Blade Runner

I think it is pointless to try and introduce this game to people who haven't seen the movie and it's also a safe bet that an introduction would be utterly useless to those who already have. So instead of doing that, let's just get to the story.

Story

Early in the 21^st century, the Tyrell Corporation advanced robot evolution into the Nexus phase - a being virtually identical to a human - known as a replicant. Replicants were used for off-world slave labor and were banned completely from Earth under penalty of death. A special police task force - called the Blade Runnner unit - has been set up to locate and terminate every replicant entering Terra. This was not called execution. It was called retirement.

However, the new Nexus 6 models were designed to be more human than ever, with complete memory of their non-existent childhood and were superior in every aspect even to the engineers who created them. The designers programmed their creations to avoid violence at all cost but as a safety precaution, they also designed the parts used in the robots to have a 4 year old life span. The only thing they didn't reckon with was the Nexus 6's natural desire to live.

Our story takes place in 2019, Los Angeles. We play the role of Ray McCoy, Rep. Detec. who's only been on the job for one and a half years, so by Blade Runner standards he's still a rookie. After one and a half years of waiting he finally gets his shot to prove to everybody that he's one of the 'big boys': an animal murder case involving two very dangerous replicants.

Opinion

There's really not much I can say about this game. It is absolutely flawless.

The graphics are spectacular. All of the backgrounds are alive, there's constant motion in all the scenes as lights shift in the streets and people go about their everyday lives. The camera often scans across an area from different angles before finally settling on a particular one, creating a very real illusion of the third dimension in the otherwise two dimensional backgrounds. The atmosphere of the movie comes across perfectly in both the graphics and the ambient soundtrack. I only wish the music was playing in more parts of this game.

Controlling Ray couldn't be easier and every aspect of crime solving and puzzle collecting is quite simply tuned to perfection. There isn't one single thing I would change in the game.

And to top all this off, not only does the game have multiple endings, but it has multiple storylines as well. The clues, cases, etc. change according to your reactions to the events happening around you and it's probably safe to say that it will take more than just a couple of playings to discover all of the different possibilities in the game. Plainly put, Blade Runner's replay value is tremendous. So much so, that this was the first ever game in my adventure gaming 'career' that I replayed right after finishing it for the first time.

This is definitely one of the best adventure games of all time and I can't recommend it enough.