Where am I?This weird trope page again, deja vu!A cooperative FPS/RPG by Streum On Studio, with a distinct everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sci-fi flavor. Taking notes from nearly every work of Cyber Punk literature and incorporating classic brutal roleplaying techniques. You play as a member an ancient demon-fighting cult, the E.Y.E., who was afflicted with Laser-Guided Amnesia and must remember why he was sent on the mission that gave him his amnesia. Along the way you uncover more and more about the incredibly complex backstory and the internal struggle of E.Y.E between his own faction - the Culter Dei - and the Jian Shang Di.Gameplay wise, it plays like a combination of a modern shooter and Deus Ex, with all the hilarious ways things can go horribly wrong in a tabletop game. A player can run through the game run-and-gun, go the route of a cyber-samurai - slaughtering foes with their exploding katana or laying down a wall of lead, while using implants to vault into the sky or sprint at 30 miles an hour, hack and possess enemies to get them to kill their buddies, cloak and snipe, or spam mobile turrets while aiding their teammates with medkits, or use psychic powers to fling cars at enemies and Flash Step to their enemies... by teleporting inside their buddy and turning them into wet meat. Players can find technology briefcases which unlock different research items; by selecting a research item and assigning scientists to it, the player can discover new cybernetics, guns, and stat bonuses.Players doing the main story can find secondary objectives and quests by exploring the large levels, while completing their primary objectives. Between missions, you often stop by the EYE Temple HQ to purchase new guns, implants, and psychic abilities. While at the Temple, you can also engage in side missions for more money at locations you've previously been to, which have randomly generated objectives (such as assassinating a high-ranking enemy, defending allies, hacking computers, and so on).Development started in 2006; this is Streum's first video game (their previous work being a board game). It was developed on the Source engine and is now on sale via Steam. Critics praised the game's variety, replay-ability, coop, and style, but criticized the often clumsy translations*
mostly rectified in a fan-made patch available on the EYE forums
, confusing level layout and interface design.
This game contains examples of:
The All-Seeing A.I.: Played straight with the metastreunomic force creatures. If you're not invisible, they know where you are, and they will never stop hunting you down. Possibly justified, since they are a manifestation of the destroyed natural world of the planets you're visiting.
It used to be that the AI for all factions had an uncanny way of knowing EXACTLY where you were if you weren't completely invisible, however, thanks to a recent patch, they behave more realistically and no longer randomly charge into your hiding places or turn around to see you trying to sneak by as soon as you enter an area. If you're not sneaking, though, expect ten-plus enemies to charge your position every three minutes. On Normal.
Alternate Timeline: If you die in combat it costs you a regeneration, and you spring back to life basically on the spot. You only have a limited number of these per mission, and since unless you're playing as a tanking character in heavy armor you're going to die a lot, they are valuable. When you run out of regenerations or otherwise die in a fairly 'permanent' way (such as falling into an area you're not supposed to be, hence cannot be revived in), your character will find himself in the dream hub area that you arrive in upon loading your character, and is informed that the "death" that just occurred was just a premonition of a future in which he failed, allowing you to continue from the start of the mission with all your regenerations restored.
The weapons take this further: advanced firearms coexist side-by-side with war hammers and katanas. And those firearms are considered ancient tech!
And finally we have armor, with Badass Longcoats, military-inspired bulletproof armor, and cyberpunk jumpsuits alongside armor reminiscent of medieval knights and Japanese samurai.
The best way of putting it is Hardcore Cyberpunk, which is what this setting/genre is called.
Artificial Brilliance: Mooks intelligently throw grenades to attempt to flush players out of cover. Psychic enemies will often cast polyclones upon seeing the player. Attack helicopters will spam rockets at players in cover, to try and kill them with splash damage. Mooks also bumrush the enemy in an attempt to overwhelm them if they hear the player reloading.
