Excellent Presentation, Intriguing Aroma, and Bland Flavors - A Review of SlavicPunk: Oldtimer
PS5 Game Review
Creating the perfect ambiance can make a mediocre movie script into an incredible film. Visual presentation alone can’t deliver this excellence—ever try watching Jaws with the audio muted? Sound design, voice acting, and background music are vitally important for media with a visual component. Blend in a remarkably detailed setting and you will have the stock to create something truly amazing. Next, the flavorful inhabitants with all of their fears, hopes, motivations, and actions are stirred into the concoction as a thickening agent to fill out the narrative framework. To this base you then add your meat to boost the umami: the protagonist, the antagonist, the foil, the confidante, et cetera. Along with some spices and alchemical fortune, the result will hopefully be something that teases the senses enjoyably. In the case of video games however, there is also the monumentally important interactive piece. SlavicPunk: Oldtimer has nearly all of the culinary ingredients for a satisfying dish, but unfortunately the generic, undercooked game mechanics and subpar character dialogue overshadow a wonderfully crafted and fabulously immersive world.
I started the game and was welcomed with music written by Patryk Scelina which contained a diverse assortment of melodic sounds. Futuristic synthesizer produced notes and syncopated drum machine beats were at the core of the arrangement, but the addition of the genre appropriate saxophone along with instruments more closely associated with Slavic Folk music like the hurdy-gurdy, gusli, balalaika, and domra, really added amazing depth, uniqueness, and cultural context. The opening track on the start screen is the theme music of our protagonist, so throughout the journey you will hear bits of it seamlessly woven into the distinct melody of each level. As I played, motivated by the stunning resonance, I was further enamored by Red Square Games’ amazingly crafted isometric three-dimensional environments. From the snow covered dilapidated buildings and architecture, to the grimy indoor spaces populated with corporate shills, gang members, “on the take” police officers, and synthetic drug dealers, the proverbial table was invitingly set for a mouthwatering feast to come.
The in-game narrative is based on the works of Michał Gołkowski, a renowned Polish author of science fiction and fantasy books. Although I’m not intimately familiar with his writings, based on the general themes presented in SlavicPunk: Oldtimer I can deduce with a high degree of certainty that “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” Philip K. Dick’s other writings, and movies based upon them served as inspirational material for the game designers and scriptwriters. When I was eleven years old, I went with my father (and possibly my aunt) to see what many consider to be the first live action cyberpunk film. At that age the dark and bleak, more likely to be REAL future didn’t measure up to what I thought science fiction should be—thanks in no small part to George Lucas. Noir has never been a genre that I’m particularly drawn to, but even at that tender age I was able to identify its influence. The theatrical release of Blade Runner contained narration by Harrison Ford as the protagonist Rick Deckard. Some say he “phoned it in” for his spoken performance, but to my ears it sounded exactly like any traditional work of crime fiction or melodramatic film from the 40s or 50s. In SlavicPunk: Oldtimer the grizzled mercenary you play as, Yanus similarly provides expository depictions of the city in which he lives and the Tyrell Corporation surrogate of HIS world. Rodent, a streetwise punk and Yanus’ assumed mentee is always sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, so you’ll find yourself breaking away from your primary mission numerous times to come to his aid. And what noir story would be complete without a femme fatale? You have been hired by Sonia to retrieve a stolen data drive. Based on the innuendo and often flirtatious dialog between the two of you, she is a frequent sex partner, so calling Yanus her “private dick” is fitting on at least two levels.
But alas… as the story unfolded, I lost focus due to its formulaic predictability. There were distracting, expletive ridden cutscenes, presumably for the purpose of coming off as edgy, punctuated by the minimalist graphic novel presentation which clashed with the realism of the game level topography. In retrospect, you discover a possible reason for this contrast in styles, but the game seems to treat the final reveal as a “gotcha” twist moment instead of a more satisfying, slowly revealed allusion to the protagonist’s actual predicament. Although clues were not present amongst the spoken dialog of needless profanity and broken English, these breadcrumbs could have been hidden within the discourse text in the upper right hand corner of the screen. To the developer’s credit, there was the option to enlarge the font size for the HUD which was adequate enough for me at the highest setting, but this option didn’t increase the size of the character dialog text significantly enough to be legible to my fifty-year-old ocular organs and my aged brain. After hours of squinting while attempting to transcribe the messages, I eventually gave up trying.
Two-dimensional characters showing very little growth in their arcs is arguably a hallmark of the melodrama. The noir setting is adequate enough for my refined (cough) palette of media consumption; however, when characters aren’t learning and growing as a result of their actions, it is very difficult for me to enjoy their passage. Moreover, when we have been given no reason to care about or empathize with them, it is doubly so. One notable exception is the Coen brothers’ masterpiece The Big Lebowski featuring the fish out of water protagonist who is unwillingly taken on an adventure chock full of Hollywood movie tropes, L.A. resident stereotypes, pot smoking, misunderstandings, White Russians, and dream sequences. By design all of the ostensibly flat characters are somewhat predictable in the handling of the scenarios therein, but you are experiencing all of the bizarre happenings along with “The Dude” (or El Duderino “…if you're not into the whole brevity thing”) as you both attempt to unravel the perplexing mystery of Mr. Lebowski’s missing million. The novelty of the absurd events and surprising interactions, not the characters themselves, keep the audience invested and engaged. In comparison, Yanus’ path feels more like a banal chronology rather than an engrossing saga.
Then there is the futuristic gear… the tech: guns, mods, wetware computer interfaces, physical augments, and hacking rigs. These items are a mercenary’s best friend in a society caught between scientific advancement and a decaying metropolis. In a sprawling city it is very easy to get turned around, geographically speaking. You are in “the future,” so one of the earliest internet advancements of our lifetime SHOULD be a part of even the most antiquated cyber-gear, right? Nope! Polish up your third generation console cartography skills, because if you want to find any of the shops you discovered previously, you’re going to need them, a pen, and some graph paper. Being able to rotate the visible segment of the map using one of the thumbsticks will absolutely be beneficial in a firefight, but all of that spinning whilst running, shooting, and dodging enemy fire can be quite disorienting. In SP:O, the location of your next mission is clearly indicated by a directional arrow on one of the edges of the screen, but it also would have been useful to include the cardinal directions in a similar manner. I’m not sure why the decision was made to omit a full map from the game design, but including one certainly would have helped to expedite my travel and shopping agenda.
For the computer power source and the hacking portions of the adventure, there were two overly simplistic mini-games included which didn’t provide much fun or variety. For example, in some levels you would have to follow electric cables from a computer or a locked door back to a power supply to turn on before you could use them. While the hacking game consisted of a pin that you had to fully insert into gaps in 3 rotating concentric rings, the power connection game consisted of five switches that you had to figure out how each toggle would behave before proceeding to get all of them in the on position. Like the hacking, there was almost no difference in each “puzzle” and no negative consequence for failing. Both seemed unnecessary and were unsatisfying.
Squandered potential is truly a double-edged sword, especially when it occurs in a studio’s first commercial game. On one hand there is the sour disappointment of imagining what could have been plated in front of you after a tasty appetizer, but there is also the hope that the next item you order off the menu will sate your appetite every imaginable way. Slavic Punk: Oldtimer had some of the meticulously prepared ingredients I enjoy, so I am optimistically looking forward to playing their next title. With additional marination, time in the oven, and a little luck, the next entrée from Red Square Games should be at home in any Michelin Guide, Bib Gourmand ranked eatery.
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