All shell, no ghost.
DeTechtive 2112 feels like a gorgeous set of environments looking for a game, if my casual run through the first half of its story missions is any indication. Developed by Turkish indie outfit M11 Studio, it’s a stealthy isometric shooter about a depressed noir detective in a very snazzy jacket, solving crimes in post-WW3 England. I was eager to try it out when it dropped on Steam this week, but sadly I’ve got to deliver a warning rather than a recommendation.
While the trailer and screenshots don’t lie—this is a slick-looking, smooth-running game set in some impressively grimy future city streets—that’s about all you’re getting out of DeTechtive 2112. While there’s so much that could have been done with the concept of an old-school private eye on dangerous high-tech streets, what you get here is more like Hotline Miami with a concussion. You get a call, you go to a place, you shoot a bunch of guys and you go back to your office. And the shooting ain’t much cop either.
Sure, you can try to get through each of the scant handful of missions by crouching down and avoiding fiddly enemy sight-lines, or you can get the exact same result from pointing an assault rifle at a doorway and holding down the fire button until every cyberpunk in the vicinity follows the exact same pathing to run directly into your bullets. Either way, the job gets done and the reward is the same, with seemingly no change in dialogue either.
While there’s a ‘detective vision’ button, it doesn’t often get used, mostly just highlighting the few interactable elements in a scene. There’s a weapons store full of guns to purchase, but some are just better and cheaper than others, and for some reason, all of them are listed as taking 7.62 ammo (even the rocket launcher), which is ironically not an ammo type that you can buy. Indicative of a very rushed localization.
The script itself is confusingly written (perhaps due to being translated from Turkish), and despite the game being set in the country formerly known as England, the detective (the only voiced character, everyone else just gets barks and grunts) appears to have an American accent. Everything about this feels cheap, except for the visuals, which I must reiterate are great.
There’s some really nice details here that I wish were more used. When getting your missions from your cyber-noteboard in your cyber-office, you get a rundown of the maps you’ll be travelling through, the enemy types within and what kind of boss fights to expect, but it doesn’t mean much when enemies will just line up single-file to be shot at the slightest hint of noise. The game supports online multiplayer for four-player co-op, but I don’t see that improving the overall experience.
It’s frustrating when a game with so much potential just turns out to be a hollow, glossy shell, but that seems to be the case with DeTechtive 2112. If you want to try it out for yourself, it’s on Steam now for a budget-friendly £7.86/$9.89 after a 10% launch discount. But if you want something with similar vibes that’s actually fun to play, Ruiner and The Ascent are probably a better bet.
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