It's easy to fall in love with REPLACED at first sight. You don't even need to start the game to do this - a couple of trailers are enough for the neon dystopia of Sad Cat Studios to immediately grab you by the throat. It's much more difficult to maintain this feeling after a complete playthrough, when stunning visuals alone are no longer enough.
Running on a Well-Worn Formula
The events of REPLACED unfold in an alternate America of the 1980s, which survived a nuclear catastrophe and finally rotted under the rule of the Phoenix Corporation. Behind the walls of the citadel city, there is still a semblance of order and civilization, while on the other side of the wall, those whom the system has long written off as scrap survive. People on the other side are literally called that — waste.
The main character of the story is the artificial intelligence Rich, who, after an accident in the laboratory, finds himself trapped in the body of his creator, Warren Marsh. The police who arrived in response to the alarm, contrary to standard protocol, do not try to save the survivors, but open fire on Rich, forcing him to flee beyond the wall.
Now he has to return to the laboratory to return Warren's control over the body, get back into the system himself, and along the way figure out what is happening. On this path, Rich will meet people beyond the wall, encounter human vulnerability for the first time, learn more about emotions, and gradually begin to comprehend things that previously existed for him only in the form of zeros and ones.
An all-powerful corporation, humans as expendable material, an AI that becomes aware of itself in a human body, shady security forces, dirt and decay beyond civilization. REPLACED is a lush, classic cyberpunk, generously sprinkled with neon noir.
We've seen all this so many times that the scenario itself is almost incapable of surprising. But the developers confidently use familiar motifs to assemble a sometimes leaky, but solid story that occasionally throws up unexpected twists and makes the player go to the finale.
The problem is rather that the plot is not structurally assembled in the best way. The game has a drawn-out prologue, a confident middle, and a drawn-out final segment. This is especially noticeable for a project lasting about ten hours.
The climactic boss fight takes place about an hour before the finale, and after that REPLACED pretends for a while that it still has something to surprise with, although in reality it is already starting to run out of steam and makes the player look at the clock in anticipation of a quite predictable ending.
Basic Game
In the gameplay part, REPLACED presents almost no surprises. Before us is a textbook combat side-scroller, which I really want to call "basic" in the literal sense. This applies to almost every element of it — from the combat system to platforming, puzzles, and stealth.
The combat system here is clearly inspired by Batman: Arkham and everything that grew out of this formula. The basis is simple: regular strikes, dodges, and counterattacks, which are used depending on the color indicators that flash above the heads of enemies. Yellow signals that it's time to catch the timing for a counterattack, red requires dodging.
It all works almost perfectly. The blows feel weighty, although you will most likely have to get used to the viscosity of the animations a little. The exception is when the counterattack is pressed at the wrong time. Then the character seems to freeze for a second and gets in the face everything that the enemies manage to release into him.
Gradually, the arsenal expands. First, the "Huxley" pistol appears, which is charged with kinetic energy. It needs to be accumulated with strikes and counterattacks, after which you can perform one powerful shot. If you use it at close range, a cinematic finishing move against the enemy is triggered. At the same time, the pistol itself acts as a reward for an aggressive pace. If you behave passively, constantly dodge and do not put pressure on the enemy, the charge begins to decrease.
Later, strong blows appear to break through armor, reflecting shots with an energy shield, an overload mode that allows you to make several shots in a row, and a shock wave that knocks opponents off their feet. Along with them, new types of enemies appear, designed to use these mechanics.
That is, contrary to initial fears, the combat system does not stand still. Every few story chapters, the game throws up something new, although this does not fundamentally change the feeling of battles.
Including because the set of opponents quickly rests on several archetypes: ordinary melee fighters, shooters, juggernauts, armored opponents, and agile assassins who need to be caught exclusively on a counterattack.
In the future, these archetypes change only the appearance depending on the faction. Because of this, battles become more difficult mainly not due to the appearance of new opponents, but due to their number and combinations.
The situation with the bosses is about the same. They, in fact, have the same set of attacks as ordinary opponents, only much more health and several intermediate phases. Somewhere you need to roll away from lazily exploding grenades, somewhere you need to fight off waves of ordinary enemies, and then return to the fight with the boss again.
This is enough for the combat system on medium difficulty not to have time to get frankly boring. On high, it seems to me, this would have happened almost inevitably: the health and damage of opponents there are noticeably increased, and the possibilities for restoring health are reduced. Although even on medium I sometimes died in individual battles, so you can't call the game a complete walk either. Or is it still…
I already said that the structure of the game is uneven. Even in a relatively dynamic middle, there are segments where the player is left without battles for a long time — in the most egregious cases, for almost an hour. At such moments, REPLACED switches to exploration, platforming, simple puzzles, and rare stealth episodes.
Platforming after the demo version has hardly changed my opinion about myself. Rich can climb, cling to ledges, swing, later gets a pickaxe and the ability to double jump using the air flow.
However, the movements lack responsiveness and lightness, and when sections appear where you need to jump on timing and accurately calculate the distance, stupid deaths begin. Fortunately, checkpoints are placed often, so it does not come to irritation. But such segments bring almost no pleasure either.
