Conglomerate 451

Review

“The year is 2099,  and the city of Conglomerate is at war. Sector 451 has become the central battlefield. Corrupted corporations control every criminal activity, making arrangements with gangs of outlaws. As an extreme measure, Ghost Class Agents are sent to the field. They are battle clones trained to face extreme situations. Their mission; clean up sector 451 from crime and restore order AT ANY COST. You are the director of a new agency. Your contract with the government is clear; eradicate the corporations from the city districts. As director, you must manage your agency, training your agents, researching new technologies and investing the resources. Good Luck; you are going to NEED it!”

Upon loading the game and clicking the Start button, you’ll be greeted with a warm welcome to Conglomerate 451. The welcome will give you some details about the game story, let you know that the game is in Early Access and that some of the in-game features are not currently available. It also encourages you to give positive and negative feedback about the game so that they are able to make the game as enjoyable as possible for everyone. After clicking OK you’ll be taken to the main menu screen, where there ais New Game, Load Game (once you’ve already started a game), Options, Credits and Quit.

Entering the game, you’ll be welcomed by Clarisse, your office assistant, who explains that you need to fill in a few forms before you take control of the agency. Here you can name your agency and choose the agency logo. Next you’ll be taken to the Cloning Centre; here you can create the clones which you will send out to restore order within Conglomerate city. When creating your first clones you can either select Auto mode (which will create three basic agents for you), or you can manually create clones yourself, customising them to your preference.



Once you have your clones, Clarissa will take you to the main office. Here you’ll receive some brief information on the current access you have at your disposal, which includes Quarters, Cloning, Research and Health Centres, Cyber Graveyard, Weekly News and Diplomacy (to start with you only have access to Quarters, Cloning, Research and Health Centres.  You’ll also see Start Mission.

One of the first things you will need to do is unlock the research area in Healing Technology. This will allow you to heal your clones should they become injured. Any injured clone will need to be placed in the regeneration tank and will take about a week to heal, although this can change as you unlock more research. You’ll have to unlock more tanks as you progress, as you currently only have one tank at your disposal. You may have multiple injured clones, and in this case, you’ll need to decide which one will use the regeneration tank. Any injury which isn’t taken care of will become permanent, which will lead to your clone performing under par when out on a mission. It will also cost you ten-thousand credits to heal an injured clone.

In total you have five areas in which you can research: Cloning, Healing, Training, Military and Cyber Limbs. All contain branches which will unlock new technology as you finish researching one subject. To research anything you’ll need some Credits and Tech points, which you can collect these by completing missions and finding them around the city.

In the main office, along with the research technologies, there’s the agency Quarters. Here you have a list of any clones you currently own on the left-hand side. You can set the order of your clones into five different categories: Name, Level, Pain, Status and Intoxication. In the bottom centre of the screen there’s Dispose, Customise and Inspect Agent along with your agent's name, pain and intoxication bars. Dispose will remove any agent you don’t need or want any more, while in Customise you can rename your agent and choose the colour highlights on your suit.

Selecting Inspect Agent and you’ll find tabs for Stats, Resistances, Equipment, Memory Blocks and Effects. In Stats you’ll have information on the selected clone such as, Race, Health Points, Range, Attack, Age etcetera. In Resistances you’ll be shown a percentage value of your clone’s resistance to things such as Stun, EMP, Radiation, Pain, etcetera; you can also open a side tab which will reveal a bit of information of any of the resistances.

In Equipment it shows you your current load out on the left, your weapon and shield,  along with any implants you may have installed. The implants you can have for your clone are Head, Body, Arm and Leg. On the right-side there’s information on any selected weapon, shield etcetera. Below this information it shows you any installed SPU’s (shared processor unit) and further down the screen is Manage SPU and Upgrade. Surviving a mission will give you skills points which you can use to upgrade your weapons.

Memory Blocks are your clones' abilities which you choose when cloning; you can change these skills at any time from the memory blocks screen. You can also upgrade your skills once you’ve unlocked the Training Research. Within Effects you’ll find any Perks, Trauma, Permanent Trauma and Disorders you may currently have.

Now that you’ve got your clones sorted and you’ve gone over everything, you can head out to Sector 451 in Conglomerate City. Within Sector 451 there are four Districts, all of which are under the control of corrupt corporations. It’s the job of your clones to free the civilians from these corporations. From the main office you’re able to start a new mission, after which you’ll be taken to the Briefing. On the left-hand side of the screen are the four districts that you need to purge of corporations: Downtown, Asian, Industrial and Harbour. Inside each district are three areas, and as you complete missions a certain percentage of these areas will be removed (if you fail to complete a mission, this percentage may increase). Once you’ve got the percentages of each area down to zero, then you’ll have beat that corporation.

Selecting to start a new mission will move you towards the holographic display of the city in the centre of the briefing room. Here you’ll have a choice of missions you can accept; each mission will tell you the objective, the difficulty, location, current team and mission rewards. Should you wish, you can also assign different agents before accepting a mission. After accepting a mission you’ll be taken to the dark and gloomy alleys of sector 451. From here you’ll make your way through the alleys looking for an elevator. The elevator will take you to an area where you’ll be able to complete your mission.

As you move around the city you’ll come across gangs and other enemies. If you get within a certain range of a gang then a battle will commence. You can scan enemies before you move closer to them in order to find out some information on them. You can also engage enemies at distance by hovering over an enemy then clicking the left and right mouse keys together. This tactic can become useful as it can allow you to turn your shields on, as the enemy will have to move closer towards you if they don’t have the range to attack. You can also move your team about, although this can only be done if a clone has already used their turn.

Once you complete a mission, you’ll have the option to either head back to the headquarters or stay and explore some more. Once you have chosen to head back to base, you’ll then be shown a mission status, drop-in influence, current team, mission details and mission rewards. After clicking continue it will then show your clones along with any trauma, skill points, pain and intoxication you may have.

As you search through the city, you may come across some Shared Processor Unit’s (SPU). You can collect these by choosing one of your clones and extracting the SPU. You will need to have some a certain level of battery life left before being able to extract the SPU’s. Sometimes they can break while trying to extract a SPU, but once successfully extracted you can then assign them to a clone by selecting them in the Equipment page of your quarters and using the Manage SPU. The SPU’s will give you either a percentage or a plus bonus for weapons, shield, head, body, leg and arm.  Scattered here and there are some computer terminals, which you can hack. If you’re successful, then you’ll have the option to choose one of several bonuses to aid you.

In the options you’ll find Audio; Master, Music and Sound Effects sliders (also in audio is the option for Mute On/Off). There are plenty of graphic settings in Video like Resolution, Global Quality, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, Shadows etcetera. You also have Controls; here you have your keyboard keys which you can re-map to your own preference. You also have eight slots to save your games progress.

The game is in early access and it still has some elements that you cannot interact with just yet, like the drug dealer, but these will be added in future updates. Even though it is in early access the game still plays and runs well. I haven’t come across any bugs and I’m enjoying the game so far. I look forward to seeing how the game progresses through early access.

 

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!


Positives

+ Enjoyable game
+ Good graphics
+ Nice music
+ Plenty to keep you busy

Negatives

- No achievements
- No cards

Review Summary

Create clones, upgraded them with cyber limbs, and research new technology as you go to war with the corporations in Sector 451 of Conglomerate City.

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Zeepond Rating: 8/10

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