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NeoTokyo Retrospective
Posted on March 2nd, 2010 4 comments
Counter-Strike. I won’t be talking about it today, but it’s completely impossible to discuss the masterpiece that is Neotokyo without abording the subject of its ancestor, the venerable guru of gaming wisdom that is CS – a game that bore hundreds of gaming industry bastard lovechildren, stole their girlfriends, and ran off to Zanzibar. More than ten years on, it remains the undisputed champion of team based first person gaming. It’s spawned clone after clone, copy after copy, and mod after mod, and still emerged triumphant.
It isn’t surprising then, that most challengers to CS’ blood-soaked throne have done their utmost best to differentiate themselves from the reigning champion, the Sauron of the FPS world. Not so with Neotokyo. It takes on the master head on, guns blazing, and emerges, if not quite unscathed, with its head held high, a Rocky of the modding world against Valve’s Creed.
The comparisons to the modding world’s undeniable king CS is hard to avoid. Two teams of special forces operatives with upgrading weapon choices, a slow, tactical pace that encourages teamwork and cooperation, and all but fatal headshots – the NT team knew exactly who they were facing up against when they wandered into this ring.
It would be completely misunderstanding Neotokyo however, to reduce it to a mere clone, as the entire mod is heavily tinged with, if not completely covered in, its own unique flavour. It’s the flavour of Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira, and it’s masterfully melded with the otherwise relatively unoriginal core – but it all fits together so incredibly well, which is why Neotokyo is such damnably good fun. More importantly, NT knows its audience – it caters to gamers, and it knows there are two things we gamers love above all: awesome gadgets, and ridiculous gadgets.
Like invisibility. Well all know it’s awesome – if you haven’t dreamt of running around with some sort of invisibility-cloak-camo-thermoptic-thingy as child, then either you haven’t lived, or you’re in fact Benjamin Button – but rarely has it been implemented in such a well balanced fashion, while still being so friggin cool. Maybe it’s because it’s called thermoptic camo, maybe it’s because it has that shockingly high-tec sizzle when you activate it, or maybe it’s the sheer feeling of invincibility it inspires before you’re so inevitably crushed by the devastating power of a satchel charge, but rarely has any gaming high compared to the feel of wandering into wide open ground, in full view of your opponents, protected only by a few seconds of measly cloak, before dropping your foes with a few well placed shots. It tickles that itch we all have for the radically awesome technology of the future, while still being perfectly integrated, functional, and incredibly fun.
NeoTokyo’s toying with our technology fetish doesn’t end there though. It knows what anybody who’s ever played Splinter Cell will know: awesome goggles are awesome. Night vision goggles are awesome, thermal goggles are awesome, motion detection is awesome, and NeoTokyo will bend you over and use and abuse you and your love of goggles. Hard. And you’ll like it. Not only does it give you all three of the awesomesauce goggles of awesome to pick from, but rarely have they looked so high-tec – while their Splinter Cell variants were at best functional, the thermal goggles making foes appear as blogs of angry red in a sea of freakish distortion, the NT goggles have style. Motion-vision will light enemies up as they run through clouds of smoke, highlighting them like neon bullseyes in some freakish dystopian shooting gallery, and thermal will highlight their bodily heat with a stunning red while colouring the decaying world around them in stunning, psychadelic hues of purple and yellow.
While you’re showered with a variety of technological wonders to toy and/or shoot people with, none will compare to the true trophy and crux of any Neotokyo game: the ghost. It’s not hard to figure out why the NT team decided to make the ghost so important. We all love robots, we all love topless ladies, and we all love seeing through walls. Oh, and we all love winning. The ghost combines all four in one disembodied cyborg package. I’ll explain: unlike CS, in Neotokyo, the objective is not set. Instead of being forced to assault or defend any particular area, you’ll need to retrieve the ghost – a robotic female torso you’ll find lying on the floor and return it to your capture area, and it isn’t as easy as it sounds. For starters, you’ll have to hunt the ghost down – as she’ll spawn at a randomly decided spot somewhere between the two teams – and then, you’ll have to carry the poor lady back, which is an issue, seeing as she’ll severely restrict your firepower, by disallowing the use of your primary weapon. It’s hard to shoot people while carrying some woman’s torso.
Thankfully, picking up the ghost isn’t all bad, as it also gives you one nigh on unbeatable advantage: you’ll detect all your foes. Through walls. The element of surprise, initially so crucial in a game like NT where death is all but instantaneous, is suddenly made all but irrelevant – but without your weapon, you’ll be forced to rely on your teammates to protect your precious burden. In other words, unless you’re willing to get on voice and report enemy positions to your friends, then don’t pick up the damn ghost. It’s a shockingly simple mechanic, but that’s also beautifully thought out, and can radically transform the balance of the game – a perfect example of why it’s garnered such a devout fan base, and why it’s still worth downloading the client today.
