ANNO: Mutationem Demo: Welcome To The Future

I should create a cheat sheet for these recent write-ups of Steam demos with “I never heard of this before, but downloaded it to give it a whirl”. ANNO: Mutationem, from ThinkingStars, is one of those titles.

You play Ann – ‘a highly-skilled combat-trained lone wolf’. You don’t pick that up first of all, but instead view her as a likeable girl living in a cyberpunk city, with a room decorated with photos of her loved ones. The demo could have taken a wrong turn as the ‘shower scene’ looks like it was marketed for a particular demographic.

Anyway. Leaving her apartment, you’ll find this pretty large city to explore – fusing 3D with flat pixel art that works an absolute treat. Now I don’t like… yep; you know that routine. ANNO: Mutationem is a pleasant assault on the eyeballs.

Between walking around the city and eavesdropping on strangers, Ann is in frequent touch with her pal Ayane through some techno-wizardry commlink. These dialogue bits are fine, and all but are silent. There isn’t any voice acting, nor are there any annoying dialogue ambience you see in so many games. Is this an issue? Not entirely, but it’s easy to miss some of the text if you aren’t paying attention.

The ANNO: Mutationem demo does have a few objectives, and that’s mostly to explore the size of the city, loot some gear and make a cheap buck, but also to experience the combat. It makes sense, what with Ann being a double-hard bastard.

This is the bit I didn’t like about the game: the combat. I didn’t hate it, but the exploration element was so immersive that I’d rather have run about like Ryo Hazuki, mixing with the locals and buying useless tat. The action here is basic: melee attacks and ranged attacks using a gun with limited ammo.

These combat sections take place within a virtual environment and are essentially a tutorial for the mechanics, learning how to jump and attack. It wasn’t anything to write home about or allude to in a blog post, but it did the job. The evasive roll was accurate and useful; I will say that.

But what I picked up from ANNO: Mutationem was the presentation and engaging world. I hope that we’ll be able to interact more with that environment, talking to NPCs as well as listening to their private, irrelevant questions. Is it any good? It certainly is. Try it for yourself.