Review – Replaced – Gamerview

Replaced is one of those projects that has left players salivating for years. Development began in 2018, but its creators only felt confident to show something to the public at E3 2021, literally the last E3 in history. Since then, there have been another five years of waiting, awaiting its release.

The studio Sad Cat Studios should not be confused with Sad Owl Studios (de ). The games couldn’t be more opposite. The founders of Sad Cat Studios came from the mobile ecosystem with a desire to challenge their own limits. The result is: a title with multiple influences brought together, which masterfully triumphs in some aspects, while complicating itself in others.

My worn out retinas

If first impressions are anything to go by, then Replaced will never leave my visual cortex. What its creators managed to achieve here is some of the most exuberant pixel art ever produced in this industry. The way the light practically melts around destroyed or decaying scenes is the purest essence of cyberpunk crafted square by square.

An unimaginable wealth of details is condensed here, considering the graphic limitations that were self-imposed. It’s a degree of fidelity and immersion that couldn’t be achieved with even the most realistic Unreal Engine 5 title or Nvidia’s nefarious DLSS 5. It’s art, it’s artistic direction in the service of the narrative. We are transported to this dystopian universe. The missing elements between the pixels are filled in by our own imagination. Walking through Replaced is like being there, in an almost tangible way.

However, this exuberance comes at a price. Not in machine processing, because in that regard, the game is smooth, quite smooth. This price is paid in loss of clarity within the level design. The visual style fulfills its role very well from a narrative point of view, but it is not integrated as solidly into the mechanical aspects of the experience. It’s extremely easy to get lost in how best to navigate certain environments, because elements that could serve as a guide are obscured or not exactly obvious.

For a title that often requires precise jumping, distinguishing the limits of platforms or the support points needed to avoid dying can become a challenge. It is no coincidence that whenever there is an object that can be picked up in the environment or information that can be extracted, the developer is forced to use a glaring highlight.

Kill or be killed in Replaced

Originally, Sad Cat Studio intended to create a game focused exclusively on narrative and platform, a kind of Another World updated for today. It would have been the most sensible choice, since the universe built for Replaced, both in its main plot and in the vast amount of background information that is added, would work perfectly well as its foundation. Still, the developers were not comfortable with the idea and chose to add more and more mechanical elements to the experience.

At one point, it was decided that the game would need a combat system. Sad Cat Studio took on the challenge of adapting the Arkham franchise’s complex fighting system to a 2D environment. There was a lack of humility. What Rocksteady forged back then was revolutionary for its time and helped establish a standard that lasted more than a decade, to the point of becoming almost common practice. This doesn’t mean that Arkham’s system will necessarily work for all projects. Or it will be executed with the same degree of refinement.

At first, Replaced’s combat actually works. Our protagonist has a valid justification for being able to crush several opponents at the same time. The attack, counterattack and dodge mechanics are satisfactory. The animations are brutal. The controls are familiar, so long after Rocksteady’s supremacy. Each confrontation is frantic and serves as an additional reflection of the truculence of this reality.

However, after a short time, it becomes clear that the fighting will repeat itself within its structure. Our protagonist is surrounded, some of the enemies are in the background, some of the enemies come from the left, some from the right, and the opponents are replaced as the fight progresses. Even the combat style between enemies from different factions is similar. This formula would be exhausting on its own, but Sad Cat Studios insists on adding increasingly exaggerated layers of complexity with each chapter. Variety is expected, the developer delivers difficulty.

The result of this exaggerated difficulty is great confusion in a small space, just two dimensions, poorly lit, in which the player needs to concentrate on dodging, rebounding, destroying armor, shooting, blocking, hitting, healing, whistling and sucking cane, all at the same time. Batman (or Spider-Man, or Mad Max, or any other similar), at least, could spread his opponents over wider areas and choose in 3D who would be the target of his blows.

I think, therefore I exist

Had Sad Cat Studios insisted on a mostly narrative experience, Replaced would have caused me more positive reactions beyond the first impression. Its plot is intriguing. Here we have an alternative reality in which the United States was the target of nuclear attacks during World War II. From then on, their society collapsed and fell into the hands of a corporation that promises reconstruction, but only seeks control.

Our protagonist is also an outlier: we are the accidental host of an Artificial Intelligence created by this corporation, an AI that is now discovering the consequences of the world it helped to form. The main character will then end up in the ghettos of the discarded and will naively do everything to return to the walled city.

There are many typical dilemmas of the genre within the story, such as the discovery of feelings, the inhumane exploitation of cheap labor, massive organ transplantation and cutting-edge equipment created to kill. Ironically, the rhythm of the narrative is broken precisely by the more mechanical aspects that the developer decided to add. These breaks have everything to frustrate all player profiles. Those who fall in love with its combat system, even though it is challenging and repetitive, will find the long conversation parts and the back and forth between locations strange. Those who want the plot to progress faster will be disappointed with long platform sessions and successive combats.

Replaced struggles to keep that first impression alive, but even the brightest neon eventually fades. I will gladly wait for another five years and an eventual Replaced 2.