Corruption 2029

[Daehawk]

[jztemple2]

I understand that it is going to be a exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Will it be the EGS version of early access or a 1.0 release?

[Pyperkub]

It's 9 years late

[jztemple2]

It's 9 years late

Or nine years early?

[jztemple2]

Looking at the game on the Epic Store, I was surprised at the small size of the storage footprint, only 5GB. I'm wondering if that means a limited campaign with only a few maps, or a lot of reuse of assets.

[jztemple2]

First twenty minutes of gameplay. Thankfully no extraneous narration.

[MonkeyFinger]

Ah... made by The Bearded Ladies and using the same (or very similar engine) to what Mutant Year Zero does. I'll probably be picking it up. Outside of Epic on PC, any idea if/when this will hit consoles? Okay, checked their FB page and when someone asked about any PS4 release plans, they said "Not right now, but let's see".

[jztemple2]

Posted on their Facebook feed by the devs:

Don't lose your head! CORRUPTION 2029 will be available to play at 15:00 CET (09:00 EST) on Monday!

[jztemple2]

I'm taking the bullet this time, with a pre-order. I'll try to get in some playing tomorrow and post impressions and screenshots.

[jztemple2]

I've just finished playing 101 minutes and here are some impressions. I will note that I'm playing on Medium difficulty. Map has an isometric view and can't be tilted, but can be rotated.

This is not XCOM. There is no strategic level, no recruiting rookies, no grand plan, no research trees. I didn't play much Mutant Year Zero, but what I did play feels a lot like Corruption 2029. The prologue mission sets up the game and acts as a tutorial. You have three units which initially have two assault rifles and a silenced rifle. For the prologue you have to kill several enemy units without losing one or more of yours. Enemies have awareness circles and so long as you stay out of those you can stay in real time mode, which lets you switch between your three units and move them using WASD or a controller in a non-turn-based mode.

I lost my first attempt to beat the prologue because I wasn't careful and I alerted the enemy before I was ready and ended up getting all three of my guys killed. So on the second attempt I used my guys in sneak mode to scout out the enemy locations. I found I could use my silenced weapon to kill two bad guys without triggering an alert. Then I positioned my guys to take out a couple of others, which caused the enemy to alert, but by then I was able to beat them in just one more tactical round.

Winning the prologue enabled the operational interface. Basically this acts a mission selector. You are shown which missions are currently available to you and as you win missions you unlock others. At times, like your first operational mission, you'll be given a choice of missions. Each mission has a unique main reward, for instance in my first mission I unlocked a shotgun. It will also have a bonus reward, in this case an augment that lets one unit have four more squares it can move in a tactical turn. You get that bonus reward for doing something specific outside the main objective. In my first mission it was to kill three enemies without causing an alert. There are also "medals", which are given for things like only needing two tactical rounds to win the mission. Missions are re-playable so you can get those bonuses and medals. I'm not a big fan of replaying missions but you don't lose out on any rewards if you don't get medals, they are just for bragging rights.

Augments, of which any individual unit can have three, provide certain extra abilities and can be passive or active. For instance, after the prologue I got an augment that allows the unit to jump up or over quite a distance and even do a Death From Above move on an enemy.

The tactical missions are closer to XCOM, although being able to stay in real time mode unless spotted allows some convenient recon of the map. When you switch to turn based mode, your unit is allowed two actions per turn, like XCOM. Weapons are fairly straightforward to understand. A weapon will do X number of points of damage and if that is equal or greater than the hit points of the enemy then the enemy is dead, otherwise he is damaged, but not inhibited or restricted. There is a displayed "to hit" percentage which is effected by range and cover of the target; low cover is a 25% modifier, high cover is a 75% modifier. There are also grenades.

I made the following note to myself during the first operational mission. It is just something to keep in mind. I'm not sure how the alert system works, but it would appear that if you kill enemies outside of the awareness range of other enemies, you *might* be allowed to go back into Stealth mode. Not sure though since it is early days.

OK, this is weird. On playing the first mission after the prologue I had a situation where I "went loud" and used two of my guys to kill two of theirs. However, because the two deaths occurred outside of the awareness circles of any other enemies, the other enemy units didn't go on alert, even though I didn't use silenced weapons. Makes me wonder if the silenced weapon is just something to be used against one enemy inside of the alert circle of another enemy that doesn't die that turn. Weird.