It’s hardly surprising. Despite all I’ve said about Neotokyo being similar to its forefather, CounterStrike, it’s undeniably an entirely different animal. From small but crucial tweaks, such as the inclusion of leaning and fireteams, to entirely new mechanics, from the ghost to cloaking, NeoTokyo has built on the foundations established years beforehand, and come back so much stronger. It has all the appeal of its ancestry, combined with its own fascinating flavour. It’s a testament to that appeal that we’ll still be playing NT for awhile to come. You should be too.
NeoTokyo is a mod for HL2. It is easy to download, and servers are still populated. You can download the installer here, and the patch here.
For more info, visit the homepage or the ModDB page.4 responses to “NeoTokyo Retrospective”
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most ppl that play actively mods and compete on ladders and me included thought that the visual design and – even more so – are better than what you get at retail but the mechanics, gameplay and mapdesign is completely broken and although pointed out numerous times by many ppl in a friendly way was never adressed by the devs going as far as banning everybody critizising their mod. They made clear from day one that their only intention was to release a “calling card” for a later industry job. Atl least that is what sticked after a release riddled with gamebreaking bugs that showed a serious lack of quality control. That’s why nobody really plays it.
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Crispy April 17th, 2010 at 10:13
If you’re into anime you should check out this mod. If you’re into teamplay (with mics), you should check out this mod.
What the review says is all true, the gameplay mechanic on its own is very strong. Unfortunately where the mod falls down is definitely not its looks, but its UI, its map balance and its weapon balance.
Regarding the UI, I have to clarify that I’m talking more about the team, class and weapon menus and just how well-explained the game is through the interface. The HUD is actually quite nice with clean look and some very useful features (scrolling compass, squad assignment and squad member info).
But where it falls down is by not explaining to a new player what everything is and does. You won’t get menus telling you what each class is good at, what abilities they have and what weapons they can use. You also can’t see the damage differences between two different SMGs, for example. What this means is you’ll spend a lot of time having to pull this information out for yourself through trial and (often painful) error.
There is also a lot of missed opportunities for a small bit of text on the HUD to tell you what’s going on. There’s nothing to tell you the game mode or rules at the start of a round, so you run around like a headless chicken for a bit. The Ghost has no text on the HUD to tell you it’s really important and you should go defend it/pick it up, and when you do pick it up you don’t have any text explaining how to use it.
These represent minor but much needed changes that teach you how to play the game. It’s like shipping a board game with no rulebook. Sadly from what I can see of the patch notes this has not been addressed and subsequent patches have instead focused on adding new content with some balance changes.
Bottom line: The NT team has done well to release such a visually/aurally polished mod, but even though the gameplay is fundamentally quite simple, picking it up to begin with will prove difficult for most players. If you are kinda hardcore and you can stick with it you may well enjoy it. And anime fans will love it either way.
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This mod wasn’t particularly fun to play, it had a ton of weapon balance problems going on and I really hated that the flag spawned at a random location rather than being situated in the middle of the map.
However, it was undeniably pretty to look at. Shame about the gameplay.
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NeoTokyo is odd. I love the mod to bits and still play every now and again when i’m able but it’s flaw is the flaw of so many other mods: “Release Early and Release Often”. NeoTokyo didn’t do that, and any game begins to stagnate if there’s nothing new for a few months. Gamers are a fickle bunch and when a game stagnates they find something else to entertain them.
As for gameplay, it’s a very harsh style. One I feel more akin to Rainbow 6 than CS, but with lots of similarities to both. The single objective gameplay is great too, and the random location spawning is so it forces you to adapt your tactics depending on the ghost’s position.
Visuals wise (seeing as it’s running on HL Ep1 engine I believe) it’s astounding the fidelity they’ve come out with.
The mapping itself is sometimes great, other times not so. There’s a huge range of vertical levels on most of the maps, and then routes through which only the recon class can get to opening up gameplay directions which can mean choke points aren’t so painful.The main problem with the maps is that they were balanced for 6v6, and most of the time it’s 8-12per side or more. When it’s 6v6 suddenly routes that were always camped become available and the whole game changes, forcing your team to work even closer together, and bringing the ghost into play alot more often.
With a bugfix, possibly a new mode (my personal hope is VIP escort) and couple of fresh maps the mod would hopefully get the attention it deserves.
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toni March 24th, 2010 at 08:53