Artificial Stupidity: Mooks often have "difficulties" opening doors, sometimes won't even notice the player (that is, when their laser vision doesn't work). Mooks sometimes get stuck on each other, and sometimes stand totally in the open, not moving. As such, the game typically kills the player by drowning them in waves of dozens of mooks. That "bumrush" thing also applies to things like "giant cyberdemon what fires gatling rockets".
Awesome, but Impractical: The Hunting Machine is basically a dolled-up Bear Killer with double the damage, magazine, and accuracy, but is twice as inaccurate if shot while moving, suffers from an overly complex and blinding scope, and, with the game's fondness for Zerg Rushes, becomes hard to use when faced with swarms of enemies - especially with twice the reload time of the Bear Killer, and taking twice as long to fire between shots. The Excidium cannon is best described as a BFG9000; it's massive, has a splash damage radius that can kill targets over a dozen meters away, and is perfectly accurate. Unfortunately, because of said huge splash radius, you're as likely to blow yourself to bits as the enemy, making it impractical in most of the mission areas, aside from the Noctis Labyrinth. You even get an achievement from nuking yourself with the Excidium.
Back Stab: Swords can perform a one-hit-kill, silent backstab attack. It sounds fine for the Facere Mortis katana, but when you use the Damocles, the enemy also explodes rather violently when you backstab them.
Black and Gray Morality: You are a member of EYE, the militant wing of the Secreta, which is dedicated primarily to protecting humanity from demons (and now, the Meta-Streumic Force) and is divided into two subgroups, the Culters and the Jians. You also have the Federation which is supposedly a totalitarian government. EYE fights them not so much to liberate the masses, but to make a grab for power for itself. Then you start finding out that the monsters of the metastreumonic force are a manifestation of the natural environments across countless planets that have been destroyed by Humanity, and some Humans are even siding with the monsters. The only obviously evil side is the one you're told you're part of, which are a group of fanatical Culters trying to make a power grab for itself, are obsessed with killing off the Jians, and take hold of Federation worlds. Outside of them, it's pretty open to debate on who's the real "good" team.
In Riminah's route, a member of the Secreta shows up to berate you for blindly following Riminah. Mentor was a mole for the Secreta as a whole, trying to stop the civil war and remove Riminah from power.
"Blind Idiot" Translation: While it's not too bad compared to other examples, there are some examples of sloppy translation, and it notably gets worse as the game goes on. See Guide Dang It below.
BFG:The Heavy Weapons department, particularly the Excidium which seems to be a massive semi-automatic cannon that awards an achievement for blowing oneself up with it's splash damage.
BFS: The Damocles sword, which is essentially a claymore with weird energy generators on it to make the sword's blade explode stuff on contact.
Boring, but Practical: The S6000 assault rifle and the silenced B.O.S.C.O. sniper rifle. These are bog-standard bullet weapons, but they both have plenty of ammunition (100 rounds per mag for the S6000, and 25 for the BOSCO) and have reasonable accuracy and stopping power for their purposes. This is, in fact, the reason why three incredibly low-tech rifles are issued to Federal forces four hundred years in the future: they're cheap, reliable, and ammo is plentiful.
Chekhov's Gunman: On the mission on Sulaco, you will come across three friendly Synicles. They'll (if you allow them) tell you about a very powerful psyker hunting down and fighting a wolf spirit. All three of them have a spin on it - he was angry, he was evil, he was sad, and so on, but all of them question if he truly defeated the wolf spirit - or fused with him. If you sided with Rimanah, he shows up as a Carnophage, apparently to settle a score with Rimanah and his goons.
Cluster F-Bomb: The player character is very fond of the word in dialogue choices.
Coop Multiplayer: The game has full online cooperative support for the entire singleplayer and all its side missions. If you're crazy enough, you could have a 32 player coop game running.
Cool Mask: The intricate horned/halo designs of commander Rimanah and your mentor.
