by Most notable stealth-action games — including Metal Gear Solid, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and Mark of the Ninja — make sneaking about and leaving enemies undisturbed merely an option, also providing the ease and capability of dealing out death as desired. Not so in the first episode of République, which follows Hope, a teenage girl held captive for possessing revolutionary materials within the school of a totalitarian regime. Aside from wielding the occasional pepper spray bottle or a one-time-use taser, she’ll need to creep around every corner and stay totally unseen to avoid being recaptured. And unlike in the average stealth affair, you’re not even directly controlling her actions.
Instead, you’ll take the role of a disillusioned security worker, who helps free Hope and shepherd her through the facility by viewing her surroundings via closed-circuit video cameras and sending directives to her device. It’s an approach well suited for a touch interface, as you can simply tap to direct Hope towards her next destination (including leaned up against a wall, or crawling through a vent opening), switch cameras, “hack” open locks, or trigger a contextual action, like pickpocketing a guard when his back is turned. You’re essentially still controlling her in the end, but that kind of context helps explain why the touch-centric mechanics are simpler than in the average genre entry.
It’s all very streamlined, but there’s still room for tactical thinking — and it’s a necessary level of simplification to make a console-inspired game like this work comfortably on iPad and iPhone. Navigating the world via cameras has its clumsy moments; the slow panning and limited views mean you may swap between a few such feeds to get through a single area. That may help build atmosphere, but it’s still kind of a pain. Yet aside from the occasional misplaced movement marker, République does a stellar job of reading your taps and giving you solid control of Hope, even without active movement inputs. That said, the depth of interaction seen in this initial episode had better be just a taste of what’s to come, or else things could get repetitive very quickly down the line.
We don’t see all that much of République’s world in Exordium, the first of five planned episodes; mostly sterile hallways and security rooms, plus a more lavishly decorated library and surrounding areas — but the detailed visuals still impress, aside from the occasional animation glitch, and the voice acting is also excellent. Exordium unfolds a few small bits of narrative across its three-or-so-hour runtime, but it’s never quite clear what that’s all leading to. Like most initial entries in episodic series, it’s content to set the table for the later chapters, but what it teases is plenty enough to generate intrigue and keep you around for further installments. And we love its unique personality amidst what could have been a very dry kind of environment; the little jokes keep things lively, while collectable Atari-esque game cartridges based on other iOS games are a wonderful touch.
The bottom line.
