Rally Point: Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is both worth playing, and worth waiting for a little longer

Views: 1623

Cyber Cyber, turning fight

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Trese Brothers

Cyber Knights Colon Flashpoint does not lead with its best foot. This is easier to shrug off while it’s still in early access, but I will confess some relief when I read that the Trese Brothers (It’s pronounced “Trese”) nudged their estimated release date back to 2025. It needs a bit longer. But I’m about ready to start recommending it.

I’m a tad biased by my love for their previous Star Traders Colon Frontiers , an interest in mercenary management , and a wish for more turn-based tactics games that aren’t bloody XCOM again. That I have reservations about what CKF hasn’t yet nailed down is in part a symptom of high expectations. And because despite carrying over some design ethos from Frontiers, Cyber Knights is a very different kind of game.

You start out with too many decisions, too little context, and a brief tutorial mission in which your player character and crew break out of a lab where you’ve just learned to touch type, thus becoming a Cyber Knight according to my granddad when he again asks how to attach a youtube. It doesn’t really represent how most missions work, or dispel many assumptions. I sympathise to an extent, because CKF is rather unorthodox.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Trese Brothers

It’s not an XCOM. Instead of strict grids, you move at the exact angle and distance you choose, split freely between running and the noble crouch-jog, and shoot/act/move in whatever order you please. Turns depend on individual initiative rolls, and movement and lines of sight/aim are consequently far more granular (and a little unpredictable, as it tradition). It hasn’t the ballistic simulation focus of Silent Storm or Jagged Alliance either. Missed shots effectively evaporate on leaving the barrel, and though it uses a similar overwatch system , there’s none of Phoenix Point ‘s limb-severing or headshotting. Character statistics are downplayed in favour of perk unlocks, but shootouts nonetheless feel like shootouts – raw firepower is your bedrock, giving open confrontations a more grounded atmosphere than the usual XCOMalong superpower metagaming.

This middle ground extends to stealth too. Cyber Knights is a heist game, but the paramilitary smash and grab kind. Your wee gang do mercenary … Read More