Corrupt Cop: Corrupt Federals, Secreta members, Culters, Jians, and on and on. Riminah turns out to be this, playing everyone against the Jians for his own gain. Your mentor was against him.
Critical Failure: The most common Critical failure is a failed attack — "Bullshit! Ultra-failed attack!", which does reduced damage. However, it's also possible to get tainted medicine - instantly killing you. Hacking can cause your head to explode. And some of the psychic abilities have the change to spontaneously kill you.
Cyborg: Players are encouraged to augment themselves with appropriate cybernetic components. A hacker might replace parts of his brain with a computer, a swordsman might install a large artificial adrenalin gland near their heart and tear out their nervous system for a much more complex circuit board, a gunman might have their limbs augmented and replaced, et cetera.
Dead All Along: Mentor and Rimanah, but possibly others - and it's very likely others are seeing them as well. Who knows, maybe EYE does not really exist, and you are just a brain in a jar somewhere...
Difficult, But Awesome: A more beneficial way in dealing with Interceptors is by hacking their AI, having control of one will let them sweep the area and kill a whole lot of lightly armored enemies, especially its armed with bombs. But hacking them is so painfully hard: you have to make them lower their depth of flight just to be able to even "start", meanwhile, you're worrying about your stamina draining as you remain cloaked while doing so - and that's if the Interceptor doesn't leave your hacking range while you're fighting a brutal battle to get inside its systems.
Dump Stat: Mental Balance, which reduces the likelihood of insanity. Depending on your playstyle, this may or may not be useful - the Maintenance skill only takes a few seconds and cures all ailments, but as the game prefers Zerg Rushes near constantly, those few seconds may be very, very precious.
Evil Is Not Well Lit: The Federation Cruiser which you board if you betray the Secreta, is very badly lit, with the only lighting being a couple spotlights.
Evilis Sexy: Synicles, attractive women in alluring, nun-like coats who are the most humanoid of the creatures spawned by the Metastruemic Force.
Face Heel Turn: invoked by your superiors - in one mission, to track down leaked information stolen by pirates, you have to go undercover as a disgraced Jian to work for a bandit group operating in a run-down mall somewhere.
Your mentor apparently turns on you if you sided with him on Mars during the final battle, but he's invoking it - when you kill him, you gain enough strength to take on Riminah and his goons.
Fragile Speedster: Light Armor. Even at high levels, you can be nearly-instagibbed by enemies wielding the Hunting Machine or Bear Killer, and even squads of Federation troopers armed with the humble Rotten Mound will gun you down quite easily. However, you'll also be able to run around at truly ridiculous speeds, once you've leveled up your agility and cyber-legs.
Gaia's Vengeance: The Metastreumonic Force, the wrathful manifestation of thousands of destroyed ecosystems wrecked by colonization.
Gas Mask Mooks: The majority of the Federal Police and Federal Special Forces along with Jian Light and Heavy armor.
Gatling Good: The Sulfatum minigun. Fires a solid wall of bullets from a 500 round drum.
Genius Bruiser: The protagonist can be this, quoting Sun Tzu and the like.
Glass Cannon: A hit-or-miss variant; Polyclones are copies of yourself that are under your orders. They die in less than 2-3 shots. What makes this a hit or miss is that the weapons they get are relevant to your PSI-Force (And they don't get the appropriate weapons for the situation either); they earn weapons which are either good for crowd control, or are only good at single targets.
Goomba Stomp: You can do this if you can jump high enough, and it does damage your enemies.
Grenade Launcher: The Spiculum Ovum. It fires manually detonated Kinder grenades in a nearly straight trajectory, which will stick to any surface.
Grievous Harm with a Body: While you cannot carry dead enemies, you can pick up their dismembered pieces. So if you exploded a bandit with the Damocles, you can then pick his head up and psychically hurl it at other looters to kill them.
