She wakes up in the dead of night.  A voice in her head tells her that soldiers are coming for her and she needs to leave.  The man calls himself Raycast, and he tells her to jam the elevator doors.  She sends out her consciousness to attack the elevators with a computer program.  Now they're stuck, and she makes her way out the balcony and onto the gritty streets.  Soon she'll be dragged into something bigger than any one person, and she'll find things about herself that seem completely unbelievable.

Dex is a 2D sidescrolling cyberpunk RPG from indie studio Dreadlocks.  Like any good cyberpunk drama, you run the filthy lower streets of a dystopian city, in the glare of neon lights, to the beats of an EBM soundtrack.  Dex features hand-drawn imagery, sprite graphics, and voiced dialogue.  And it's good cyberpunk; Dex doesn't try to reinvent the cyber-wheel.  Megacorporate soldiers are after a girl that has no idea what she did, so she falls neatly into the arms of an underground resistance movement made up of hackers, punks, and anarchists, who encourage her to get cyberaugmentations so she can do cool stuff that normal flesh-and-blood people can't.  The story and writing are top-notch and instantly immersive; you're in the action as soon as you start the game.

And like Shadowrun, Dex features a robust hacking system that you'll need to use to fight the evil corporate syndicate known as The Complex.  Dex is special in that she can go into cyberspace without the use of a datajack; everyone else has to connect through analog.  Not our girl.  By pressing the tilde (~) key, Dex can connect wirelessly, attacking electronic devices, firewalls, and data nodes to get info, money, or to accomplish storyline goals.  Cyberspace is its own world, with its own dangers.  Some nodes spawn viruses that "swim" at you.  Others spawn trojans that weaken your link.  You'll need to shoot them, and you're provided with a normal and strong attacks to destroy opposition, eventually gaining access to stronger attacks like flashwaves.  With upgrades to the hacking skill, you can stay in cyberspace for longer and do more.

For those of us that played sidescrolling platformers on the SNES and Sega Genesis in the 90's, Dex feels a bit like coming home.  The inventory system is familiar and simple.  Pause to access your menu, find your item on the grid, then double click it to use it (or select and press a button on a controller).  Hassle-free.  It makes it easy if you're in a fight, you're running low on health, and you need to eat a kebab or take those stimulant pills to regain some HP.  Pause, use, and go back to killing.

The leveling system is also simple and straightforward.  Your health bar at the upper left will tell you when you've leveled.  Go back into the pause menu, select 'character', and take a look.  Every level gives you a single point to upgrade something with.  Leveling your charisma will give you more options in dialogue.  Leveling hacking makes you able to stay in cyberspace longer and be more effective there.  Putting points in firearms allows you to shoot more bullets per attack.  One slight problem is that in the beginning of the game, you're not faced with tons of problems requiring different skills.  Early on, the lockpicking skill is really useful, and it's one of the only skills you'll find yourself in need of.  So the game doesn't cause you agony over choosing what to put your points into for a little while.  Soon, though, the game will branch out and you'll find yourself in need of other skills, so this forces you to think ahead a little without necessarily knowing what you need.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on what kind of player you are.  Do you like being in the dark, having to think ahead and live with your choices?  Then it's right up your alley.  As of writing this, I haven't been able to find any evidence of items that allow you to refund skill points.  It's possible they'll add it in a later update.

On the pause menu, you'll also find your journal, giving you access to all your quests and bits of information you've picked up in the game.  Again, it's functional without being flashy.  Everything's there for your perusal, and it works.

On the streets, you'll encounter a whole cast of colorful residents, from addicts to prostitutes to hackers to the mentally ill, many of whom have a story they'd like to involve you in.  One woman in Taijo gives you a quest to find her missing brother, and she seems to think he's gotten involved with some nasty people.  You come to find out that he's being forced to work as a sex slave in an upscale boudoir, and it's up to you to get him out of bondage.

Please forgive me.  That word was begging to be used.

This is probably a good time to mention that this game is rated 'M for Mature', and it definitely earns it.  The storyline and content are definitely not suitable for a younger audience and discretion is advised and all that stuff.  It deals with the seedier aspects of a life in a dystopian city under megacorporate rule, and has all the trappings: prostitution, drug addiction, senseless violence.

