Screw it, the only thing better than cyberpunk is steampunk. Unfortunately, Bioshock just ain’t got the multiplayer to pull this kind of shit off.
It’s hard to recommend Dystopia to anyone who isn’t already into the online gaming scene. There are few games that are quite as tough to “get” than this one – even the notably unfriendly universe of EVE’s New Eden was a walk in the park compared to this – but by god it is worth it.
The scenario is pretty simple: three classes, two teams, one set of objectives. At its base Dystopia is simply an attack/defend style of game – you have objectives (be it CTF or much more complicated) and you go forth and conquer – but that is where the simplicity is forced to end. I’m not sure how to explain just how difficult it can be to fully understand how this game works so instead I’ll just tell you about the message that always appears on the loading screen: it directs you to a page on the website that tells you how to play. I’ve never seen that in a game before.
To be brutally honest with you, however, it is the cyberpunk setting which jumps this total conversion from being a solid exercise in multiplayer fun to something that wins awards. The mod immerses you in a world which seems at once both believable and unreal. Everything goes into making the maps look the part: clean, shiny portal-esque rooms mix with darkness and menace creating a familiar feeling of unease. It’s almost comforting to think that these very rooms were probably designed for evil scientists and the oppressive police.
It isn’t just the level design which contributes to the feel of the game. Some of the mechanics also play a role. The hacking system has got to be one of the most innovative that has ever been produced. In keeping with the tone of the rest of the mod you don’t simply sit at a terminal and let a bar load, or try some little minigame; instead you are propelled into a whole new reality, a cyberspace where your actions have consequences upon the rest of the game. I think I saw someone describe it as cyberspace impacting upon meatspace. How poetic.
With all my talk of graphical immersion I almost forgot the most important part. Some of you might have read my recent review of “Fragments of Ferelden” a mod for Dragon Age, this suffered from a dreadful lack of ambient noise. Many forget just how important this is to a game’s immersive qualities but Dystopia’s developers seem to have been well aware that a good soundtrack and good use of ambient noise can make up for many defects.
Dystopia might be a hard mod to get into, it is sometimes as harsh as the world it is set in (and I haven’t even begun to talk about the ludicrous possibilities that come when you roll a class: 3 classes, with 4 unique weapons each, then a selection of implants makes for myriad possibilities) but it is well worth taking a trip. The major problem with many multiplayer mods is finding populated servers – here you can be fairly certain that there will be at least one. In my experience the community is also quite tolerant, not once have I been bullied or called a “n00b” despite not having dedicated as much time as I’d have liked to the game.
Why is it on our list?
A cyberpunk setting, hacking in a VR and awesome gameplay make for a winning combination.
Is it easy to install?
Yup, just follow the on screen instructions, either through Steam or on the Dystopia website.
Is there a trailer?
Funny you mention that…
Steampunk would be awesome, if it were more Thief and less anime-in-the-Victorian-era more often…
I digress.
Dystopia’s earned a permanent place on my hard drive, if not in my schedule. It’s something of a niche (especially in learning curve) so the community has stayed relatively small. You can’t argue with the very satisfying arsenal and well designed levels once you jump that hurdle, however.
I did hear that there’s a fairly large update on the horizon including guff like Steamworks achievements. Hopefully that’ll breathe some life into it.
Thanks for the coverage, Orfeo. :)
Our community was atrocious for a while, but it slowly fixed itself with the decline in our player numbers – most of the hardcore types who are liable to start calling you names for not knowing how to play are either gone or play competitive games exclusively, so that’s always a boon to new players. That said, it doesn’t take much to stay on people’s good sides – just do a bit of basic research before going ingame; and if you intend to go into cyberspace, *please* run through each map at least once in a listen server.
It’s a good idea to do this anyway to get a feel for where you need to go in each map, but it’s absolutely vital to learn cyberspace if you intend to use a cyberdeck. There are only ever a small number of terminals to jack in, it’s usually very important to get the objective as fast as possible, and if you’re a new player, most experienced players will naturally be a better decker than you are, so by going into cyberspace without knowing the map layout or how cyberspace works, you’re actively harming your team. This is more often than not what gets on experienced players’ nerves, and the userbase is mostly made up of experienced players these day.
Oh, and yes – our sound guy is a genius. If you run into a guy called sverek in-game, that would be him. Feel free to congratulate him. As for the comparison to EVE, I thought it was a little unfair. We’re not nearly that bad. ;)
@MuscleHorse – achievements have been in the game for a while, but we’ve been using our stats website to track them because it initially allowed us to track a lot more stuff in a lot more detail than Steamworks did out of the box. That’s no longer an issue, so Steamworks achievements are now possible.
But yes, we’re hard at work on 1.3, with most of the hurdles of porting to the Orange Box engine overcome. There’s also a new map being “officialised” – Fusion, which is getting a similar treatment to what Cybernetic got (i.e. the mapper was made a tryout dev a few weeks ago and is updating the map for release with 1.3). The changelog we posted in November is a little outdated by now since a bunch more stuff has been worked on.
- Ansob, veteran QA tester (four years next month, woo!)
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I just might play this. I’m not a huge fan of Source Multi-player mods but this looks really good.
@Alexander Norris:
I’ve a suggestion for you, would it be a possiblity to take Portal’s Bonus Content/Challenge menu and add each map to it but somehow with only the cyberspace part?
Taking the portal menu directly doesn’t allow it to be very flexible though, but it can be very easily used, which I’ve tried to do in my mod not that long ago. Although I’m not sure how Valve would react to that though(considering I’m probably dropping that mod… in the Source engine anyway it doesn’t matter for me)
Anyway I think Dystopia is the first mod I ever played for Half-Life 2, I was a noob then and no one was playing then and I had little idea what mods were, uninstalled shortly after.
Came back later and had some good fun with it though, great mod, the cyberspace part and the class system are great, equal chances for everyone!
he… he…
he complimented our level design…
/me gets teary-eyed
Nice write-up. :)
The weapon balance is terrible, there are several blatant cheaters who have been caught, but are still allowed to play in competitive matches, and the community is still atrocious.
And where, exactly, would one go to find this “Dystopia”? I’m only asking because it wasn’t mentioned in the article. You also failed to mention which game it’s a mod for (I’m not sure tags count).
This list is a great idea, but please try to cover the basics in the articles before you start praising the sound design etc. Remember, the idea is to introduce noobs to the best the community has to offer – it helps when you tell the noobs how to begin playing the mod in the first place.
Oh lord, killahmate you are right that is most remiss. I shall edit in the details you need tout de suite.