Not all video games are created equal. And even in the world of M-rated shooters you can find some titles that try a bit harder, reach for a bit more. Bandai Namco’s Get Even is one of those. And in spite of its inherent genre and content problems, it at least deserves a tip of the hat for trying.
Get Even stirs equal measures of first-person shooter, horror and psychological thrills into the story of a guy who’s struggling to reclaim lost memories. Gamers play as Mr. Black, a gritty, private investigator type who knows he’s been in a terrible accident. And he also comes to realize that he’s strapped into a futuristic, high tech device that’ll help him relive snippets of his forgotten past.
It all starts while Black is trying to rescue a young girl from her murderous kidnappers. But when he gets to her, everything goes sideways, and he gets seriously injured. The disembodied voice of another character, Dr. Red, continually pushes Black to use the memory tech’s ability to dig deeper and relive more of his shrouded history, even as the tech’s glitches keep the restaged interactions just a tad hazy and confusing.
As to why Black is doing all this—with the guidance of that on-looking doctor—or what all the chaotic try-not-to-die-while-crawling-through-an-insane-asylum memories mean, well, that unfolding conundrum has to be followed all the way through to the end.
Gameplay-wise, this title can sometimes remind you of Assassin’s Creed as you future-tech your way from memory to memory to piece together the meaning of each new revelation. Only in this case, there are no climb-a-building acrobatics. And an ample coating of mad-man, memory-blurring creepiness gives the action a totally different feel.
This is definitely a shooter. But the game also repeatedly encourages you not to go in with guns blazing whenever possible. There are puzzles to solve. Dark environments to explore. High tech clues to uncover. A mystery to solve.
On top of that, a number of surprising twists bend the story this way and that, too. As layers are peeled back on the narrative, it eventually reveals a cautionary tale: the tragic tale of a man who lost everything of real value in his life because of selfish pursuits. In fact, the game makes sure we relive past events from different perspectives and forces us to examine how our actions look from another’s point of view.
For all of those plusses, though, Get Even packs in plenty of nasty negatives. The language throughout, for instance, is rankly foul. The game’s atmosphere feels dark and fetid. And, ultimately, trigger-pulling can’t be totally avoided, either. Head and body shots are a bloody mess. One scene features a number of violent gun deaths frozen and unfrozen in time. Elsewhere, a girl is disturbingly tied to a chair with a bomb strapped to her chest.
Gameplay exploration also involves scanning the blood spatter of past murders. Escaped mental institute maniacs butcher fellow patients and leave them in gory heaps. Ghostly mannequins launch a frightening attack. There’s a marital affair in play, too, as well as manipulative deceptions. Finally, innocent victims suffer through physical and mental anguish.
Tally it all up, and you find that this is, indeed, an ambitious game. A game that tries to defy expectations and offer something more, even a moral that’s almost impossible to miss. Unfortunately, though, Get Even still wades through and wallows in a lot of M-rated gunk that can’t help but seep into your family room carpet and spatter anyone else nearby.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
