Metrocide

Simple game, but i can recommend for what it's worth. Pretty challenging will appeal to the rogue like fans i am sure. Some games are over in a minute, others take you 30 minutes and you die from lack of focus or cockiness. Either way fun to mess around in different modes and is quite comical at times. The cons graphics kinda suck, the a.i is predictable and flawed, aiming is frustratingly inaccurate at range. I recommend getting on sale not worth full price at $13.00 more like $7.

Devs abandoned the game. DO NOT BUY. This game will forever be half-baked and as shallow as a puddle of water.

The game sounds enticing for fans of the genre (stealth or cyberpunk) but the mechanics are incredibly flawed.

Sometimes police drones flag and attack you from a few tiles away- sometimes from a screen away!

Usually if you are spotted committing a crime, a notification will appear that a civilian spotted you and identified you as a suspect. Other times, (read: MANY), no civilian will spot you, no alerts will appear over their heads, no message will appear that you have been ID'd as a suspect, and yet a minute later, all of the police drones in your zone will be fully alerted, looking for you, ready to kill you, and ending your run.

The mechanics do not work as explained, are entirely unpredictable, and fundamentally broken.

Only worth the buy for the most die-hard, masochistic fans of the relevant genres. Great ideas, would be great as a polished re-make. But this version is crap.

Needs to be improved.

Especially the font sizing and symbols. (Ex; **)
Even full screen the game sizing needs balancing. (Ex; cameras too small)
Im not changing my system resolution just for this one game!

It does need some optimization for the variety of systems in the world, so take this as a warning.

Because it needs some tweaking, for the price of the game (And the fact that they should of marketed this as EARLY ACCESS), I cannot recommend this game just yet.

TL;DR: Not recommended. This game is pretty bad.

What I liked:

- Interesting Premise: This is sort of like the old Grand Theft Auto titles, basically you are an assassin who must complete contracts and earn money to get travel papers and eventually escape the city. Pretty simple plot, and it's easy enough to grasp straight away.

- Good Attempt at Style: The game has a little bit of soul poking out here and there, like when the sun is covered up by a huge raincloud.

- Attention to Detail: Like Hitman: Blood Money, this game will challenge players to pay attention to small details that pertain to their contracts, things like age, behavior, and special notes. Their age will determine different things, such as how fast they run away from you once they know you will kill them, or how fast they react to you pulling a weapon on them. If they are a smoker, that will determine their pace as they walk around the city, and whether you have time to set up an ambush or a chokepoint with your items; special notes will be things you really have to watch out for such as whether they are armed, have a bodyguard, their body needs to be hidden as stipulated by the contract, etc. Sound plays an important role in the game, like most stealth titles, most of your actions have both visibility and audibility, so you need to work to conceal yourself from unwanted attention. I feel like this is perhaps the game's best feature, because I would be excited to play an indie version Blood Money.

What I didn't like:

- Bad Controls: I played this KB/M, so maybe it's better on a gamepad, but somehow I doubt it. TJ Trench (the hero) handles like a**, mostly because it seems he can't run and shoot at the same time. His footspeed is already atrocious when not aiming a weapon (I found myself outpaced several times by fleeing targets), and the game is really f****** difficult when you are trying to shoot and move at the same time. There are several moments in the game when you know you are dead because you know there is no g****** way that your little stubby legs are going to carry you far or fast enough away from danger, especially from police drones and vigilantes (don't even get me started on those). In my honest opinion, the game could have benefitted from a more reliable and quicker starting weapon (the basic gun you start the game with has to be the worst weapon in gaming history), like a knife that you can only use real close to your target, but you can still use it fairly quickly. A charge up time of a second and a half to fire the basic gun, in a game where it only takes half a second to get spotted and have the cops sicced on you is not an acceptable game mechanic, because it destroys most players' ability to "hit the ground running" as it were, and allow them to gain a little momentum and have fun.

- Graphics: This was hard to criticise, as I am usually quite fond of retro-style gaming and graphics, but in the end I decided this was a black mark for the game. The sprites for the main character and NPCs in the game are really uninspired and low-res to the point of really interfereing with gameplay. There was one part where I thought I was alone with my target, only to find that this immobile a****** I thought was a trash heap on the ground suddenly woke up and started hightailing it to go snitch on me to the cops. He ate a bullet for his b*******, but this only illustrated the major flaw with this game: playing on higher screen resolutions makes everyhting SO MINUSCULE that it impedes gameplay. I shouldn't have to be confused about which way characters are facing or where they are onscreen just because everything blurs together. Gunpoint was a game that also had a similar problem, but at least in Gunpoint the models used in the game had a higher bit count, so it was easier to tell what was what onscreen.

