GTA 2-inspired Glitchpunk has early access in its sights
It's better to be a punk than a rockstar
Top-down and totally OTT shooter Glitchpunk is aiming for an August 11th early access release date. I spotted it just before the Steam Game Fastival a few months ago, and was surprised at how grafting a Grand Theft Auto 2-style action game with hacking appealed to me. My memories of GTA 2 are so fast-paced that I get out of breath just remembering it, so stopping to do some nefarious and slow-paced activities seems like a perfect tweak.
Not that you see a lot of hacking in any of the game’s trailers, but I’m going to trust them that, aside from all the GTA-esque wanted levels (all the way up to ten), car crime, and murder, there’s some subtley involved. Controlling an android that’s fighting its own programming is a decent enough hook for that.
It lets you augment your own character with powers (speed, strength, etc), but also allows you to mess with the world somewhat. You can force people in the street to fight each other, and hack passing cars to cause traffic chaos. Heck, you can even steal someone's identity. You’ll definitely end up in a tank, blasting away at everyone you see, but that’s not the whole game.
It’s properly early access, too. Of the full game’s four cities, only Outpost Texas and New Baltia will be playable when it launches next month. Neo Tokyo and Moscow will come along later. If things are balanced across all the cities, that probably means you’ll encounter six gangs of the game’s planned dozen.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for it on Steam when it hits early access on August 11th.