Guide Dang It: The penultimate level, if you choose to spare your Mentor; he sends you to find someone called Akmal. This is undoubtedly one of the most annoying levels of the game, and it gives you no hints on how to complete it; you have to solve it by Trying Everything. The level is made even worse by the translations of dubious quality - the game mentions that you need to destroy a "switch" - said switch is a rusty metal wheel in the top corner of the level, which activates some gas below. What it doesn't mention is that you need to shoot the pipe on the level below twice to actually ignite the gas.
On the upside, it also doubles as a Breather Level after the long slog on Mars, with no combat whatsoever.
The process to cure an otherwise permanent fatal wound is long, obscure, and costs several hundred thousand brouzoufs.
Guns Akimbo: The BK13 pistols. Two rapid fire pistols, one in each hand.
Guns Are Worthless: Mostly Averted. Most Mooks can be dropped in a couple of well placed shots, but a character possessing high endurance and wearing heavy armor will take next to nil damage from low-caliber weapons.
Hacking Minigame: A unique example; all hacking attempts are subdivided into what you want to do (Possess, Hack, Destroy, or Steal) at which point a battle minigame is played out where both the player and the object being attacked attempt to gain the stat advantage and reduce their opponents health to 0.
Hand Blast: If an enemy gets too close, causing the player to lower their weapon, their attack button will make them shoot a psychic blast from their left hand. The blast is capable of causing weak enemies to explode in a shower of blood, while more powerful enemies are violently shoved back. The psychic blast can also be done when sprinting, and it has a chance of setting an enemy on fire.
Hand Cannon: Nothing but in the pistol department. You start off with a .50 cal and you can also use dual .45s if that's more your style. Later on you unlock a .222 cal revolver, but the king is the 444 cal Bear Killer revolver. It's so damn powerful that you can shoot down gunships with a few shots.
Heroic BSOD: Gameplay variant. Constantly fighting while damaged or consistently taking damage, especially while suffering an injury (broken bone or laceration) will cause excess stress. Too much and the player character falls into a psychosis, ranging from hallucinating enemies and paranoia, or even the controls locking up and the character freezing in terror. An ability can be used to apply "maintenance" to yourself, and get your mind back in the game.
I Have a Family: A random kill message you can get is that "You've killed a good and caring daddy".
Implausible Fencing Powers: You can block any bullets being shot at you using the Facere Mortis katana, Damocles, or the Arrancadora
Improbable Weapon User: Of all the things you can throw...in one level about Assaulting a Jian Temple after killing your Mentor, you can actually kill a group of them by throwing a Porcelain Jar..
In a Single Bound: High levels of Agility and several levels of Cyber Legs gives the player character an absurdly powerful Cyber Jump ability - jumping several stories into the air.
Inter Service Rivalry: The Culters and Jians, both divisions of the demon-fighting EYE foundation, are at each others' throats, mostly struggling for power. There's also Vindico the Corporation, which is supposed to be a front for the Culters, but as of late, has been cutting more deals for the Federation and feeding info to the Jians.
Invisibility Cloak: Cyber cloak, which is an implant you can buy at the Temple. It gives the player a Predator-esque invisibility, which enemies can see close up, but only barely see from afar - they will head to your general direction if they see you running around while invisible.
Jack of All Stats: Equilibrium Lords, when properly built are able to adapt to any situation while being suited for anything you pack them with. Further developing this particular class into a Grey Master can lead to a character that can use his Medikit effectively, run fairly fast despite wearing heavy armor, hack turrets fairly faster, take considerable amounts of damage, prolong the time it takes to suffer a Heroic BSOD, and cast PSI-Powers VERY effectively (Wherein casting an Invocation commonly spawns a powerful Carnophage).
Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Energy weapons used to be better, until the humans started to fight the metastreumonic forces. Faced with the fact that energy weapons are nearly ineffective against them but kinetic weapons are effective they began using kinetic weapons from Dark Age again.
