Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition

Creative, ambitious spin-off suffers from outdated gameplay.
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Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this game.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition is a single-player point-and-click adventure game available for download on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac. It's set in the same universe as the Blade Runner movie, as well as being an "updated" version of the 1997 game. Players will attempt to solve a case involving the brutal murder of multiple exotic animals -- which soon becomes even more dangerous when Replicants make themselves known. In this gritty, cold world, violence comes quickly -- leaving players with a choice to shoot certain people if it's decided they're guilty, causing bloodshed. But the old-school visuals keep the violence from ever being overly bloody or gruesome. Characters tend to curse quite a bit, including profanities like "damn," "hell," "bitch," "bastard," and "s--t." Later in the game, a strip club becomes a major location, featuring scantily clad women dancing provocatively on stages. During a party in a night market, players can drink and become temporarily drunk, and a few characters are clearly intoxicated during conversations. At the game's core is a message about the detriments of discrimination and prejudice, showing how disenfranchised groups react to harmful societal norms -- and the dangerous results. But the ability for the message to resonate is dampened by the fact that the game has a hard time registering where the player wants to go and also has players die randomly and senselessly without an autosave feature -- meaning that players might lose hours of playtime in the wake of minor errors.
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What’s It About?
In BLADE RUNNER: ENHANCED EDITION, the year is 2019 and the stage is a futuristic Los Angeles. Two unknown people enter a shop that specializes in selling exotic animals and proceed to slaughter all the animals in a gruesome act of violence. Ray McCoy is sent in to investigate and find the perpetrators, but he's soon met by the threat of Replicants: bioengineered humanoids who seem to have their own agenda -- and are willing to resort to violence to get what they want. Along the course of his journey, Ray will have to decide whether the Replicants are deserving of "retirement" -- basically death -- or if the Replicants themselves are victims of something much more sinister. In a world that has decided that a certain group is lesser and undeserving of certain rights and privileges, which side will Ray find himself on in the end?
Is It Any Good?
It's always a shame when you can see how great something could've been if it hadn't gotten in its own way. Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition, unfortunately, falls victim to just that. It's an incredibly ambitious game that's almost as ahead of its time now as it was when it came out in 1997. Few games follow through on the promise of a living, breathing world where things happen without the player's direct involvement like Blade Runner does. The likelihood of certain situations occurring is dependent on where you are, what you choose to do, and how quickly you can act. In theory, this is a game someone could play over and over and somehow manage to find something new every time. But there are simply too many roadblocks getting in the way of what could've been an engaging return to form for a beloved cult classic. To start, the "Enhanced" part is inaccurate, as certain scenes somehow look worse than they did in the original game. Additionally, this game feels like a 1997 point-and-click game in the worst possible ways. Players need certain objects but have no clue where to find them, only to discover that the object is the size of an ant and blends into the surrounding scenery.
With the lack of an autosave feature, players will die in absurd ways they couldn't have foreseen, and find that they've lost a chunk of progress by not obsessively saving after every room and conversation. Even worse, players have to track their objectives themselves, and with so much happening in the plot, it's easy to spend too much time figuring out what exactly you're supposed to do and where you're required to do it. Combine all this with a host of bugs and glitches, and the half-hearted update would've been better off as a full top-to-bottom remake. But as it stands, Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition is a cautionary tale to game developers to tread lightly when bringing older games to newer audiences, as all that glittered back then won't necessarily be gold today.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about updating older games to fit the modern gaming landscape. Is there ever a time to leave well enough alone in keeping beloved classics in the past, or is it always good to bring older games to newer audiences? Can such a concept bridge the gap between older and younger gamers?
How effective is it when stories touch upon issues such as racism, discrimination, and prejudice while using robots, animals, or other non-human beings? Can the message be received better if it's delivered in a less "realistic" way? Why, or why not?
Game Details
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Windows, Mac, Linux
- Pricing structure: Paid ($9.99)
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Nightdive Studios
- Release date: June 23, 2022
- Genre: Adventure
- Topics: Adventures, Robots, Science and Nature, Space and Aliens, Wild Animals
- ESRB rating: M for Blood, Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Drugs, Violence
- Last updated: June 28, 2022
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