Wait, what? Another cyberpunk game? Is that all I review now? It seems like dystopian futures are a dime a dozen these days. From post-societal action extravaganzas like Horizon: Zero Dawn to the death of the planet from spores in The Last of Us, our thirst for hollow, depressing futures seems to know no bounds. Lately, that has translated to an absolute dearth of cyberpunk themed games. I’ve recently reviewed Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, Dex, and Ghostrunner just to name a few, and those are the tip of the iceberg for this style of content.
Now, to be fair, Disjunction from Ape Tribe Games and publisher Sold Out Software has actually been in the works for a while and was delayed by about two years, so it would have been well ahead of the curve in terms of cyberpunk content if it had come out on its original schedule. Billed as a ‘cyberpunk stealth-action RPG’, Disjunction is an interesting pixel-art action game that pulls you in right out of the gates. You start as a private detective with cybernetic augments investigating the disappearance of a local politician, but the plot is mostly just a segue into primarily a stealth action game.
The meat of Disjunction is sneaking around large levels and incapacitating or killing everyone in sight. Most levels consist of 2-3 floors where you avoid or attack a variety of traps, robots and personnel. There’s a very Metal Gear Solid-esque feel to the gameplay here. As Frank, you sneak about, watching for the opportunity and then strike, hitting your enemies from behind or stunning them with a well-placed stun blast. Each floor generally has a save marker that you can use once and then restart at. Keep in mind that if you save with your health down, down it stays until you complete the segment though, so if you’re badly hurt, it might be better to die and replay an area than to save!
After playing through a couple areas with Frank and finding out where the story is leading, the narrative shifts to Joe, a rough and tumble cybernetic boxer whose daughter has been murdered. Joe is a bit angrier than Frank and he wants to get to the bottom of his daughter’s death, so off onto the mean streets of New York he goes. Gameplay is similar with each character, though Joe is noticeably more powerful and less stealthy overall than Frank (and no, they’re not the Hardy Boys, even if they’re named Frank and Joe and they’re solving mysteries). Eventually, you’ll unlock Spider, the third playable character, which is when the difficulty ramps up a fair bit.
Disjunction is a pretty straightforward game. Work your way through each level, try not to kill anyone (good luck with that) and at the end of each segment there’s a moral choice to be made regarding the storyline. Branching dialogue options allow for a variety of responses but still feel fairly directed. The advertising for the game claims that the story reacts to your gameplay style but it’s definitely hard to tell if that’s true or not as you play and it seems somewhat superficial. That’s not to say that this is a bad game by any means, as it’s definitely not, but don’t expect noticeable shifts in gameplay and fairly minimal plot based on the morality of your decisions.
There aren’t a ton of tactics here either. Sneak, run in, attack and kill, or knock your foes unconscious. You can hit enemies with various stun abilities, drag their bodies around to hide the evidence and so on, but after you’ve learned each area and sequentially knocked out most of them, there’s no real reason to hide the evidence. Enemies don’t respawn and you don’t revisit rooms after leaving them, so why waste the time? As you progress, you have a couple of tasks per level, including optional ones that will gain you experience. That experience can be spent on upgrading your abilities between levels. There’s a decent upgrade system that allows you to not only make your character overall more powerful but also to change powerup selections if things aren’t going your way, a handy ability to have!
Pixel art has been all the rage for a while now, and it’s handled masterfully in Disjunction. The attention to detail is solid, the colors are subtle, the designs are excellent and it doesn’t feel cheap or underdone. If this had been a title that came out in the pixel art era, it would have won a ton of awards. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t any cinema cut scenes during gameplay or for the story segments, but it can’t be helped. The train travel between levels quickly becomes tedious as well, but fortunately these travel sections aren’t particularly long or frequent. However, the biggest problem that Disjunction suffers from, at least on the Xbox, is font size. There are backstory documents strewn throughout the game, but they have some of the smallest, densest text ever. Even with glasses on and a 55” TV, they’re essentially illegible unless you get up next to the screen. To a lesser extent, the same goes for the dialogue, and the game could severely use a patch for its font sizing. With the amount of plot, it’s not a huge issue, but it’s still irritating to see minuscule text. Most players will likely skip the documents rather than bother to try and read them due to this issue.
There’s not much going on in the way of music in Disjunction either. What there is is mostly subtle, fading quietly into the background most of the time. It’s almost like an ambient track floating around behind the gameplay, not bad, just hiding in plain sight. Music definitely takes a back seat in this one and it’s easy to find yourself forgetting that there’s a soundtrack at all. That’s fine though, as focusing on stealth is always harder with a thumping track pounding out of your speakers and the sound effects themselves are quite good.
Once the difficulty spikes and the three stories start to intertwine, things definitely get more challenging in Disjunction. You’ll likely end up repeating sections of levels over and over to get through, and chances are high that you’ll get frustrated here and there and end up simply going in guns blazing, which is harder than you might expect. However, the gameplay itself is fun and engaging, and the environments are well-made, so the game ends up overall being fairly solid with a storyline that keeps you fairly interested and doesn’t become too wordy and tedious. If you’re looking for a pixellated Metal Gear channelling Blade Runner, this is a pretty good selection! At $20, it won’t break the bank and most players will get pretty good bang for their buck. After a long wait for this one, chances are Disjunction won’t blow most people away, but it also definitely won’t disappoint and has some rock solid gameplay to boot!
This review was based on a digital copy of Disjunction provided by the publisher. It was played with an Xbox Series X on a 55” Sony 1080P TV. Disjunction is also available for PC on Steam, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch.