So I Tried… Republique

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of Republique.

What I thought it was

I may be getting this confused with a different game, but I’m pretty sure it’s a stealth-based third-person game with a female protagonist. It’s either cyberpunk or World War 2, and all I know is that it intrigued me enough to grab it -- but that was ages ago so now I’m missing key information as it’s been supplanted by other facts in the meantime...

What it actually is

It is definitely not what I was expecting, with you not directly controlling the protagonist, a girl named Hope, in a stealth-based adventure game. She has been arrested for spreading propaganda, and is scheduled for mind alteration. You are her ticket out, so long as you can hack your way through the facility, kinda like that one mission in Watch_Dogs. You’re viewing everything through the security cameras and can hop between them to get a different angle on things, as well as hack doors to lock and unlock them, and have to tell Hope when to move. She can pick things up, pickpocket guards and run should you tell her to. Eventually you can buy upgrades to hack voicemails, create distractions -- that kind of jazz.

Will I keep playing

I don’t think I will. Usually I get an instant feeling one way or the other, but with Republique (also the name of the villainous political party’s manifesto) I don’t think it made enough of an impact on me. The control method of being stuck in the cameras is very limiting, and honestly the story wasn’t very compelling in the opening half hour. You can pause time to move around the cameras, and it’s the only way to unlock doors and collect digital information, but there’s never really any danger. If one of the guards grabs Hope, he takes her to the closest holding cell -- which you instantly help her escape from and resume what you were up to. That’s why I described it as an adventure game: it’s a new take on point & click. However, despite my being a fan of that genre, Republique isn’t something I’ll be returning to.