- Sound: Imagine one of those white sound generators that help you sleep by playing soundtracks of whales f****** or something, except this one plays the sound of a thunderstorm. For hours. Yeah. I like thunderstorms, don't get me wrong; I fall asleep to them all the time. I just never expected to get sick and tired of that sound, mostly because that is all this game plays for you, albeit with the occasional and often repeated sound effects. As I said before, sounds play a very important role in the game, but would it have killed the devs to put in some Foghat or something? There is no music, except for this *deep breath* GOD AWFUL DRUM SOLO that plays when you are in the vicinity of certain nightclubs in the game; and when I mean "in the vicinity" I am talking about the IRL equivalent of SEVERAL CITY BLOCKS. I do NOT understand how ANYBODY in this game hears ANYTHING of importance if they are patrons of that kind of aural prison rape. It's just a guy hammering away on a drum in the same pattern of hits, looped endlessly; and it's not like you can TURN THAT S*** OFF EITHER. Yeah: no sound menu. How about them apples? And the thing that pissed me off more than the nightclubs, is the fact that all of the humour in the game (in the form of ironic and facetious advertisements) are masked or washed out by sounds that you've been hearing for the entire game. I was just walking along under this blimp trying to get a little laugh, but the words were being drowned out by the thunder and (you guessed it) the NIGHTCLUBS.

- Difficulty: This game is super hard. You will develop a form of ADD just to play it. It spilts your focus in way too many ways to be attractive or playable. The game doesn't really teach you or provide you with adequate help, so when you get a new weapon or item, you must have already mastered it. How is that possible you ask? I dunno, but that it what the game expects. If you are like me, and require a little trial and error learning to grasp how to use new game concepts, you will be summarily raped up the d***hole for attempting to try these new things. No joke. Funny story time: I was one contract away from graduating to the next sector of the city, when I unlocked the "lure" item at the vending machines. So I bought one, and innocently stepped into the middle of the street to test my new toy. I dropped it, and every NPC acted like I had whipped out a suicide vest. The police were called, they zoomed over in their little b******* skycars and shot me. The end. The game told me I had completed ten contracts, called me a psychopath, then unceremoniously dumped me right back at the beginning of the game. No money, no guns, no progress. I nearly destroyed my keyboard at this point, because I had done each one of those contracts with the basic gun, and I had hidden all the bodies too. It was a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a lot of nightclub aural rapage. This is what every gamer will experience playing this game. So save yourself a lot of grief and JUST DON'T BUY THIS GAME, EVEN ON SALE.

- Menus: I mentioned this before, but the menus are *really* bad, there is no sound menu, a bare-bones display menu, and you can't even change the keybindings to something more comfortable or accessible to you. This is the Post Half-Life era of gaming, okay? There really isn't any excuse left anymore for having a game that you cannot tweak to your preferences, or even change the keybindings. Simply unnacceptable.

The idea was so very tasty - a sprawling dystopian cyberpunk megacity, living by its own - and inside it you, a hitman, trying to make ends meet by picking jobs of increasing complication and difficulty, trying to get away with killings under the ever-watchful eye of Big Brother overhead. The sole thought of having such a game was thrilling.

That is, until I played Metrocide and found out that it is actually a repetitive isometric shooter/stealth game with no variety or replayability to speak of. I have about eight hours on my record and trust me, this is eight times more than it is really required to see and get bored with everything this production has to offer.

It feels incomplete. A great idea done badly and quickly abandoned.

Save your money, don't buy it.

A slow paced cyberpunk style hitman game where you kill to save up enough cash to buy a ticket get out of your hellhole to a slightly lesser hellhole, rushing carelessly and cutting corners can end a otherwise flawless string of hits and set you back to square one. This is a tough game due to the grind of your lifeblood: cash. You need it buy better tools/guns, paying off cops when your hits go south and most importantly to get on to the next level. Each level only increases the total you need to move on and this brings up my main issue the bugs. The longer game ran the more likely it was to either crash outright or glitch me into a building or fence just fifty bucks from freedom.

