JYDGE (PlayStation 4) Review

Nothing yells 80s sci-fi as much as the gritty movie Robocop. It took elements from the cyberpunk genre, and added it to a violent action flick taking the genre out from the shadows of obscurity it had previously been in, and delivering it to the masses which would further solidify the theme of distrust towards unregulated progress seen in sci-fi movies ever since. JYDGE is more than a little inspired by it when it comes to setting and execution. It takes a fair dose of society criticism and adds it to the simple, yet fast-paced and addicting genre that is the twin-shooter genre. The goal is to fight crime, and the objectives range from everything in between saving hostages to executing gang leaders (without a fair trial of course).

The gameplay has a high-pace, great controls, and a lot of varied options to customize the JYDGE to whatever playstyle one prefers, or that is optimal for the current stage. This makes the gameplay quite interesting, and prevents it to get too stale and repetitive, while still keeping the core intact. It is dark, gritty, and extremely addicting to try to not only complete the main objectives, but also the sub-objectives offered. While all the shooting is really fun and addicting, though, there is a huge elephant in the room. The biggest problem with JYDGE is that even though it is a fun game, it risks getting stale fast because of the decision to make the player being required to beat some sub missions, and to even replay the stages at harder difficulties to reach the very end.

It takes away choice of what to do as a player in favour of artificially prolong the game's longevity. Those who desire challenges in games are going to seek for it, no matter if it is required or not, and those who are not into bonus challenges are more likely to just shut this off, rather than participate in them. It feels like a really strange decision as a developer to force this upon you rather than giving the option to just simply move forward in whichever direction desired. Thankfully, not all challenges are required to be completed for anyone else but the completionist, and it is easy to cherry-pick what to do.

If someone really enjoys missions about finding and eliminating targets, they can mainly focus on these to progress through it all, and if they do prefer sneaking around, they can go for stealth based objectives to further their progress. There are missions for everyone to enjoy to fill those objective quotas to continue with the story. Another bonus with doing this is that they also use them to unlock new weapons and upgrades that progressively give the player more choices in how to tackle missions, and what kind of weaponry they prefer. Ultimately, though, these are all just sweet features that would better serve as rewarding bonus missions.