Tokyo 42

For a game that promises a degree of freedom in how you approach a job, you'll often find there's a clearly preferred way of doing things. [Aug 2017, p.112]

Although it has quite a few issues, it’s original and fresh, and has a strong personality. If you like what it has to offer, you’ll probably forget about the problems and enjoy it quite a lot.

That's why it's so unfortunate that Tokyo 42 fails to leave its own mark on the genre its developers so clearly admire. It literally wears its cyberpunk influences on its sleeve (your default coat, Deckard, is named after Blade Runner’s iconic protagonist), but it fails to cultivate a unique personality during its various missions.

Its issues and occasional shortcomings didn’t hugely detract from my enjoyment, and instead just left me with a longing sense of “what if”. Tokyo 42 is still a good game. It’s just one that comes close enough to being a great one that its flaws sting a little bit more than they probably should.

An intricate, beautiful playground for some enjoyably open-ended assassinations.

Quotation forthcoming.

This action packed Syndicate-esque Tokyo 42 features lots of fun when the game plays right and lots of frustration when it doesn't. If you can withstand the randomness of its combat you are sure to enjoy the beautiful views of this colourful stylish cyberpunk shooter.

Thanks to the imprecision of its shooting controls and the cheap behaviour of its AI, I could never really develop any confidence in Tokyo 42’s frustrating combat. Which is a shame because, glitches aside, I really loved exploring the wonderfully crafted world and the simple yet still challenging nature of its stealth-based assassinations.

Tokyo 42 offers a stylish, polished, well-presented open world that’s unfortunately just not an awful lot of fun to do anything in. A few nice touches put a spark in its heart, but they can’t light up the overall experience.

The eccentric aesthetic of Tokyo 42 is its biggest selling point. It’s a joy to run around the skyscrapers and having some fun shootouts. It’s a pity that the camera proves to be our biggest enemy alongside the issue of repetition.

Tokyo 42 has a lot of potential, and moments of greatness where it can deliver satisfying action, but unfortunately gets bogged down by an annoying camera and notable structure issues and technical snafus. There’s still fun to be had in the candy-coated world of a futuristic Japan, especially when it comes to exploration and the occasional parkour, but those looking for a more focused and more effective action game would be better off checking something else instead. So in the end, it’s sadly less Blade Runner and more Johnny Mnemonic.

Quotation forthcoming.

The single player campaign remains immensely enjoyable but it’s a shame it can’t sustain early success. Refined controls and a focus on more crafted stealth missions, rather than turning everything up to 11, would have meant fewer rage-quits and a higher score.

Tokyo 42 rarely locks us into a certain style of play, but it’s not the "isometric Hitman game" you probably wished for. It’s too small in all aspects to earn that title, and, the worst part, the stealth is awfully boring and primitive.