Tokyo 42 is a stunningly realised depiction of a neon Pan-Asian future city. It’s also a great indie game built around clever camera controls and some really good shooting gameplay. Plus an excellently flappy coat.
Tokyo 42, developed by SMAC Games, and published by Mode 7, has an excellent opening.
The player character is in their apartment. The TV flashes on. The screen shows the inside of the room, complete with the player moving around. The News says the player murdered someone. A friend calls and tells them to get out. After rushing out of their apartment roof, the police arrive. Bullets start flying, projectiles streaking across the rooftops of Tokyo. With only one option, the player jumps. Their friend pulls up in a flying car and rescues them. They’ve been framed for an assassination.
The First Murder of 2042 in Tokyo.
There’s only one way to find out who the real culprit was. Become an assassin, kill your way up the ladder, and uncover the identity of the man who ruined your life. Thankfully, death is cheap. This is the future after all. Thanks to society adopting Nano-Meds, there’s a respawn facility next to most vending machines. (The guy you supposedly killed? Stopped taking his medicine.) From there, there’s a whole story of corporate espionage, intrigue and good old fashioned assassinating.
Tokyo 42 does excellent things with its camera. The camera operates independently from the player character. A quick tap of Q or E, (The bumpers on a controller) will shift the camera round by 45 degrees. This then combined with the blocky, futuristic city design allows for the player to see hidden locations, secrets and potential routes. This is best shown when verticality is brought into play, with stairwells and balconies providing platforms in unconventional routes.
Miraculously, the player character is easily controlled through all of this. Moving is done with WASD or the left stick, and aiming with the mouse or right stick. There’s no instance I had where switching the camera resulted in a character flying off the side of a building because left suddenly became right after some frantic camera changes. On the whole, I loved the system. I felt like I had complete control of the environment that my character was fighting in, able to quickly work out the way to go to avoid gunfire or to sneak up undetected.
Missions tend towards three strata. There’s assassination missions, kill em all missions, and wave based defences. In these, the player will generally be given an area within the overworld, as below, in which the mission will be conducted. Assassination missions only require the death of a single target, while kill em all missions are a little more wide ranging in targets. Wave based defences often see the player given free reign to move around an area, as waves of enemies encroach on their position.
Gameplay has a very quick rhythm. The player character can’t ever take a hit. One point of damage from an enemy will take them out. This means movement and dodging are essential. Due to the sheer speed with which the player gets back in game, and the plentiful checkpoints, this isn’t really an issue.
Enemy combatants will try to kill the player with sprays of projectiles, grenades or with swords. These are all very easy to spot, and pattern recognition plus constant movement to cover will allow a player to avoid them. In terms of fighting back, the player has their own melee weapons, but these tend to only be useful when used in a stealthy style. In contrast, once the alarm is raised, the full arsenal of pistols, grenades, bananas, shotguns, rifles, missile launchers, miniguns and lasers are fair game for wiping out the hordes of enemies.
When faced with one or two opponents, the gameplay in Tokyo 42 is calculated. Careful peeks from behind cover to try and pick off a target. When a whole army of enemies arrive, that calm evaporates. Instead, the player character is constantly running and jumping. The camera is constantly shifting to work out the angle that the swarm of projectiles are coming from. The feeling is exhilarating as the horde is slowly whittled down, with fewer streams of projectiles. When combat ends, it feels earned, with a real sense of satisfaction in having found the right path through the fighting.
In addition, there are a couple of gameplay changes that provide diversions. A side story involving “Par-Couriers” has the player racing through checkpoints to reach the end of a route. Sometimes there are other runners to deal with, by any means necessary.
There’s also a minor aside involving a biker gang, which culminates in your handler entering the player in a bike race. This was one of the most entertaining introductions in the game, as a whole race track is revealed to be suspended above the city, by colourful balloons. Both of these side stories are exactly enough of a diversion from the main gameplay loop, without overstaying their welcome.
I did run into a couple of minor bugs, most of which were to do with the open world elements. Occasionally, enemies would leave the initial combat area, so missions where the objective was killing everything resulted in some legwork at the end. Similarly, the respawn system would occasionally start the player in front of an enemy patrol route, requiring repeated deaths till the timing was right and the level could continue. None of these were particularly game breaking, and at most took a few minutes (or deaths) to resolve.
In terms of other criticisms, there is a a bit of a difficulty spike at the end. The fairly generous checkpoints and single hit enemies are replaced with some chunkier foes, as well some more challenging combat arenas. It’s not impossible, but it will definitely provide a challenge as the end of the game approaches.
Other than the story mode, there is a multiplayer mode. There, two players are given a range of weapons to collect in a small arena as they avoid the civilian crowd and hunt each other. The theoretical gameplay is that both players try to blend into the crowd and identify their opponent for an easy kill. In reality, things tend to get a bit messier, with full blown battles occuring as players wind their way around the maps and fly off balconies and the like. It’s a neat diversion, and good for a couple of matches. I can imagine playing with a friend on voice chat as the two of you try to identify the other being a lot of fun.
More than the missions or the camera or anything else, Tokyo 42 presents a well realised open world for the player to enjoy. It is colourful, fun and engaging. Just traversing the environment feels pleasant, with constantly shifting environments being incredibly expressive, despite the minimalist style. Each Rooftop feels distinct and unique, from the Nudist temple to the factory, and all the way to the technocathedral. From the isometric viewpoint, the player is constantly given a sense of the scale of this world.
Even as they are only presented with about twenty rooftops total to play around with, the world feels huge. This is in part due to the sheer volume of environmental puzzles and secrets dotted about the world. These generally reward the player with new cosmetic upgrades for their guns, coat and cat. Some are a little garish, but the satisfaction in solving the puzzle platforming for gathering most of them is reward enough.
There are moments that never stop being cool. Leaping onto a hover car from a balcony, in order to cross a gap? Combining action sequences like that with the player’s ability to control the camera gives a director like quality as the player crafts their own mini action movie moment.
Most importantly, Tokyo 42 gives the player character a button to put on their trenchcoat (Blade Runner inspired) and watch as it majestically flaps behind them as they dodge gunfire and jump rooftops. With an excellent graphical style, engrossing open world and fun shooting/platforming gameplay, as well as a truly excellent coat, what more could you want?
Tokyo 42 is available right now on PC from Steam, Xbox One and will be arriving on PS4 in mid July, from $19.99, or equivalent.