ADACA is a one man development teams love letter to the days of Half-Life 2 done in a sort of voxel styling. It pulls the core gravity gun mechanic from Half-Life 2 and uses it to create an interesting adventure full of fun weapons, environments, and baddies around every corner.
ADACA begins with you being recruited into a war you know nothing about. You’ve been drafted by a corporation and the games tutorial is cleverly used to teach you the basics but also lays out the basic premise of the story. Where things get interesting is when you are quickly put on ice while you await getting to the battlefied.
When you do wake up you are thrust into a wild world where you realize that your ship full of compatriots has crashed and you’ve been asleep for thousands of years. Those that woke up before you started their own civilization on the rock you crashed on and now it’s your turn to wake up. But it’s not all rainbows as you’ve been asleep too long and your arm has atrophied. The guy who opens up your pod fixes you up and attached a new gravity arm onto you, and this is where the game starts.
From here on out the game plays essentially like Half-Life 2 with even most of the baddies looking and sounding like the Combine troops from said game. Still, this gameplay mechanic while old, is still pretty damn fun and a wonder why it isn’t just more in this regard. The early game holds up really well and does a great job of sucking the player in on fighting to save your little sliver of freedom.
Using objects to kill enemies is a blast and finding unique ways to dispose of enemies is always a good time. Maybe you’ll go in guns blazing, or maybe you’ll toss a huge object at a group of baddies and gravity rip a weapon from one to take out the rest, or maybe you’ll toss a fire grenade to flush out a group only for them to run right into an exploding barrel that you snip from a distance. There are lots of options making ADACA a pretty fun experience.
That said, the game will start to fall a part in the later stages. I feel this probably comes down to the fact that such a large scale game was created by a single person. I’ve been in the position where I have something really special and am excited to work on it only to start cutting corners and doing the bare minimum in order to get it done in time. The level design begins to suffer down the road and oftentimes you’ll feel like you are walking in circles as a stages progression isn’t clearly laid out.
The fake Combine also feel a little too lifted from Half-Life 2. They not only look the same, something I can get past, but they also sound eerily similar, almost to the point that I thought ADACA had lifted the actual sound fonts used by the Combine. They also lack any real A.I. and won’t attack you in interesting ways. Enemies will simply shoot at you and then maybe run away in order to keep some distance. Melee enemies will simply run at you head on and stab you until you die.
None of these things break the game and when you take into account the fact that the game was created by a single person, you’ll still be impressed. What really holds it all together is how weird the game becomes even when the level design never truly expands. People have said that ADACA is inspired by Half-Life 2 which is clear from the outset, but they also said it had some teal STALKER vibes to it as well. You see, ADACA is a short game and laid out in an episodic nature. It lasts only a few hours but when you complete the main game you can jump into a free mode that is really interesting.
This is where the STALKER vibes come into the picture. This second mode is an open-world setting that lets you explore and do whatever you want called Zone Patrol. There is a lot going on and things can get really messed up with events and situations having you wonder just what the hell is going on. There are interconnected zones that you can travel between, each with their own unique feel. As you explore you’ll find codes that let you go deeper into these zones, and as you go deeper things get weirder.
The deeper you go the more ADACA turns into an almost horror game with what is presented to you. These moments can get truly wild and the trading and collecting that you do will make progressing all the more interesting. In a lot of ways I wished the entire game was based more around this Zone Patrol mode than the given campaign. Still, because of the nature of things the Zone Patrol mode feels less finished and polished than that of the main campaign. I suppose this is the nature of a solo development team and maybe of trying too much all at once.
In the end ADACA nails what it tries to do with only minor issues, something impressive for a lone developer and a style of game that even large studios fail at doing. ADACA is a game that really should be on your radar and might go down as one of the hidden gems of Steam games for this year as not a ton of people are talking about it yet. Hopefully that changes and more players take the leap and experience ADACA. And I only hope that we don’t have to wait all that long for the next episode to drop.
Pros:
+ Fun Gameplay Mechanics
+ Great Styling
+ Two Solid Game Modes To Experience
Cons:
– Short Main Campaign
– Level Design Issues
– Lacks Overall Polish
Final Score:
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