Cyberwar 4
Cyberwar 4 is a futuristic FPS title developed by Psygnosis. It's the fifth game in the Cyberwar series, taking place two years after the events of Cyberwar 3 and Cyberwar: Netizen X. The game features elements of both FPS titles and hacking/social engineering games, with dual protagonists who both take a different approach to fighting a new world war that's spilled almost entirely into cyberspace. The corporation known as the Power Corps, which began as a mercenary branch of the United States government, but has since become its own extranational government through its control over cyberspace and its ability to influence millions of people throughout the world, has launched a series of strikes in an attempt to cripple the abilities of the world's governments to resist them. Fighting against the Power Corps are a group of hackers spread across the world who have aligned themselves with soldiers and rebels to battle the Power Corps' private army. The game's two primary protagonists are Toma Alvarez, a hacker and defector from the Power Corps, and Lucy Brunstein (AKA Netizen X), a 17-year-old girl who happens to be the most skilled hacker in the world, and also the most influential influencer of all time, with millions of followers of her own, giving her a private army almost rivaling that of the Power Corps (with the difference being that the Power Corps is armed with guns and WMDs, and Lucy's army has whatever they can acquire, plus hacking skills). Tomas controls like a typical FPS hero, using guns in most situations, but also able to use hacking and stealth, making his style of play somewhat comparable to that of Joanna Dark: a skilled fighter with an array of technological tools at his disposal. Meanwhile, Lucy fights from the comforts of her room, and when playing as Lucy, the player will take control of a robotic fighter that Lucy has hacked. Lucy has the ability to "jump" from vessel to vessel, utilizing the robots she hacks, each of which have their own separate stats and weapon loadout. The game's narrative is a fairly strict one, meaning that for the most part, the player is not able to choose between Tomas and Lucy, and the switching between them is usually fairly unexpected, triggered by a cutscene or an event flag. However, the game itself (especially Lucy's segments) is quite non-linear, especially for an FPS title. The player is encouraged to explore and hack what they can. Both Tomas and Lucy can build up levels as they progress through the game and accomplish various tasks, with Tomas able to gain the ability to shoot straighter or take cover more easily, while Lucy can improve her hacking skills and give herself more time to find a new vessel once her old one takes too much damage. The game features highly contextual dialogue between the player characters and various NPCs, and also between Tomas and Lucy themselves. Lucy also likes to talk to herself sometimes, and will say various things depending on what's going on in the game. Like in other open world games, the player is able to find out more about the game's world by hacking and exploring as much as possible. Lucy is able to hack into civilians' phones in order to see their contacts and recent texts, and at greater hacker levels, is able to interfere more with the operations of the city and with the Power Corps soldiers. When Lucy and Tomas are working together, Lucy can help Tomas clear barricades and lure people into traps, while Tomas is able to clear a path for Lucy to navigate her robots. Cyberwar 4 features great graphics on the Nintendo Sapphire (pushing the system almost to its limits), but looks especially good on the Google Nexus, with Psygnosis taking the time to make it a true next generation title. As far as voice acting goes, Zachary Quinto and AJ Michalka both reprise their roles as Tomas and Lucy respectively, while other famous actors also voice various major and minor characters in the game, giving Cyberwar 4 one of the year's most talented and high profile voice casts. The game's high production values make it one of the most expensive titles of the year, putting a significant strain on the finances of the newly independent Psygnosis and making it pretty much a make or break game for the company.
