Why Yes, I Would Like A Gritty Cyberpunk Grand Theft Auto

I very much like the look of Metrocide

Metrocide is a top-down open-world-ish game in the vein of a classic (read: pre-GTA 3) Grand Theft Auto. Difference is, instead of grandly thieving autos or sticking to other small-time crimes, you’re a contract killer. Your goal? To hunt down various targets using an ever-expanding array of gadgets and turn them into cybernetically enhanced paste—but, you know, discretely.

Your itsy bitsy man-ant—though a teensy bit more murder-prone than his peers—is just as kill-able as anybody, meaning that run-ins with looming police drones don’t typically go your way. It’s as Gandalf once said: “Keep it secret, keep it safe, dump the body in an open manhole before that thick-as-a-brick fuckhead over there notices.” This is especially key given that death is permanent in this one. No respawns with all your gear magically intact.

The structure of the game world itself is also interesting, given that portions of it are procedurally generated. Citizen names, for instance, are pulled from a randomized version of the 2013 U.S. census.

Metrocide looks like quite a thing, especially for a small indie production. It’s no Watch_Dogs, but in some ways that’s a good thing. Besides, everybody already knows that Gunpoint is Watch_Dogs‘ smarter, more focused indie cousin. Metrocide appears to be its own animal—a stew of Grand Theft Auto, cyberpunk classic Syndicate, and its own juices—and that’s just grand.

It’ll be out on Steam in October—aka, very soon.