REVIEW

Republique Review

by Ford James, April 12th, 2016

Warning: This review may contain spoilers.

With over $550,000 pledged on Kickstarter and a solid team comprised of industry veterans that worked on titles such as Metal Gear Solid IV and Halo 4, Republique had a lot of potential. Set in a dystopian city-state inspired by the events of George Orwell’s 1984, players control Hope: A teenage girl who realises everything the leader and dictator of Metamorphosis, the facility most of the game takes place in, says isn’t exactly true. The entire premise of the game is finding a way to get Hope to the surface. 390-H is the alphanumeric code she’s known as to the Prizrak; the guards that patrol Metamorphosis, and watch over Hope and the other ‘pre-cals’ like her.

Episode One kicks things off with a phone call. You answer and are greeted by a distraught face via video call we soon find out to be Hope, in a panic as it’s her time to be ‘erased’. You’re then introduced to the game’s main mechanic; hotswitching between different CCTV cameras dotted in convenient locations around the facility. Unfortunately, that’s also the introduction to one of the main problems with the game: it’s horribly optimised for PS4. Jumping between cameras should be a fluid motion, but if often takes 10-15 seconds of staring at grey static before the next security feed appears, breaking immersion and severely affecting any enjoyment you may find with Republique. This comes as an even bigger surprise given the game was initially on iOS and while it’s been remastered with plenty of improvements, performance issues are not something you’d expect with a game that previously ran on smartphones.

Conceptually, Republique is a fine idea. You can pause time while in the ‘OMNI’ view, enabling you to switch between cameras, scan collectibles, activate distractions and a whole bunch more. When not in OMNI view, you control Hope as she sneaks around Metamorphosis, finding help from unlikely sources. There’s no combat in the game; if Hope is caught by a guard, she can either quickly pepper spray or taser them, or be escorted to the nearest cell which is another major issue. Being caught by the Prizrak has essentially zero consequences; your progress isn’t reset, you still have all the collectibles you found and sometimes you’ll find you’ll be taken to a cell closer to your goal, in essence being an aid rather than a hindrance. Your items get confiscated but retrieving them is as simple as pickpocketing the guard that captured you; a surprisingly easy feat due to the lack of peripheral vision they seem to have, meaning you can almost walk right next to them and not be spotted.

Despite the convenient placements of the CCTV cameras, there’s times where the frequency of them can cause major issues. Multiple instances occurred where Hope was stuck in a seemingly never-ending loop of the camera auto-switching, thinking she’d gone out of view but as soon as the camera feed switched, she’d fall back slightly and cause the other camera to trigger and switch back, and vice versa. As much as I love imitations of awkward Irish jigs, I don’t enjoy them when I’m trying to navigate Hope between the patrols of two approaching Prizrak.

While in OMNI view, switching to different cameras and scanning various items are mapped to various buttons on the DualShock 4. When you pan the camera round and then back again, all the buttons will have changed for the specific items; it makes it difficult to play the game quickly, instead having to double take every time you want to interact with something to make sure you’re actually pressing the right button. From another control standpoint, Hope is essentially a magnet to walls; she gravitates to them from much further away than is necessary, meaning it can become awkward to sneak close to guards for fear that she’ll go too close to the wrong wall. Since the controls on iOS initially had players tap where they wanted Hope to move to, the scheme introduced for PS4 definitely needs some refining.

Thankfully, the controls aren’t the only change from the iOS edition to the remaster. There’s a considerable improvement in the visuals as expected, although they’re still lacking in what you’d expect on a PS4 title. Especially since the gameplay is slow and methodical, there will be plenty of times you’ll find yourself waiting for a guard to pass and paying attention to the environment, meaning the poor textures are hard to miss. In terms of sound, Prizrak often have automatic dialogue between themselves but it’s limited to just a few lines discussing the escaped pre-cal, a.k.a you.

You’re introduced to a character named Cooper early on in the game; a Prizrak guard who is evidently not suited for the job in the way he’s bossed around in the opening scene. It’s then revealed that he will assist you through the majority of the game, providing tips and a narrative through the stolen smartphone Hope carries on her, however rather than speaking normally, all of his dialogue is done via text-to-speech to prevent him from being identified if anyone was listening in. Understandable from a story perspective, but after half an hour of hearing that damned text-to-speech voice, I was longing for it to end. Annoyingly, it doesn’t until near the end of Episode Three, so you have to put up with it for more than half of the game.