If you love repeating the same task again and again, with nothing other than player patience being tested, as you follow a blurry splodge of a person barely discernible from the surrounding pavement, and your failure dictated at least partly by random chance then 'i heartily recommend this game'.

This game is the textbook definition of artificial difficulty. Theres no extended combat, or story, or skill being tested. You just follow a target endlessly, until he's in an area which is kinda quiet, shoot him (and half the time fail because you went to the stormtrooper marksman school) and then steal his wallet.
Its just intensely lacking in... anything. Which is sad, because in some ways its got a lot of style. But overall this concept is suited to maybe, MAYBE, be a somewhat forgettable free browser game. It didnt need a release, and it damn well isnt worth £10.

Loved this game, one of my favorites of 2014. It takes a little while to get a handle on the mechanics but once you do it's incredibly fun and surprisingly open. There are so many ways to take down your targets with the varied weapon set you unlock throughout the game and you can even use other factors like a target's own paranoia against him.

The sound design is fantastic too. There's no real music but the noises of the city and the constant, the constant sound of the rain, and the occasional advertisement you hear for a fictional in game product all do a great job to bring the game world to life.

As for the price, it is a little high but I found it okay since this game offered me a unique experience.

The problem with Metrocide is, I really want to like it.
I like the setting, graphics, sound and have always liked top down games.

I have tried now twice to get into it, with several tries to get somewhere. What is killing the game for me is the charge up starting weapon which takes about 3 sec. to shoot. I like the approach, follow ppl around, wait until they are out of sight ..., in short the whole contract killing thing.

I can't get any further because always at some point the target or gang member turns around, pulls a gun and bang... I am dead, no charge up for them. Or maybe I am missing something? Have never got enough money to buy something at a vending machine.

Well I read the developer blog about the game has got to be hard and all. Well in my book games should be fun and engaging above everything else. Being hard is ok, but being frustatingly unfair creates no long term motivation to try again and has quickly killed it for me.

Not being able to save anytime just adds to this game being dropped. Why? Because getting anywhere needs patience and time, so it would be good to "bookmark" the current progress and pick it up some other time. If this was used to make the game harder it is for the worse.

This game is amazing. The tone is great, the gameplay is great, it's an all around fantastic game. Having trouble getting into full screen mode, but that's a nitpick. It's better to play windowed than not at all.

A simple fun indie game with an interesting gameplay loop held back by being horiffically unintuitive and unfinished despite being out of early access. If I hadn't payed $10 to buy this off steam I could quite easily have believed this was a gamejam game. At a basic level the controls are confusing as hell and too much of the gameplay is dependent on the completely arbitrary actions of the ai, who are seemingly capable of maintaining perfect aim at you while you are hidden behind a corner. There's a bit of depth to the gameplay with several options to assassinate targets but these are all gated with a stupid unlock system obviously intended to pad out the game. It's a shame because the central ideas are good and I like playing it but you shouldn't encourage developers to pull stuff like this.

Metrocide is fun, but not without flaws. The contracts are random which means you'll either have an easy time or an extremely hard one. The atmosphere is great and i love the pixle-art (though thats not everyones thing). It isnt GTA1 + Syndicate, so dont expect that, its more of a randomized puzzle game with contract murder in it. While it can be amusing and fun, it wears out fast due to the slow pace (its not an action game) and the lack of driving force. I feel this isnt a game that can be easily rated so ill just leave it at that. You might hate it or you might love it but there isnt much in between.

This game requires some hard thinking process & patience if you want to go far; the run and gun tactic only gets you so far but if you know the mechanics of the game you can do that. For the first level... Which is what I love about it! ^.^
It has some 'stealth' in it, hiding bodies so the cops won't knock you out for stealing that last cookie of the cookie jar but its very rewarding killing your target after careful planning and receiving that payment for it.
Highly recommend this game if youre up for a good challenge.

I was attracted to Metrocide by the look and the fact that someone described it as "GTA1 + Syndicate".

