Corruption 2029 Review

The developer The Bearded Ladies, developer of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, came out with a tactical game called Corruption 2029. When this game was first announced, I was immediately sold since it looked like a more sophisticated version of one of my favorite tactical games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. To be honest, I used XCOM: Enemy Unknown as a basis for comparison as I played Corruption 2029.

Corruption 2029 is set in a dystopian future where the United States of America has been split into two factions, the New American Council (NAC) and the United Peoples of America (UPA). Both factions are pretty much the same and corrupted in their own ways. I was placed in the UPA faction where the soldiers have been augmented with cybernetics and deprived of their own free will. The game started by thrusting me in the middle of the war that has been raging for years and may never end. This setting got me really excited to explore more of the story and history of Corruption 2029 but unfortunately, the story never really progressed and seemed to be an afterthought. Basically, the story boiled down to UPA was the faction I happened to be in and NAC is the enemy so go kill them. Both sides think they are on the correct side of justice and that the other side are a bunch of terrorists. The opening scene told me that both sides were really no different from each other but propaganda and false reports helped to keep their citizens and followers loyal. There was nothing really to expand upon this other than what I just said, save for a few dialogues here and there. It honestly made the game feel a bit lacking in that regard. Not only that, unlike XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the units did not have permanent deaths. They did have names but to be quite honest, I could not remember names so I usually just mentally referred to them by their roles. However, Corruption 2029 did make up for it a bit in the graphics and gameplay.

Visually, Corruption 2029 was a stunning game. The details on the map and the interfaces were very well designed. I really enjoyed watching explosions and seeing the bullets shoot across the map. The areas I was in also really helped sell the dystopian environment of the game. There were burning cars and demolished buildings all over the place for me to take cover behind. However, after a while, the maps all started to feel the same and while visually pleasing, it felt like I was just playing the same missions over and over again. Either that or playing different missions in the exact same place I was previously.

One thing I did really enjoy was the gameplay. I did love how at the beginning of each mission, I could maneuver my units around as though I was playing an MMORPG to get them into the best ambush positions. The tactical turn-base portion of the game was very similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown and I really enjoyed how it played it. Of course, there were times when the percentages would be 70% chance of hitting and my unit would miss wildly. This is always a game of chance because I have hit an enemy with only a 25% chance of hitting as well. Maneuvering the camera was very easy and it was very easy to move units around without having to worry about misclicking.

The stealth in this game was a nice feature as well as knowing the radius that enemies have before they could detect my units. With stealth, I could pick off enemies one at a time without being detected most of the time. However, eventually, the enemies become smarter and are able to detect me quickly, forcing me to engage in a firefight right away. As I completed missions, I was able to augment my units even further such as giving them the ability to bionic leap onto buildings or land on top of enemies, thus blowing away their cover. I also could give them new and better weapons to play with. Unfortunately, the enemies were not terribly varied at all. I encountered enemies that wielded rifles which are the normal enemies and then enemies that also wielded a rifle but had more health. There were also snipers and a heavily armored enemy that were quite annoying to deal with. Finally, there were resurrection drones and a unit known as the overseer. For a game such as this, I was hoping to see more types of enemies that were distinguishable from one another.

Overall, Corruption 2029 felt like an incomplete game. The gameplay and graphics were definitely there and were pretty on point but the lack of story and different maps made the game feel rushed to completion. I felt slightly cheated as there was so much potential for even a half-decent story but that was not even given. I will say that I did enjoy the battles most of the time but I could not bring myself to truly enjoy the game as I felt that I was just doing the same thing over and over again towards the end.