Get Even Reviews

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    Based on the developer’s previous games as well as the game’s release trailer, you’d be forgiven if you thought that Get Even was going to play out like an eerie, first-person shooter that would see you navigate the hallways of abandoned bunkers and buildings, peaking around corners to shoot enemy mercenaries and using stealth takedowns. That’s pretty much what I was expecting when I first picked up the game on sale for $10 CAD in the Winter of 2019. While there are FPS sections of the game, I’m hesitant to say it’s part of the core gameplay loop, but I’ll get to that in a few paragraphs.

    Get Even is a first-person psychological thriller where you play as Cole Black, an ex-military member turned “mercenary-for-hire”. The game starts in media res with Black heading towards a derelict building saying he has to “save the girl”; his motivations aren’t immediately clear. Black infiltrates the building, disposes of a hand full of enemy mercenaries and reaches the girl only to learn that she has a bomb strapped to her body. Black is unable to defuse the bomb and it explodes, presumably killing both the unidentified girl and Black in the process. However, this appears to only be some sort of flashback, as Black wakes up outside of an abandoned asylum in an amnesiac state. After some more investigative exploring and clue hunting, Black is trapped in a room and gassed, knocking him unconscious. He wakes up and finds some sort of VR headset strapped to his head that makes him look like the guy on the cover of the System Shock box art. A shadowy figured who calls themselves “Red” introduces themselves on a TV screen, informing Black that the device on his head is called the “Pandora” headset. It serves as some sort of experimental technology that allows the recording and play-back of human memories. It’s through this headset that Red wants Black to replay the events that lead to that unidentified girl’s kidnapping. As Black explores these memories and gathers information, both Red and the player learn that Black had more involvement in this ordeal than he remembers.

    Gameplay-wise, Get Even is primarily an adventure, puzzle type game that sees you exploring either derelict asylums, buildings in various stages of upkeep or these fractured, dream-like environments that provide you more backstory and exposition. Black is usually armed with a smartphone that has 5 primary apps: an evidence scanner, a UV flashlight to detect fingers prints or stains, a map which can be used to track enemies and navigate the level, thermal vision to track heat signatures and a messaging/phone app. I found myself using the scanner app the most since a fairly decent chunk of the game’s evidence collectibles need to be scanned in order for the game to register it as collected. You can also use the scanner app to manipulate anomalies in their environment and use them to your advantage, such as scanning the outline of a concrete divider on the phone screen and making it appear to provide you some cover from enemies. The puzzles in the game are fairly straight forward, mostly involving opening/closing valves to control water flow or pulling different levers/switches to activate power sources.

    Each level has various notes, images and recordings that you can discover and collect. They’re then all stored on giant cork boards inside the game’s “Filing Cabinet room” which serves has the game’s central HUB base. You can warp to and from this room by focusing on a certain picture frame within each level to see what clues you’re missing. It would’ve been nice to have seen the game flesh out this evidence collecting feature a bit more. You have all these documents and recordings pinned up and connected to each other with strings and push pins on giant cork boards, a very “Hollywood” set up and you’re never given a choice to make any deductions or draw any conclusions yourself; the game’s plot progressions does it for you. While gathering clues isn’t needed to progress the game, there are 9 achievements tied to 100% collection of evidence in each level. Get that 100% level completion and you get a 4 digit code on the bottom left of that level’s board which can then be entered into a keypad somewhere within that level to unlock a secret and/or hidden memory.

    The overall story and immersion is where Get Even shows off it’s strengths. While it does take a while for the story to unfold and can be confusing in the early going, the end result is worth it. Personally, I was near a point in my play-through where I was going to rip the game’s story as being convoluted for the sake of pseudo-intellectualism, but as I progressed, the story threw some satisfying twists my way and ultimately unfolded in way that made sense and helped provide some satisfaction to the conclusion of the game. Get Even certainly isn’t shy about going for long stretches where it’s providing exposition via cut scenes, scanning for clues or navigating through these weird, broken memory levels. There are certain points in the game where you have to make a choice that’ll affect your experience later on. Some of them aren’t really on-the-nose but still matter and others may have some serious unintended consequences.

    The music in this game I found to be quite good. For me, the standout was the various string instruments being able to provide an eerie and melancholic tone to a lot of the game’s levels. The voice acting in this game is great as well. I felt that Black’s voice acting was well done; there were various scenes where you can really sense the frustration, confusion and desperation in his voice. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a standout performance here, it’s just great across the board and I can’t really provide any context to some of the other moments I enjoyed, without spoiling bits of the story.

    Back to the gameplay for a minute, I mentioned off the top that there are some FPS sections to the game and that I was hesitant to say it’s part of the core gameplay loop. This where I have my biggest gripe with the game as it represents a conflicting design decision. First off, the shooting in this game is terrible. Aiming feels a little clunky, there’s no hit markers, no hip-firing reticle so iron sight aiming is pretty much a necessity and even getting a head shot can sometimes prove to be a bit inconsistent. Second of all, those secrets that you unlock by getting 100% level completion, are different guns. There’s an automatic pistol, sub machine gun, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle and a crossbow. Since I found the shooting in this game to be pretty terrible, I didn’t see much motivation to try out the different weapons to see how they handled. The only saving grace here is the prototype of the “Corner Gun” which you acquire as part of a mission, does pretty much what you think it does: it allows you hide around a corner, bend your gun around it and then aim and shoot using a crosshair on a small display screen. But even the “Corner Gun” has it’s shortcomings; there’s no iron sight aiming when you’re aiming straight ahead for some reason, instead, you awkwardly hold the gun upwards a bit and then aim using the crosshair on the screen. Lastly, the game rips you for going in guns blazing, saying something to the effect of “This memory is unstable, please refrain from causing unnecessary disruptions.” or “Damnit Black, typical, I knew i couldn’t count on you to going in stealthily.” While you won’t fail a level for shooting first and asking questions later, I’d rather the game not tell me I’m being an idiot or doing something it perceives as “wrong” based on the way I want to play. Also, the game has a “good” and a “bad” ending and getting the good ending is predicated on a less lethal, stealthier approach, so I found myself even less motivate to engage in the combat mechanics since I didn’t want to shoot for the bad ending on my first play through. Overall, this is why I felt compelled to leave the FPS elements out of the core gameplay loop: it feels at odds within itself as well as at odds with what the game does well, which is it’s storytelling.

    Graphics wise, Get Even is fine. It’s got some good art direction and great atmosphere overall. Navigating through an office building late at night as part of heist memory felt eerily tense and abandoned buildings tagged with graffiti, destroyed furniture, creepy, dirty mannequins and kids toys give you a sense of a world left behind.

    Performance wise, I did run into some issues. The game lags a little in certain areas, the loading screens are a bit too long for my liking, there were some graphical glitches when I’d turn a corner and there’d be some “flashes” where the level hadn’t quite finished loading and every time I warped back to the "Filing Cabinet room" there was a noticeable delay with the texture popping in.

    In terms of achievements, there's only 6 that are story-based and a few others that are locked off depending on some of the choices you make. So if you want to collect them all, use the walkthrough on this site and be ready for at least 2 play-throughs.

    Overall, Get Even tries to blend first-person shooting, storytelling and investigative exploration and I’m not sure it’s a mixture that entirely works in this case. The game tells a pretty interesting story and fleshing out the puzzles and investigative elements might’ve been the smarter play here. The shooting felt almost token and it’s something I could’ve gone without. I still had a good time with it, I’m glad I didn’t skip this and for getting it on sale for $10 CAD, it represented a great value purchase.
    3.5
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