Are you in the mood to play with Half-Life 2’s gravity gun but want to do it in Stalker’s exclusion zone? Then you have some seriously strange moods and I am exceptionally gifted at guessing them. On the other hand, that does sound like a great combination, right?
In singleplayer sci-fi FPS Adaca, the Half-Life 2 vibes are strong right off the bat, as your arm has been replaced with a gravity gun-like prosthetic that can yank objects toward you and let you fling them like projectiles. And in Adaca the world is full of objects, from exploding barrels to file cabinets to crates to cinder blocks. You can even yoink the weapons from your enemy’s hands if you’ve staggered them. The bad guys are highly reminiscent of HL2’s Combine cops, from their looks to their radio barks (though they say “shit shit shit” instead of “outbreak outbreak outbreak”) to their tendency to be delivered by dropships.
Movement and combat is speedy as you zip through the world like you’re on skates, making it fun to dash into a pack of enemies, blast one at close range, grab an object and fling it into another, and go zipping back into cover again. Like Half-Life, there’s a bit of gravity-based environmental puzzle solving as you fight your way through the linear levels of the campaign, occasionally collecting new guns and finding all sorts of stuff to throw at the cops. The campaign has two episodes of about a dozen levels each, with a third episode listed as “coming soon”—which is about as Half-Life 2 as you can get.
What’s more interesting to me than the linear adventure is Adaca’s Zone Patrol mode. It’s a non-linear open world completely separate from the campaign (you’re a different character, though you still have the gravity arm) and has much more of a Stalker vibe. There’s a big world broken into discrete zones you can explore, taking on specific missions or just going freeform. Gear up at your hub and then hit the zone, look for valuable artifacts to sell back at base, get in firefights with roaming factions, make discoveries and unlock new guns, and even team up with AI-controlled companions.
Just running around in the zone for about 10 minutes I found a weird outpost in the woods guarded by enemies wearing hazmats, some heavily armored foes in a downtown area, a dark and expansive underground bunker, a ringing phone with a riddle-like message when I answered it, electrical anomalies blocking a bridge, locked doors requiring a special key, and a radio broadcast repeating a series of numbers. There really seems to be a lot packed in there.
I haven’t played it front to back yet but it’s already been a blast, and you can get a pretty big taste of Adaca with its free demo. The full game is $25.
