Get Even may look like an FPS at first glance but this is definitely not what it first seems when you switch it on and begin playing. With the screen play being written by a couple of the guys that have written for mentalist Derren Brown, you’re welcomed into a world of intrigue, tech and more twists and turns than the last 6 months of world politics where you just happen to hold a gun in your hand.
You play the role of a guy called Black, a hired gun who, in the opening prologue, infiltrates an abandoned warehouse to save a girl from her kidnappers. When this all goes wrong, you then wake up in a mental asylum and are regressed through your memories by a mysterious figure called Red, who talks to you mostly through screens on the walls of the asylum, as well as through a device called the Pandora, a VR headset that pulls you into past memories where you’re asked to observe mostly. Playing around with things and killing enemies can have serious consequences later on!
Whilst the game doesn’t look particularly good for the most part, with low grade textures and muddy colours, it does sound amazing! One of the first things you’ll notice is how the sound reacts to everything you do. The sound of machinery clicking denotes something you’ve done that could change the game later on, there’s a music track that features your heavy breathing as part of the percussion as you escape from a high security lab, and there’s even a Disney style song with vocals that kicks in if you get discovered on one of the levels. Somehow even that works really well and is still stuck in my head weeks after completing the game! Oh, and there’s an impressive Sean Bean soundalike playing the part of Black. Really, it’s not him but if Game of Thrones ever needs the voice of Ned Stark to come back into the story, he’ll probably be a cheaper option!
When it comes to gameplay, there is some shooting to be done with a pistol and a device called the corner gun. Here you can tap a shoulder button to aim round corners so you can shoot without exposing yourself to enemy fire. It kind of works but can be really confusing in the heat of battle. When not holding a gun you’ll be using your mobile device to solve puzzles and interact with the world around you. There’s an infra-red mode you can use to detect heat patterns, a scanner that can be used to capture information you can piece together to try and solve the mystery of the kidnapped girl, there’s a torch in there and you can read emails and messages that come in to tell more of the story. You can also take guards out stealthily by creeping up on them, but there is quite a disconnect here when Red tells you off for shooting people when you haven’t actually fired a shot and are instead subduing guards with a bit of nifty strangulation.
Later on in the game you’ll also be able to teleport around the place as you explore your memories and scan your surroundings for enemies and clues. I won’t say why, as this game is very easy to spoil if I go into too much detail.
Get Even is a strange one because despite it feeling a bit cheap, it really sucked me into the atmosphere and all the questions it raised in the story. It’s great storytelling as you explore not only your memories but also the memories of others, and occasionally things get really weird thanks to the device on your head being a prototype! Prepare for things to get really trippy at times!
Sandbox games are still the in thing at the moment but sometimes, you just want to enjoy the show and be taken along for the ride, which Get Even certainly does if you concentrate on the story and don’t expect to play this game with guns blazing. Play it wrong and you’ll hate it. Get what it’s trying to do and you should enjoy the experience. It gets 7.5 out of 10.
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