The retro-futuristic 2D adventure game Replaced was one of the many titles present at Summer Game Fest 2024 and it was difficult to ignore a project with such potential. So I was finally able to try it, three years after its announcement!
As soon as its trailer was released in June 2021, REPLACED was on everyone’s lips. Few games are as deserving of the term “art” as pixel art. The attention to detail in each of the sprites, from their design to their animation, is already exceptional but it is the use of the camera that pushes the staging to its climax. Obviously, REPLACED is not “real” 2D. Understand by this that the camera is also capable of rotating and showing other angles when necessary. The game from Sad Cat Studios is one of those which makes full use of current technological resources and for which 2D is above all an artistic choice, like an Octopath Traveler in another style.
If you’ve seen the trailers, you already know all this. What interests you is what REPLACED is worth once behind the controller. In the session offered to me, I could try three distinct sequences. A prologue sequence which allows us to understand the issues, a pure combat sequence in an arena and a slightly more “adventure” phase, with quests in a city. Surprisingly, I’m going to keep things out of order and start with the adventure part. We play an entity called REACH which I’m going to call Reach for convenience and because everyone ends up calling it that in the game anyway. Reach is an artificial intelligence that “accidentally” finds itself in the body of a human being. I’ll spare you all the ins and outs, I’m sure you’ll enjoy discovering them for yourselves. In the session that concerns us, I arrive in the city of Phoenix-City and wander around a bit… Let’s be clear, the artistic direction immediately makes an impact: in an environment with a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk feel, the animations of all the characters in the background give an incredible style to REPLACED. Relaxers warming themselves around a fire, a guy sweeping the broom, others chatting, we manage to recognize each little movement in the blink of an eye, pixel by pixel. The more I tried to look closely, the more the details left me speechless. An example stood out to me: as I enter a bar, I see in the foreground a warmly dressed character who leans over the table to bring his cup of coffee to his mouth, which he gently opens to swallow the contents. Damn, he’s supposed to be part of the setting, he doesn’t even have a line of dialogue, but he’s better animated than some main characters in other 2D games! Its foreground, main ground and background elements are numerous in REPLACED and it is not uncommon to find yourself on one plane or another depending on the situation.
But casually, I had a quest to accomplish and I found myself going to look for a component for a defective arcade machine. A completely classic quest which requires me to make one or two round trips. Although it must be admitted that discovering an area is always a marvel, having to go back and forth is already less fun, especially since REACH is not a lightning bolt when it comes to moving around. I hope there won’t be too many FEDEX quests, although the developers seemed to be aware of the problem when I reported it to them. Once the terminal was repaired, I was able to play a mini-game worthy of the Atari 2600 in which I had to bring injured people to a hospital, a nice little interlude.
I’m coming to the second micro-session, the fights. In a Mad Max type arena, I face gang members equipped with bats or shields. A touch to attack, a dodge but also a parry to come out at the right time, the principle is simple and even resembles a Rock-Paper-Scissors from time to time… except that you are playing against 4 or 5 opponents. After having chained a few shots you can then fire a bullet from your weapon, a “power” to be used sparingly. We don’t yet know the exact structure of REPLACED, but if the game is as narrative as it seems to us, it can be assumed that there won’t be many fights, which is probably good. Not that the gameplay is unpleasant, but it is probably not complete enough to make it a main element.
Finally, let’s end with the most interesting, a very staged sequence at the start of the adventure. Reach is pursued by guards who shoot him on sight, then by a Jeep mounted with a machine gun. In terms of gameplay, we are at the level of a Runner. We run to the right and the only actions to do are jumps over rare obstacles. The whole point is rather in the cinematographic approach: we see the guards coming out of the sets, including from the background and the foreground, exactly as Another World already did more than 30 years ago. Decades later, it’s surprisingly still effective. The tension is high and it builds up until the end, an (automatic) fight in which Reach takes a beating. The camera perfectly depicts the action with an appropriate zoom and the quality of the animations does the rest of the job: when the camera suddenly turns to show Reach and his assailant falling off a cliff together, we are already won over!
Our impressions
REPLACED seems to have the weapons to be a successor to Another World and Flashback, two games from which it is greatly inspired. Certainly, it will be difficult to leave the same mark in video games three decades later, but its breathtaking animations, its stylish staging and its cinema-worthy shots catch the retina from the first moments. However, like the pioneers of its genre, its rigid gameplay could be a handicap if too many passages require using it. So let’s hope that it’s the narrative slap we’re hoping for and that it manages to captivate us throughout its adventure.
Editorial opinion
Promising
