Sprawl Zero review

You cannot reload in Sprawl Zero. Instead, you mindwarp a fallen gun straight to your hand, unload all the bullets into a cyborg guard, then javelin the hollowed weapon at his colleague's skull. You then brainsnatch that victim's rifle into your fingers while it's still falling from his dead hands, and you do it all again. 

For the first half hour of this retro blastathon, I habitually hammered the R key after loosing a few bullets. It did nothing. Body memory will not help you here, even if your head memory is summoning visions of the 2000s sci-fi shooters this dusty megacity is inspired by. You will navigate blocky levels full of secrets while lobbing empty pistols into the faces of your enemies and tossing back grenades. The gag presents itself. This is literally a throwback shooter. 

You are a cybernetic killfiend of the Junta, the city's ruling force. A terrorist group are doing terrorism, and worse! They're being preachy about it. It's your job to bleed 'em out and silence their cultish leader, Silas. I say "your job" but it's clear from the protagonist's robotic recitations ("Memory is the phantom. Autonomy is the flaw.") that you are a pre-programmed, captive killing instrument doing the dirty work of your shadowy, fash overseers. Not that your cult foes are clean-cut goodies. Better just keep murdering until the plot twists happen.

Yes, 2000s shooters may be the soul, but the body is all Doom 2016. It is a rhythmic, flowing shooter that demands the player keep pace. Enemies are nippy and move around arenas with cowardly self-preservation, making movement more important than cover. The combat rhythm is a dance on repeat: pick up, shoot, punch, dash - not forgetting to use your abilities to mix things up. You telepathically pluck up gas cannisters and chuck them at dudes, and you earn your health back by remembering to use bullet-time every so often, which generates glowy green healing drops. 

Most importantly, the lack of ammo forces you to snap up and try out every gun, even those you don't like so much. Dropped weapons are coloured according to rarity, so you can easily teleyoink a rare purple pistol and ignore the everyday grey guns. But sometimes you have to improvise and use whatever's grabbable in a heartbeat. 

I commend this as an act of despotic game design. The developers are forcing you to eat your vegetables because - as it turns out - some vegetables are delicious and you will feel better having digested all your grenade launchers. In 2001 some hardwired troglodytes moaned about Halo only letting you carry two guns at any time, but this was the most interesting change in mainstream shooter design for decades. Sprawl Zero pushes that logic a little further and builds a whole game around it. It makes one big combat decision and commits. For that alone, it is worth playing.