Cyberwar 4's main campaign picks up right where Cyberwar 3 left off, and shows how Tomas Alvarez escaped the prison that he trapped himself and Sara Marzandre in. It confirms that she indeed turned the gun she had on herself and didn't shoot Tomas with it, and then the player is given control of Tomas and after a somewhat complicated series of actions, he escapes his confinement. However, Power Corps troops are descending on the building, and he has to fight his way out. He's wounded, and we're left with a cliffhanger, and then a fairly long sequence of Netizen X missions begin, two years later in 2046. The game shows how the Power Corps has slowly taken over the world, using proxy armies in various nations, starting (and usually winning) civil wars all over the world, while subtly manipulating the American government into surrendering more and more power. Netizen X and her band of rebel hackers, which include Julie Skalzeny (but notably not Samuel Redd, at least yet), along with some new characters (the organization is somewhat like Dedsec from OTL's Watch Dogs 2, though perhaps a bit more serious in nature) are the only thing standing between the Power Corps and total world domination. The player is able to get a feel for Lucy's abilities and do some true open-world hacking and exploration during this part, which sees Netizen X "liberating" the city of Compton from some Power Corps mercenaries and mechs. However, the greater Los Angeles area is still heavily controlled by the Power Corps, with much of the city damaged and in chaos. Netizen X's missions eventually lead to Tomas getting a "ping" about a strange hacker. Two years after the incident at the Power Corps HQ, Tomas is a freedom fighter, hitting Power Corps sites all over the world. However, he sees Netizen X's activities not as a help, but as a hindrance to what he and his own allies are attempting to accomplish. He doesn't know that the ping leads to Netizen X, and also doesn't know about her true nature, all he knows is that whoever this hacker is they could potentially be working for the Power Corps. He makes his way to Netizen X's headquarters, an old underground mall in Los Angeles that's been converted into a resistance base. He ambushes Lucy and grabs her, but she's able to turn her security mechs on Tomas, leading to an impasse that's quickly resolved when Lucy determines that Tomas wouldn't kill a child, and uses her mechs to stun him. Now with the upper hand, but also knowing everything about Tomas, Lucy playfully "interrogates" him before revealing that she's been waiting for him to show up and that she's been tracking him for some time. An uneasy alliance is formed, but the two agree to work together, and this leads into the main action of the game, in which Lucy and Tomas coordinate on operations to stop the Power Corps (at this point, the campaign is about a third of the way over). Tomas can begin learning some of Lucy's social engineering skills, while Lucy begins to level up her combat (though she herself is unable to fight at this point in the game). The dynamic between them is sort of like an even more dysfunctional Joel and Ellie from OTL's The Last Of Us, with Tomas eventually seeing himself as a kind of father figure for Lucy, while Lucy sees him as the dad she always wishes she had (but who also annoys the hell out of her). The game's main villain is revealed at this point: a soldier who once worked with Tomas in his squad named Eldon Barker (voiced by Jake Gyllenhaal one of the bigger A-list voice acting "gets" for a video game to this date),. Barker, like Tomas, is a brilliant hacker, and like Lucy, is brilliant at socially manipulating people. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Power Corps with his technical abilities, and once he learned how to manipulate top government officials to the Power Corps' whims, he was able to seize power at an accelerated rate. He IS sort of reminiscent of Mysterio from the OTL Far From Home movie, though without the illusions and theatrics, and more of a deadly serious edge to him. He's not the leader of the Power Corps themselves, but is their top-rated "neo-mercenary", a sort of cybersoldier with the ability to fight in both cyberspace and realspace. As Tomas and Lucy's activities get more and more troublesome for the Power Corps, Barker gets closer and closer to taking them down.
The game's second half begins with a mission to find Samuel Redd (who savvy players will remember was the protagonist from Netizen X). Tomas finds him, and he's been convalescing for most of the last two years. Tomas eventually finds out some troubling information from him: Lucy has been manipulatng him into giving up vital information and tech, and she indeed might be communicating with Barker himself. Indeed, the next Netizen X mission confirms that Lucy is working with Barker on some level. Tomas is reluctant to go after Lucy, but is told by Redd that her activities are doing more harm than good, and that she has to be taken down. This leads to a harrowing "boss fight" in which the player controls both Lucy and Tomas in alternating segments of a fight against each other, as Tomas tries to break into her base and eventually kill her, and Lucy tries everything she can to stop him. This leads to a sequence in which Lucy is forced to shoot Tomas in self-defense, and flees out of her hideout, giving the player direct control over Lucy for the first time in the game. During this segment, she has limited hacking abilities, and is not able to attack anyone, but she's eventually forced to defend herself again after one of Barker's mercs comes after her, and she eventually kills him. Though she has killed people before with her hacks (reluctantly), this