Disregarding mechanics, in a narrative driven game like this the story is obviously important but unfortunately it’s not a saving grace. Episodes One through Three are all about one thing; escaping Metamorphosis. The thing about Metamorphosis however, is how so much of it looks so similar; the corridors, rooms, even the larger open space areas within the facility all have the same theme. Of course it’s expected given the purpose of the whole city-state, but for a video game it becomes incredibly repetitive and stale having to slowly traipse around the drab hellhole. Pacing is a serious issue and by the end of Episode One I was ready for something new, something to inject a little variation or excitement into the endless pickpocketing and pepper spraying of guards.

Then Episode Four hits and hooray! You’re out of Metamorphosis and on the surface, ready to tackle the world. Only that’s not really the case. The first thing you’ll notice is Hope has an entirely new voice actress, one that sounds considerably more innocent and upbeat about things given she’d just thrown a friend under the bus to reach the outside world. The voice acting for Hope, Mireille and other characters through various collectibles and voice clips was one of the only redeeming factors about the game until this point, so to have such a sudden and unexplained change is immersion breaking. It’s worth noting that Mireille and Zager are voiced by Jennifer Hale and David Hayter respectively, so the Kickstarter budget went on something of note at least.

When you surface at the start of Episode Four, something else becomes apparent; the mechanics change somewhat. Gone is the map and the ability to scan collectibles and find usable items such as pepper spray, suddenly they’ve been replaced with a photo mode on the camera. OMNI view still works although you have no assistance anymore, and everything that glows red through OMNI view can be photographed as a collectible. Prizrak have been replaced with one, towering beast of a man named Mammoth who suffers from some form of split personality disorder; you regularly hear him arguing with himself over what he should be doing. Admittedly, it got a few chuckles out of me due to the nature of the arguments. The stealth aspect is still there, but the entire episode is essentially one long puzzle, having to turn various water valves and photograph certain items to escape the confines of the garden. The end of the episode takes a surprising and unexplainable twist which I won’t completely spoil, but it felt like Camouflaj, the developers of Republique, planned to the end of Episode Three then weren’t sure where to take the story after that, so resorted to an enormous cop out.

Episode Five commences with Hope back inside Metamorphosis, completely okay despite being shot and passing out at the end of the previous episode. The original voice actress, Rena Strober, is back again and the mechanics are back to normal. It’s almost like Camouflaj handed Episode Four over to an entirely different team, then took it back under their wing to finalise the game. The fifth and final episode also sees the game present you with the first proper choice to make that could potentially affect gameplay: whether to kill the Prizrak loyal to defending the Headmaster or try to win them over and recruit them. If Republique had managed to spark any form of emotion out of me other than a few half hearted laughs and exclamations of “What the hell is going on?” When the story simply didn’t make sense, maybe I’d have been inclined to try and save the guards that were just doing their job. Unfortunately for them it didn’t, so going on a murderous rampage seemed like the most entertaining option despite it not being in line with Hope’s personality. As a result, the fifth episode is spent entirely back inside Metamorphosis, with no new areas whatsoever as you revisit old areas to enlist some help with the war you’re about to start. Except you don’t get to see any of the war, you just get to hear it then walk through the littered corpses as you reach the end of the game. There’s a mini episode six right at the very end, where things take an even bigger turn for the crazy. I won’t spoil it but what I will say is this: your choice doesn’t matter. There’s an option at the end of the game but no matter what you pick, Hope will do her own thing anyway.

Comparing Republique to The Walking Dead: Season One by Telltale, there’s one distinct difference that made me care about the characters of Lee and Clementine, while not giving a rat’s arse about Hope and Cooper. The start of The Walking Dead explained exactly who Lee was, where he was going and why, and he was a character that was already defined by the time the zombies started coming for him. Hope on the other hand was a nobody; the game throws you in at the deep end and expects you to piece things together via newspaper reports and voice mementos strewn across Metamorphosis. The problem with that is it becomes tiresome and boring, since there’s no incentive to actually find out more about the characters in the game.

The concept behind Republique is a fantastic one and I have no doubt it works better as a smartphone experience, but on console it largely disappoints. Undeveloped characters, dodgy controls and a bland environment contribute to one of the biggest disappointments I’ve played on my PS4 so far. If I backed it on Kickstarter after seeing the experience and vision of the guys behind it, I’d feel hard done by with the PS4 version.