Klingon Promotion: Invoked by your Mentor. He attacks you when you arrive to back him up in the assault on the Culter Dei headquarters if you sided with him at the end of the Mars mission, claiming You Have Outlived Your Usefulness — but only because Rimanah and his goons severely wounded him and that killing him would cause you to absorb his power, which will help you defeat Rimanah.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Notable in that it is very laser-guided: the protagonist remembers practically everything except for plot-relevant information. Though the reason behind this becomes evident if you get the hidden ending.
Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Zig-zagged; although PSI-powers are devastating on their own right, they consume a chunk of your stamina enough for you to notice that they aren't always good to use. Endurance (despite being a health increasing stat) reduces stamina costs for Cybernetics (Another way of spending your stamina if you're not into powers though "Stamina" is used for said powers) by a tiny percentage and an implant for the heart increases Stamina recovery rate...with that said, any class has the freedom to choose their armor size and can have any weapon available at the armory with the right carrying weight.
Lost Technology: Technology from the "Dark Ages". Some weapons and technology are relics from it like the "Medkit" healing system.
Ludicrous Gibs: Large caliber weapons will often cause enemies to simply explode in a cloud of blood. The Damocles sword causes enemies to explode (and send arms and other body parts flying), while the Facere Mortis simply lops heads off.
Mighty Glacier: Heavy Armor is nigh-indestructible, but is very slow and has less capacity for heavy guns. Players in Heavy Armor can have a dozen enemies wailing on them and only take a small amount of damage.
Mind Screw: The entire game gets progressively weirder the closer you get to the end until it culminates in you waking up in the base and finding out that neither your master nor Rimanah have actually been around, others are having dreams just like yours, and at the end you step into a portal where the Mysterious person tells you some cryptic things along with Rimanah and the Mentor before sending you back to the start of the game. You have no way of knowing what events, if any, actually happened.
At least, most notable event that may have actually happened (The New Game+ "of sorts" makes it confusing) was the Monolith mission where you can talk to the 2 unimportant Culters. One tells you that you've been talking to yourself lately (Mentor and Rimanah), while the other thought that your Mentor already died on a previous mission with you, but was easily convinced that he wasn't when you denied it.
Gets even crazier if you side with Rimanah. Apparently, he's had you brainwashed and now you see all your friends in the order as enemies and vice versa. Huan, that guy who has been mocking you like a schoolyard bully from the beginning, was apparently your best friend. Your impossible-to-please mentor? Apparently, he's more like a level-headed father figure.
If only it just stopped there. Your Recurring Dreams are sometimes triggered by your death and you are told you only saw a glimpse of the future. All of your resurrection charges are replenished afterward. Or maybe in reality your mind was wiped once more; plugged into another body and shipped out on the same mission. Just how many other operatives has Rimanah been doing this to? And the worst part about this, you start realizing that your character was not all too sane to begin with, or just about anybody you meet for that matter.
Lampshaded by the Carnophage who allies with you in the endgame if you sided with Riminah. You can doubt your own sanity at everything that's happened so far and if anything is even real, at which he'll shrug and say "if it's in your head, you're not really any killing anyone, so no damage done, right?"
More Dakka: The HS 010 submachine gun can be best described as a bullet hose. It already fires faster than most guns in other games - and there's a firemode to triple its fire rate. The hundred round magazines lets you wildly spray the gun - which you will need to do, since it can't hit the broad side of an aircraft carrier in rapid fire mode. Good thing you can install an implant which removes recoil entirely when activated.
New Game Plus: Every time you beat the game, you start over from the first mission, but retain all your research, levels, guns, and psychic abilities. It is necessary to play the game three times in order to get each of the Gate abilities, unlocked on the final mission of each story branch.
Nintendo Hard: "Master" and above difficultly, when playing solo, especially after the major nerfs to ammo storage - players need to actually scavenge for ammo now.