is the first time she's truly killed anyone with her own hands, and it causes her to break down. Meanwhile, Barker captures the wounded Tomas, but doesn't hurt him at first. Instead, we get a lot of information about the two's background as former friends. Eventually, however, Barker does begin torturing Tomas, and Tomas eventually relents and asks Barker to help him take down Netizen X, as she's a threat to the stability of the world. Lucy manages to make her way into a hacker lab, and begins transmitting a message out to every electronic device in the world that the war cannot go on and that the Power Corps must give up their power. She is attacked by more mercs, but manages to fight her way out with a combination of hacking and bullets. Exhausted and terrified, she wants to find Tomas but believes he's probably dead. She manages to transmit a message to him just before passing out. Tomas begins to set a trap for Lucy, but realizes the error he's made just in time, and fights his way to Lucy, saving her life. The two reconcile, and with their remaining allies, they're able to form a new group to take the fight to the Power Corps. The next mission is a climactic one in which Tomas battles his way to Barker while Lucy uses her hacking skills to clear the way for him. Eventually, she's forced out of her hiding place and ventures back out on her own (though with a much better weapon this time). Tomas gets help from both Julie and Redd to help him reach Barker, and after an emotional fight, Barker is defeated. However, Lucy doesn't think it's quite that simple, and even as Power Corps troops flee Los Angeles, Lucy realizes how difficult and brutal the fight will be. She decides that she's going to take another option... using Sara Marzandre's design, she's reconstructed the logic bomb, and she detonates it, cutting off power to the entire continental United States. This also severely cripples the Power Corps, allowing the United States military to overrun them in a series of harrowing nighttime battles. However, it's not that clean and simple. Tomas is taken prisoner by the US military, who take him to a blacksite for interrogation. Lucy decides to rescue him on her own, without her hacking abilities. This is where much of the combat knowledge and leveling that Lucy did pays off, as she fights her way into the blacksite and manages to reach Tomas. However, more soldiers arrive, and Tomas and Lucy have no way out. Tomas tells Lucy that he's proud of her for ending the war, but Lucy, despite her bravery, is terrified to die. Just when it looks hopeless for them, literally hundreds of thousands of Netizen X supporters show up, surrounding the blacksite (think the Area 51 raid if it went exactly how the planners thought it would go). They threaten to overrun the facility and kill everyone inside if Tomas and Lucy aren't released, and reluctantly, the site commander allows the two to walk out unharmed. Tomas and Lucy walk out through a crowd of cheering supporters, but though Lucy is relieved that she didn't die, she's also terrified of the world that she has made. The United States has been crippled by the logic bomb, with damage that will take years to repair and tech set back a long time. The Power Corps is defeated in the United States, but is regrouping elsewhere. Technology has literally become so dangerous that Lucy doesn't know if she wants the grid to be repaired or not. The game ends on a bittersweet and worrisome note, with an injured Tomas and an emotionally broken Lucy not knowing what direction the world will go now.
The game also features an extensive multiplayer mode, perhaps the most detailed and feature-packed in the series to date. The main new mode, a game style called Cyber City which is sort of a combination between OTL Fortnite and OTL Watch Dogs, in which 12 players are placed randomly across a large map and must kill each other, utilizing hacking and social engineering to disrupt, manipulate, and find the other players. It's one of the most strategically dense and amusingly addictive gameplay modes ever in an FPS title, lending itself to fierce fights and hilarious moments, with matches becoming instant social media sensations. Cyber City is the main attraction, but Cyberwar 4's myriad of deathmatch and other modes, both team and individual, make it one of the most fun FPS titles ever for competitive play and an instant hit amongst players who have gotten tired of Call Of Duty. It's the multiplayer that has made Cyberwar as big of a franchise as it is, and that's no exception here, with the game quickly shooting to the top of the player count leaderboards on both Sapphire and Nexus. The game, which releases on November 20, 2012, is an instant hit upon its release, smashing first week sales records in North America on the Nintendo Sapphire and quickly surpassing The Covenant 5 as the best selling Nexus title as well. It even outsells Call Of Duty: Coalition, despite being released on less systems overall. Cyberwar 3 was the best selling game ever released on the Xbox 2, and Cyberwar 4 will eventually come to surpass its total sales on the Sapphire alone, not even factoring in Nexus sales. Reviews are also extremely good, with only Super Mario Laboratory getting higher overall scores. Cyberwar 4 would come to be Super Mario Laboratory's biggest challenger for 2012's Game of the Year, and fanboys would begin fighting over which of the two games was better almost immediately after the first reviews were released. Cyberwar, which began its life as an Xbox exclusive, has gained new life on both Nintendo and Google's systems, and Cyberwar 4 would eventually be released on Apple's Virtua system as well, selling at least a million titles there.