But if mature themes don't bother you, you're in for some great storytelling.

A lot of your game will be spent fighting with various baddies, especially street thugs.  The combat system is decently sophisticated for a 2D platformer.  Even in melee combat, when your fists are the only things between you and a back-alley death, the system gives you options and expects you to use them.  The really big tough guys use power attacks on you, and you're given a rolling dodge to get out of the way, giving you the upper hand as you return to finish the fight.  You're quick and agile; the girl's name is Dex, and you quickly find out why.  Still, some mobs get annoying when they do things like run away really quickly, turning to go back the other way as soon as you've caught up with them.  Melee fights like those become long and drawn out.

Ranged combat could have been a little more intuitive.  There's no "equipment" menu, so equipping a firearm involves dragging it down to one of the boxes at the bottom of your inventory that corresponds with a quick button (1-10 on your keyboard).  These aren't labeled so you sorta figure out what they are on your own.  You draw your gun by pressing the corresponding quick action key, and the camera swivels out all the way in whichever direction you're facing.  It's a little...odd.  Guns do what they're supposed to do, but the great sidescrolling shooters of old - like Contra - have sadly spoiled me on Dex's fairly crude firearm mechanics.

And the save system is slightly disappointing.  A couple of builds ago, a working save-at-will system was in place.  Now, saving is done by leaving a zone, prompting the game to autosave.  It's not as hair-pullingly-frustrating as the checkpoint system in the release version of Shadowrun Returns, but I'm gonna miss the option to save wherever - whenever - I want.

On the plus side, the developers have done a really amazing job of creating the mood of their city, and between sound, dialogue, and graphics, Harbor Prime is a scary, lonely kind of place.  The soundtrack works, and at times, it's really exciting, but it never really sets your heart pounding or brings tears to your eyes the way a piece from Jeremy Soule or Hans Zimmer would.  It's not masterful, exactly, just good.

Now, the graphics are lovely.  Beautiful backdrops do a lot to create the mood of whatever part of the city you're in.  Gorgeous neon signs glow in the night that never seems to go away, and the shadows looming everywhere lend an air of filth and despair to the streets.  I only wish there had been more in the way of visuals.  Bloom effects might have added more to the surreal beauty and the glare of the well-lit parts of Harbor Prime, giving it contrast with the more dejected parts of town.  Dex's graphics remain fairly simple, despite being lovingly hand-crafted.

The writing was the part of the game I found the most satisfying.  The characters come alive with well-written cheek and sarcasm, and multiple different dialogue options give you a feeling of freedom and choice, reminding you that it truly deserves to be called a role-playing game.  The voice acting is also well-performed, adding further immersion to the story.  This is probably one of Dex's strongest points.  One of the best things you could say about any cyberpunk story is that it reminds you of Shadowrun.  And this reminded me very much of Shadowrun, without ever borrowing from it too much.  It's a gripping narrative.

I've given it three out of five stars.  That's not to say that Dex does anything really wrong.  The loss of two stars isn't so much for what Dex does wrong as it is for how high it reaches when it does things right.  The writing is really good, and paired with good voice acting, it's an edgy cyberpunk drama that keeps you running.  The graphics are gorgeous, but I can't help feeling like they could have done more; adding additional visual effects would have been explosive.  The music is good and does what it sets out to do, but it's hardly the kind of epic soundtrack that sends you scrambling to pick up for your collection at any cost.  Is it an immortal classic for a wide audience?  Time will tell, though I would reluctantly say no.  It won't hook everyone, and it won't scratch the timeless, epic RPG itch of a five star game.

But Dex is a great cyberpunk title, and I would say it deserves a place on the shelf next to Shadowrun, Syndicate, and Satellite Reign.  For any die-hard cyberpunk fan, Dex is a game you drop your creds on and don't look back.  The game provides a generous amount of content and a really rich story for the price tag.  For the average gamer, catching this one on a sale is definitely the way to go.

Dex is not a legendary sidescrolling action game, but she deserves an honored place in any cyberpunk collection.

-Aubrielle