Puzzles are closely related to platforming. Most of them are based on understanding where and how to move objects, paving the way further. Periodically, there are tasks for deciphering passwords from notes, as well as a hacking mini-game, which is very similar to a similar mechanic from Hail to The Rainbow. All this works to change the pace, but none of this can be called either outstanding or memorable.
The same can be said about stealth. Formally, it is here, and in several variations. In one case, you just need to avoid other people's eyes and hide behind cover, in another — hide in the crowd from reconnaissance drones or move after a moving mechanism. But, as you understand, the difference between these scenarios is cosmetic, and mechanically everything always comes down to one thing: do not fall into the cone of view.
As a result, there are basic battles, basic puzzles, basic mini-games, and basic stealth. And none of these elements tries to really go beyond this very base.
Between chapters, Rich gets to the city-hub Vokzal — a settlement beyond the wall, where you can talk to locals, take side quests, rummage through the back streets, and get distracted by mini-games in arcade machines. These activities themselves are also quite simple, but they have two important advantages. First, they give tangible rewards: increases to health, improvements to medstims, bonuses to energy generation, and other little things that really help in battle. Secondly, through side quests, the developers reveal the world and its inhabitants, showing how people who find themselves on the sidelines of the system survive.
Separately, I note that side quests in the hub should be completed immediately. The game doesn't really warn about this, but after moving on to the next chapter, old activities become unavailable.
Some of the upgrades and notes that reveal the lore for those who are interested in digging into it can also be found in the main locations. They don't look really big, but they are often arranged as multi-layered scenes with several plans, branches, and small side routes where you can find a health upgrade, a note, a music track for the player, or another useful bonus.
Sometimes you need to turn a little to the side for such a secret, go up a level, or take a closer look at the white glow against the background of the scenery. The game confidently creates the illusion of a living space, and Sad Cat Studios generally has everything in order with the level design.
Another thing is that a significant part of the time you still have to spend in tunnels, ventilation, technical corridors, and other utilitarian guts of this world. There, REPLACED is not always as expressive as in open spaces. And here we come to the most interesting thing.
Not Just a Picture
If REPLACED has an area in which it unconditionally justifies years of waiting, it is the visual presentation. The game really looks great. Pixel art here is combined with volumetric light, smoke, depth of the scene, and detailed backgrounds. Autumn ruins, industrial zones, dirty urban back streets, tunnels, stations, neon streets, snowy territories in later chapters, a scene on a train — in almost every chapter there are at least a few frames on which you want to linger. But personally, I was most impressed by the almost transcendental level of staging and camerawork.
Already in the prologue there is a luxurious moment when a PFS operative knocks the hero off his feet with a baton, and the camera makes a swift flight with a flip. It's not just beautiful. It is beautiful with an understanding of how the scene is built, how the player's gaze is directed, how the feeling of impact, inertia, and physical volume is created. And this is not a one-time trick at all.
The game constantly works with angles, focus, zooms, camera flights, and internal editing directly during gameplay. Here you can feel not only a strong art department, but also a truly fresh look at how you can use film language in a pixel game. I can't immediately name another pixel project with such an effective cinematic production. And if someone is ready to dissuade me of this, I will look at the examples with interest.
The soundtrack supports the overall intonation of the game well and does not draw attention to itself most of the time. But atmospheric details also deserve special praise — rain, background noise, technical hum of space.
All this successfully complements the visual volume that the artists and directors of Sad Cat Studios managed to achieve. And in the best moments, when a powerful scene, camera work, and this nervous industrial sound with a hint of Nine Inch Nails converge at one point, REPLACED gives pure aesthetic pleasure.
Technically, however, the game is not perfect. During the playthrough, I had problems interacting with objects twice. But nothing that could not be solved by rebooting and repeating the last twenty seconds happened. The most unpleasant thing was that Steam did not give an achievement for completing the ninth chapter.
This is especially annoying against the background of the lack of chapter selection. The game simply does not allow you to quickly return to the desired episode in order to replay something, collect collectible items, or close missed side quests. Therefore, I would really like this function to be added. Because one stunning visual will ultimately not be enough for me to want to go through this whole path a second time.
Verdict
REPLACED turned out to be exactly the game that was expected after the trailers and demo version. With a correction for reality. This is indeed a very stylish, very beautiful, and sometimes gorgeously staged combat side-scroller. But behind the outer shell lies a much simpler game than one could have expected.
The plot here is too familiar, there are questions about platforming, and the combat system, although it develops during the playthrough, is not deep enough to maintain a consistently high interest for all ten hours. Exploration, puzzles, stealth, mini-games, and side activities work as a solid filling, so in general, almost everything in REPLACED is done at least "normally".
If REPLACED were two hours shorter, it would almost certainly only benefit. But even in its current form, it is a worthy work. Not mandatory for everyone, but almost mandatory for those who are professionally interested in pixel art, directing, and how far you can advance the old form at the expense of the skill of artists and directors alone.
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