However, I'm finding Metrocide deeply unsatisfying to play....
The game isn't really as "difficult" as the creators claim on their page. There's clearly an optimal way to kill people -- do it when no one else is around -- and the main difficulty in the game is simply that of "how long can you wait before you get bored?". It's basically gameoveer to kill someone openly, as either people will fight back or they'll all run off and call police drones, so either you wait out the target going to a safe spot or take a risky shot in public and hope you get away with it. That's the only real choice available to you and there's not really anything "difficult" about this.

Infact most of the game is simply spent waiting around for the target to plod their way around the map. You're meant to assassinate targets (as far as I've seen that's the only mission type), and you want to do this outside of camera or people's viewpoints. This means you're often waiting slightly ahead of the target, down an alleyway or something, hoping they'll walk past. The movement speed of your dude and the other people is awfully slow and means they take ages to get anywhere. But the problem is that you want them to be going somewhere in an effort to capture them alone. So you just spend huge amounts of time tailing a target and waiting for them.


Also: The game offers pop up tutorials, but they fail to describe something I felt was important: In the first few playthroughs I thought I couldn't buy any weapons or tools as I didn't have enough money. It turns out those tools are locked, behind some unknown restriction, and the game doesn't tell you this or what the restrictions on each tool are. You basically unlock them by playing, if you can stomach playing a long time.

Another annoying thing about the game is that on the first map (the only map I saw) both contract vendors are in the top right of the map, and the targets often spawn quite close to them. This means most of the game is spent in the top right corner of the map, which is a problem as 1) manholes (where you can hide bodies) are one use only, which quickly exhaust the supply in the top right corner of the map, and 2) you want to avoid previous crimescenes as police drones are hovering above them. Then player's answer to both is even more waiting and hoping that the target wanders somewhere useful. That rarely happens though, as often the target just walks back and forth in the same highly visible area, not leaving much room for creativity in the assassination.

Also, as far as I can tell, there's no save mid mission? AFAICT you need to make 2000c in the first mission, which is killing roughly 12 people without being caught. So it looks like the developers want you to do this all in one go, which I estimate takes about 2 solid hours of perfect play, if you can stomach waiting around for the targets that long.


There's a lot of promise here, but the game feels empty. Some improvements I would try out are:

1) explaining, or just doing away with, the unlock system
2) making all of the people in the game MOVE FASTER to enable potential for assassination

*Early Access Review*

So, a lot of people have been referring this to Hotline Miami. Hotline being my favourite game of all time, I really don't think these two are similar. The graphics style is slightly similar, but not really.

Gameplay:
Metrocide is fun to play. You get your contract, find them, stalk them and attempt to kill them without being spotted. The gun mechanics are really great, I wish there were more games that had that holster system.

Story:
There isn't one really, your character needs to get out of the city and kills of targets to pay for travel papers to get away.

Mechanics:
The game has a permadeath mechanic (those familiar with NerdCubed will know the term) which consists of restarting the entire level if you mess something up. In this case, it's REALLY easy to mess up.

Overall Score:
Given it's early access, there are still some bugs that are kind of annoying, but I trust the devs will fix them. Obviously more will be added but at the moment the game is still quite bare. I'll give it a 7/10.

Style, setting, retro art, a vicious yet compelling gameplay objective... Just looking at a screenshot of Metrocide is akin to hearing a namedrop of Grand Theft Auto 2, Syndicate Wars, Teleglitch and Gunpoint all at the same time.

Unfortunately, the game isn't fun.

It happens, from time to time, that a game is visually appealing and solidly coded, but that *design* is missing almost entirely. Metrocide's gameplay loop/s simply aren't entertaining. There's no combat, as such, as the fight ends upon the first shot, or its outcome is defined by it. There's no skill-based gameplay, only trial and error fact-based learning on what a given tool or weapon does and therefore when or whether to use it. There's no interesting chaos spiral or meaningful AI interaction, only a binary 'Are the police drones shooting you on sight? y/n' state.

All the game asks of you is to repeat a mundane task. Successful completion of said task relies upon only two things; the patience to follow your target very slowly until they are no longer in the view of another civilian, and the luck to not have a drone fly overhead at the wrong moment or a civilian turn the corner while you dump the body.

It lacks GTA's chaos, Syndicate Wars complexity, Teleglitch's entertaining combat, or Gunpoint's quality of writing.

