NEO Scavenger Review
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Article Index
Story
Usually in roguelike RPGs, you play a random character in a random dungeon and you fight random monsters for random loot. So it's interesting that NEO Scavenger tries to mix that sort of feel with a fixed campaign. Unfortunately, for me it didn't work, and it didn't even feel like Blue Bottle Games tried to make it work.
After setting up the interesting premise -- where you wake up in a cryo lab without knowing who you are or what happened to you -- the story aspect of the game is almost completely dropped. There are fixed locations where you can go to learn things about yourself, including the Detroit Megacity and an insane asylum, but they don't tell you anything of significance. About all you learn is that there's a "wraith" in your backstory, which opens up more questions than it answers. Even winning the game doesn't resolve anything. You just move from Michigan to Indiana, where presumably your exploits will continue in a sequel.
About 60% of the game is comprised of scavenging, about 30% is comprised of combat, and the other 10% includes the special encounters (some fixed and some random) where you talk to people, go shopping, and learn things. The scavenging and combat aspects of the game work fine, but I don't think they're interesting enough to hold up the game on their own. In fact, with the campaign so undercooked, NEO Scavenger feels like it hasn't been finished yet, like it only contains the first act of a three act story. It's in a state that I more associate with previews than reviews.
Graphics and Sound
NEO Scavenger is a budget title with very basic graphics and sound. All of the items you find have unique icons, and your character looks different on the world map depending on the equipment you have him wearing, which is nice, but otherwise there isn't anything about the graphics to get excited about. Everything is in 2D, there aren't any animations at all, and the map locations use cutting and pasting far too often, which gives them a generic feel. Meanwhile, other than a minimal set of background music, interface sounds, and ambient noises (such as for rainfall) there aren't any sounds at all. The difference between playing NEO Scavenger with and without sound is minimal.
Technical
I spent about 30 hours playing NEO Scavenger, and I didn't notice any bugs or broken abilities. However, the game does have one serious technical issue -- the saves. Most roguelikes only allow one save per character, where the game controls when the saves are made. NEO Scavenger is sort of like that, except it only allows one save for the entire game. So you can't have two people with active games going at the same time, and if you manage to "win," then the winning save is erased the next time you start up a new character. That's just blechy.
Conclusion
I don't play roguelike games very often. My preference is to play games with enveloping stories and memorable characters and meaningful dialogue, and that's not what roguelikes usually try to deliver. NEO Scavenger starts out looking like it might be something new, an RPG with a fixed campaign and an otherwise random world, but all-too-quickly the campaign flatlines, and all you're left with are the random elements, which aren't strong enough to make up an entire game on their own.
Still, NEO Scavenger has the kernel of a game inside, it's still being updated, and it's not very expensive. It also has a demo, so you can try it out for little or no cost and see if the random elements work better for you than they did for me. But my take is, if you're going to try out a budget title, and if you want something reasonably new, then you're much better off going with Legend of Grimrock II or even Lords of Xulima than NEO Scavenger.
