, which felt really tacked on and pretty pointless. Some of the upgrades were so clearly better that it wasn’t even a choice. When you give me the option between +2 damage and +20% chance to stun, I’m going to go with the stun every time. Also, the science skill is terribly out of place. One of the six primary skills used to dictate successful checks, the out of combat application is faster non-combat healing. To a ludicrous degree. At zero points, it would take about 90 seconds for my health bar to fill. At one point invested, it would take 7. It’s an insane scaling for a skill that is basically worthless. When you have an entire skill whose only benefit is decreasing the frustration of a mechanic that you intentionally put in the game just to make that skill relevant, you might need to rethink your priorities.
It feels like 4/3’s of seven different games. It comes together to make a large package, but one that doesn’t feel like all the parts are clicking. Even when invested in a quest, I had trouble deciphering how actually impactful my decisions were. Letting a band of deserters flee, I assumed that would have some major repercussions. Unfortunately, a big plot twist around hour 10 negated pretty much all of the decisions I had made. Pivotal plot points are unchangeable, making your decision of allegiance at times pointless.
It’s a fitting time for The Technomancer to launch, as we are once again in the midst of a Steam Summer Sale. While Spider RPGs are all acceptable budget titles, they are amazing bargain bin finds. Their games similar to movies like The Forest. If you paid 10 bucks to see it in a theater, you’d be pissed. If, after all the negative press and hype had died down, you pick it up from a Redbox for a dollar, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find the visual effects are great and setting pretty spooky.
The Technomancer is easily Spiders’ most robust and well made game, but it still isn’t more than just slightly above average. It’s too flimsy to really hold up under tense scrutiny. However, for a just average game, it’s the most fun I’ve had with one. The amount of enjoyment I get from playing is much higher than the relative quality of the game. I love exploring new worlds, so for me there’s a lot to love about The Technomancer. I expect that many of you that pick it up months from now when it’s on sale for $12 will feel the same. But as it stands, at $45, you’re going to be disappointed. Respect the rough edges, and love it for what it is.
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Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