It's remarkable how little Metrocide feels like a *game*... Perhaps more like a gamejam prototype that should have been shelved or radically redesigned when the absence of 'fun' was noticed. What the game lacks most significantly is any sense of chaotic consequence/rich AI feedback, or any sense of true power in your character.

Metrocide isn't simply a bit boring - it's as though there never was any fun to be had, even at the very beginning.

It looked so promising =<

Early Access Review, only logged about 2 hours and counting.
This game is hard, and you WILL die several times before surviving for a long time, until you die again.
So far so damn good. This game scratches the sort of itch that Hitman: Blood Money made possible to scratch.
The UI is clean, simple.
The controls, sort of weird at the start considering they want you to press 'w' and use the crusor to change directon, but that can easily be changed in the options menu. The city is wonderfully crafted, wonderful cyberpunk-esque lighting and billboards.
The game play is straight to the point, get a contract, stalk your target, kill them.
It's a risk reward sort of thing, where only true patience rewards you and reckless shooting will get you killed and sent right back to the start.
So far, a couple of bugs.
-When I get killed by a Police Drone I can't respawn, have to start game over
-Occasionally get stuck in small boxes where hovercrafts are parked
-Sometimes the game just up and freezes
that's all I've experienced so far.
As a stealth fan, it makes me happy to see another developer catering to my need for meticulous plotting and stalking of NPC's.
The world itself is dark and made to be gritty, the NPC's that walk around aren't really much interesting however, just possible witnesses.
Several times you'll see several hovercrafts fly overhead somewhere off into the distance, but this game world seems to have no real flavor other than what you yourself put into it as your character.
You generate the excitement, there's no real atmosphere sometimes and it seems like such a wasted opportunity.
LIKE for instance, at one point in the game whilst I was stalking my target a large hovercraft(blimp?) flew above me and was spouting advertisements for a Brothel for men who think their wives are unfaithful.
THAT, is how you create a sense of atmosphere, a sense that this world is alive and breathing without your character having to be in it to generate all the excitement, so if you can add more stuff like that, that'd be cool.
More dialogue or advertisements in an otherwise, really quiet city would be very much appreciated.
ASIDE from those small issues I have with the game, there are moments when HOLY SHIT this game gets my heart going.
Like assassinating a target and dragging the body into a sewer drain to hide it, but a civillian saw me and runs away.
I duck and weave through back alleys, and my heart drops when I see a police drone fly overhead to the crime scene.
Or this other time when I fired at my target but missed, and he and another civillian ran away, so I cut through alley ways, following my compass and manage to cut in front of my target shooting him dead in the street.
This game is great, and it's got the materials to create a truly great futuristic city.
Hope they make it more lively instead of just the sounds of distant sirens, cleaning droids and rain to kill people to.

**Early access review**

This is a TON of fun. Lets get that out of the way first and foremost, because there are currently some bugs and UI difficulties, but I do not regret this purchase for a single second as-is.

Metrocide has a very steep learning curve because it is VERY easy to mess up a simple hit, but it is very rewarding once you learn everything you need to pay attention to in order to take out a contract hit, dump the body, and get out of the area without being seen. The challenge that you are presented with right from the get-go, and the complete lack of hand-holding are why I'm loving this game!

Potential witnesses are everywhere, from security cameras to wandering pedestrians. Citizens travel along the sidewalks mostly, but they have random routines that make them stop for a smoke, turn around and linger in front of buildings, and just generally get in the way while you're stalking your target and looking for an idea spot to jump them. Noises, such as drawing your gun or firing it, will alert people in range. Being seen with a gun will make people run to alert the police drones. Your target could be armed... witnesses could be armed... you can't actually hide from anyone if you miss your shot, but you can outpace them. Because all of the movement patterns seem random, there are no predictable paths to make pattern kills... every kill ends up being tense and interesting.

Adding to that, you get one life... one hit will take you down, and you will have to start all over from scratch. There are so many ways for things to go wrong, and it is horrible getting so close to the amount of credits you need to complete a level, only to make a simple mistake and be taken out by a vigilante... but again, it keeps the game tense and interesting.

But... currently, there are some glitches.

The game crashed on me a few times during play, and since there is no way to save the game in-process (this is actually a feature, not a flaw), I had to start over a few times more than I should have needed to. Once you complete a level, you can start back at the beginning of the new level. Some folks are currently reporting issues with the game crashing at start-up... this is kinda normal for an early-access title, and I'm hoping these are just growing pains.

