go figure a long-time-coming source engine fps (standalone mod) would land in 2020 and dazzle my senses more than any other fps i've played in... years? i mean, i don't often play games that feel so artistically striking, lately, but this thing generously provides handpainted-looking mini locations both lush and bleak all flowing together with sound that is ALIVE. i have plenty more to play and little else to say, but i am already convinced. i'm completely bewildered by its approach to 'plot'—yet in awe, frequently mashing the screenshot key—and it's like how i felt when i first read BLAME! which... i mean, only makes sense, when one considers how even half-life 2 sometimes managed to evoke that "lost in the megastructure" vibe. and that game's dna is absolutely felt here. yet it feels fresh, and much of that freshness comes from the way finding your path forward often works, integrated into the world design in such a way that it feels natural, almost like a secret. it likely owes nearly as much to dark forces 2 as it does to its own source engine origins. not that anybody's coming to collect. this is just... peak fps, revisited and repurposed for brilliant artistic ends.

2020 was a big "cyberpunk" year for obvious reasons, but this is not a game that should be left overshadowed. if you like the genre (either: cyberpunk or fps), don't sleep on g string. it's like an ode to many of the best with its own inscrutably, vibrantly cyberpunk identity.