Offscreen Teleportation: Several enemies spawn where you're not looking. Even if this means they spawn directly behind you with no obvious ways to that spot when examined.
One Bullet Clips: A nice and rare aversion of this trope for a shooter... despite being far in the future.
Psychic Powers: Either they are recruited into two government different government special forces or E.Y.E. Rogue psychers are actively hunted down.
Rambling Old Man Monologue: Akmal, the supposedly super-powerful traitor of the Culter Dei. Mentor claims he's as dangerous as ever, but he's senile, tends to go off on tangents, is somewhat grumpy, and devolves into gibberish at times. Even the protagonist wonders what he accomplished by talking to him.
Real Is Brown: Everything is covered with at least 3 layers of grime, in keeping with the cyberpunk setting. Most maps are brown, but some swap brown for alternate colors - cm_wurster has Real is Green, and cm_sheep has Real is Blue.
Respawn On The Spot: Resurrectors automatically respawn the player where he died. There's a limited amount of resurrector uses, and they are shared between players in coop mode. Running out of resurrectors or falling into a bottomless pit results in the player being transported back to the dream world.
Sawed Off Shotgun: The Betty Boom. A sawed off 12 gauge shotgun with iron sights shaped like a cross. Unlike all the other shotguns, it can fit into a hip slot, normally reserved for submachine guns and pistols.
Scars Are Forever: If your karmic scale is off balance, every time your character dies they'll run the risk of suffering an irreversible stat penalty regardless if they used a resurrector or not.
However, a late game research tree removes penalties. If your stats have reached the point that it costs double (or even a massive 25 times as much) to increase each level up, this can increase them at the cost of at least 110,000 credits.
Self Duplication: The Polyclone and Transmutation PSI abilities allow you to make copies of yourself. Polyclone will 1 to 6 clones of you, but they are all individually weak and typically die in one hit. Transmutation makes a single copy of you, but it is far more powerful than the polyclones.
Short Range Shotgun: The Betty Boom, for obvious reasons, cannot kill past a couple meters. The CAW hammer gets some of this, but not nearly as badly as the Betty Boom. The Deprezador on the other hand, averts this entirely, being effective even at fairly long range due to its small choke - the combination of aiming ease, a huge magazine, and massive damage make it a very practical weapon.
Manducos are totally not scaled-down, less-lethal Genestealers. They're even formerly human.
Investigating a mysteriously-quiet facility with dark hallways, on the planet Sulaco. The main enemies are totally not Xenomorphs, and you nuke the site (but not from orbit). There's also an achievement called "Corporal Hicks".
You get the achievement "Stalker" for killing an irradiated man, one of the many random achievements you'll get when blasting random mooks. The game seems to affix random titles to random enemies, giving them some inkling of a backstory:
Sniper Rifle: Three flavors. The BOSCO rifle is the weakest of the bunch, but offers a 25 round magazine, is lightweight, has an easy-to-use scope, and is silenced. The TRK AD is a high-powered .50 cal anti-armor snipe rifle that can take out attack helicopters in two hits. The Hunting Machine is essentially a lengthened Bear Killer pistol; it offers extreme damage and an 8 round magazine, but lacks a high-powered scope and is stuck with a very distorted holosight. It's more like a semi-automatic rifle.
Speaking Simlish: Everyone speaks a corrupted, vaguely Slavic/Russian language, or a corrupted, vaguely Japanese language.
Stealth-Based Mission: You can play most missions in the game like this, only taking out key targets and avoiding the Mooks.
However, the enemies have shockingly good eyesight and will open fire if they have a clear line of sight to you. A popular play style has become throwing stealth out the window entirely and instead relying on heavy armor and miniguns.