The controls currently can not be remapped aside from switching the movement controls between 2 different formats, WASD specific to the mouse cursor, or specific to the map directions. This doesn't really bother me, nor will it bother most folks who are used to WASD controls, but the lack of being able to rebind the keys can be an issue.

It is not obvious in-game what keys pair up with tools (such as the lure, which is 'z'), what reloads the gun ('r'), or what the police presence/threat level indicates... you can figure it out eventually and often there will be a one-time hint screen that will pop up after-the-fact, but it would be very useful to have an option page that lets you see the given key-mapping instead of guessing and waiting. It is not obvious at the start of the game that you need to hold down the fire-button on the first gun until it is charged enough to fire. It is not obvious that there are conditions toward unlocking weapons and tools, and prices for these things aren't shown until they are unlocked. Its not obvious that manhole covers can only be used one time each for hiding bodies.

But the biggest issue I'm having with the game in its current state is that the colors used for some of the civilians blends in FAR too closely with the colors used for refuse and clutter in the streets. Most of my mistakes have involved me ducking into an alley to draw my weapon out of sight... only to alert the guy standing not 2m away from me in that same alley that looked like just another box of garbage. I love the pixelated look of this game, I honestly do, but having the color schemes of characters match the colors of background details is a bad design choice, in my opinion.

I'm hoping key-bindings, and the game crashes can be patched soon... I'm hoping more content gets put into this game, such as the ability to go inside buildings or a garrote weapon that would be a silent draw, but require longer time to kill a victim out in the open... I'm hoping for more, but I'm really enjoying what there already is!

Metrocide is a game about contract killing, and to do this you get a contract from your contact then try to kill the target while avoiding security cameras, police drones, body guards and civilians.

Roaming the streets are gang members and there is a bit of early GTA vibe there, you can kill gang members in back alleys and take their wallets from the ground which is neat and satisfyingly opportunistic.

Metrocide has a male and female character to select from when you begin which is nice, although given the nature of the game it is probably just represented by a couple extra pixels added for hair length.

Controls are WASD for movement, RMB to draw/conceal weapon, (hold) LMB to charge and shoot starting weapon, E to interact and Mouse to aim.

The city is well designed with manholes to hide bodies in placed frequently.

The game is said to have a cyberpunk setting which is demonstrated albeit quite obscurely within the confines of the archaic presentation style.

The contracts are fairly similar but the features that are there fit the game well. Namely the common smoking habit targets have, you can put a bullet in them while they are a sitting target stopping to have a cig which is always cool. Targets also read newspapers and enter buildings, which add an air of realism to the characters.

There is an 'incognito' cash bonus for killing and disposing of the body unseen which is a nice touch. This is always satisfying.

You can use cash to buy new weapons. Weapons have different characteristics; the shotgun for example is short range, has no warm-up time, is noisy and can kill two targets at once. The silent pistol is obviously totally different. You can switch between weapons with tab so your hard work getting one weapon isn't wasted when you buy another. Weapons are bought from vending machines and become available for purchase as you progress.

There are some nice thematic mechanics in the game like throwing bodies into the sea and paying a hacker to hack the police database lowering your notoriety.

A little bit of comedy is present in there, I think I killed someone and got 26 cash and a ‘photo of a new born’ from their wallet.

There is no save function, which can be annoying because a large amount of money (therefore kills) is needed to move on to the next area. For context 2,000 cash is the target in the first zone and contracts pay either 150 cash or 175 cash per kill (plus the wallet they leave on the ground which is about 25 cash). Contracts are time consuming because you have to follow them around until they are out of view of civilians and security cameras or until you have a good hidden vantage point in an alley way. I can forgive the permadeath because it adds to the sense of accomplishment you feel for getting far and keeps things tense.

I encountered some bugs but at time of writing the game is in Early Access. Particularly annoying among these is sometimes having no option to respawn and the game not responding to pressing escape upon death, forcing you to close and restart the game. I also became stuck in an intended un-enterable fenced off area nearby a space vehicle at one point.

Verdict
Metrocide is a brilliant concept presented in an antiquated yet charming style with little depth but fantastically fun and challenging core gameplay.
Is the game fun? Yeah, it is. It stands as one of my personal favourite indie games.