Overall impression is that Corruption 2029 isn't going to replace XCOM or XCOM 2 or Phoenix Point as your go-to turn-based squad combat game. It does have some nice features and the first operational map I played felt sufficiently large so I didn't feel artificially confined. Between the new weapons and the augments there are some nice options to explore and unless I'm mistaken, you can always go back and replay a mission with rewards that you unlocked in missions further up the tree; that should add some variety and interest in replaying missions. The operational mission I played didn't feel like a puzzle that I had to approach in a certain way to win. The stealth features are nice and the maps are very pretty and XCOM like. And the price does seem reasonable for the content.

I'll post more impressions as I play more missions.

[jztemple2]

Addendum to above. That note I made?

OK, this is weird. On playing the first mission after the prologue I had a situation where I "went loud" and used two of my guys to kill two of theirs. However, because the two deaths occurred outside of the awareness circles of any other enemies, the other enemy units didn't go on alert, even though I didn't use silenced weapons. Makes me wonder if the silenced weapon is just something to be used against one enemy inside of the alert circle of another enemy that doesn't die that turn. Weird.

I've started my second mission and took down two guys with loud weapons, but because when my turn ended there were no live soldiers within awareness range of the combat, I was able to go back into Sneak mode. So that's a good point to remember, even if you use loud weapons you won't alert the whole enemy group if the enemies you attack are killed in that tactical turn.

So I guess the silenced weapon is just good for when two bad guys are near and you just want to take down one, or can't at that time try to take down two.

Addendum to the Addendum. I just tried to do what I described above but this time an enemy who was *not* nearby heard the shooting and the whole enemy force is alerted. So I'm not sure why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't . Maybe I'll just not take the risk next time...

[jztemple2]

Found something else interesting; not a bug, just not obvious when I started playing. When I started my campaign I selected the middle difficulty and it said something about recovering 50% of hit points between... something. I just now figured out what that was. I was in a tough fight and one of my three guys lost all his hit points, then after three more turns he bled out . However, once my other two guys killed off the bad guys, the bled out guy was resurrected (maybe the Force Ghost was involved?). Anyway, he came back to the fight with only half his hit points intact. So that is what the difficulty statement meant. As long as one of my three guys is alive after the tactical rounds are done and the battle returns to Stealthy real time mode, any bled out guys return with half their hit points healed. And I guess that means on Easy they would come back with all hit points, while on Hard difficulty... they don't come back at all

[MonkeyFinger]

It's been a while so trying to remember... pretty sure it (that resurrection) worked the same way in Mutant Year Zero.

[Jolor]

Well, that worked out pretty well. I still had a $10 coupon from the Epic sale that was going to expire in May. Forgot about it, tbh.
I'll fire this up after I finish the Resident Evil 2 refresh.

[MonkeyFinger]

Had the same unremembered / unexpected $10 discount as well.

CORRUPTION 2029 v1.01 Hotfix Patch Notes.

Spoiler:

MAJOR
Fixed rare graphics related crash occurring for some users in the Fort Stafford Location.
Fixed rare crash that could occur when abandoning missions.
MEDIUM
Fixed rare crash on start-up when there is no available audio device.
Fixed issue with turrets consuming two turret codes instead of one.
Fixed camera hang if enemy shoots minigun (mind controlled)
Fixed issue when deleting a slot in the save or load menu using the gamepad would also trigger a save / load.
Fixed issue with units sometimes getting stuck in when hiding.
Fixed issue with item cycle for shield grenade and decoy.
Big bag of localization fixes.
Balancing fix: Implant Armor is now +2
Added mis-click detection to prevent accidental move orders after fast forwarding the enemy turn.
Fixed issue with combat text "Squad xxx Alerted" appearing even if the squad was not alerted.
MINOR
Enemy can Mind Hack decoy (will still target it but fail).
Fixed issue with wrong items sometimes being shown in the map screen.
Fixed visual glitch with Decoy animation.
BOYO MAX does not show a higher crit damage (it can’t crit anyway) and AI damage with it has been upped to 8.
BOYO MAX doesn't hit enemy and keeps spinning/ playing vfx after animation is finished (related to remote explosives)
Fix for ground bleeding when shot.
Fixed issue with camera state after switching quickly to the in-game inventory after going into combat.
Fixed nitro shot showing knocked-out icon.
Fixed issue with some sounds not being affected by the master volume setting.
Fix for Wolf speaking in man’s voice for some actions.

[Jolor]

Enjoying the game. Same quibble that I had with MYZ, though: I can't seem to climb to rooftops during battle, though my enemies can.