Sword and Gun: It's possible to carry a katana or a Damocles in one hand, and a single BK 13 pistol in the other. Once you unlock the Bear Killer, you can swap out the piddly fully automatic .45ACP pistol for a .444 rifle round that can kill attack helicopters
Tech Tree: Players can find research briefcases after killing enemies, which will unlock new items for research, though sometimes other things must be researched first. Research is done via a menu in the character screen; the player selects an item to research, and tells how many scientists the wish to assign to the item which will determine the cost and the speed of the research. Research progress is saved between missions.
The Syndicate: Several, with enough power to contest control of a likely galaxy-spanning empire (background data puts over 1200 worlds in control of the Federation); the main character is a member.
Too Dumb to Live: Several times you'll have the option to negotiate with a hostile NPC, usually an officer or commander. You can threaten them to do what you ask or die, and they will frequently refuse to believe you can kill them, even if you cut through their entire force to get to them in the first place.
Dutch, in the fourth area. If a monster gets behind him, he'll let it scratch his back with their foot long claws unless you kill them.
In addition, EYE agents don't seem to receive sensitivity classes. Its not so much knowing what will tick off a person so much as finding a path through the dialogue tree that does not reduce yourself to declaring to his face that you want to rape his dog, shoot him in the face and use his mother for pipe tobacco. You are just generally not a very nice person, Mr. 100 Karma.
Unbreakable Weapons: None of the weapons can be destroyed. What makes it especially odd from other Unbreakable weapons in other games is that in this game, you can use your weapons as shields, by holding it up to your chest with the shift and right mouse button depressed. Your gatling gun will happily take several hundred rounds to its receiver and barrel, and keep functioning. The HS010 submachine gun will continue to work perfectly fine even after firing several dozen magazines in its triple fire rate mode, though firing in this mode does make the weapon sound like it's ripping itself apart.
Useless Useful Stealth: Though it is possible to be used effectively, Steath drains your energy stores and you must periodically take cover and let it recharge. Though you can easily get around while invisible, enemy NPCs have a habit of accidentally stumbling into your out of the way hiding place with machine guns ready whenever you stop to recharge. In addition most attempts of just sneaking past people are made impossible due to the insane sight range of your foes.
It's a bit better with that latest 1.3 patch. You can tone down the vision distance and hearing sensitivity of enemies, but they still have above-average awareness. You can sneak without cloak now though.
Was Once a Man: The creatures of the Metastreumonic Force are speculated to be this. The Synicles are speculated to be the opposite: creatures taking the form of human women.
Weaponized Teleportation: The Dragon and Triangular Gate PSI abilities. They both functional fairly similarly - they teleport the player inside an enemy, killing the enemy regardless of its size or health, but the Gate can be very dangerous to the player casting it.
What the Hell, Hero?: Mentor makes full use of any opportunity to berate you, whether it be for getting caught off guard in the prologue and the amnesia that comes with it, or not using stealth to take down a Federation mole in the second mission. On the other hand, he's also quietly proud if you DO follow instructions.
Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy: Practically every heavily-populated area. This game is distinguished by showing just how many strip clubs, brothels, etc. would exist in such places.
You All Look Familiar: To an extent, there are a decent variety of enemy NPCs, but over the course of the game you'll see them often enough for this to take place; it doesn't help that they respawn in some areas.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Overlaps with Videogame Cruelty Potential in that after you possess someone and make them kill their comrades, you still have to dispatch them yourself because they remain hostile when you break the possession. Rimanah also essentially does this to you if you side with him, but the actual EYE shows up to shake you out of it and tell you what you've done before he can really kill you.
Your Head Asplode: Most weapons will cleanly take off the head, while others, such as the Bear Killer, will just make it explode in a fine red mist.
Zeerust: In-universe: most of the in-game weapons are horribly outdated - the RK and Rottenmound are both two centuries old and still in service, since everything else was too expensive to make.
Zerg Rush: In a normal difficulty game, expect the game to throw at least two goons your way every five seconds. At worst, you can literally get squads of twenty-plus Federation goons on repeated, non-story missions. On normal.
"It's true that I read the trope page......and yet, I am not its reader."
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