CLOCKWORK REVOLUTION
Developer/publisher Xbox Game Studios (InXile Entertainment) Format PC, Xbox Series Release TBA
Showtunes playing from speakers. A steampunk city with an art nouveau aesthetic. Heavily armed automata controlled by a dictator set on bending the world to their will. The team at InExile aren’t so much borrowing from BioShock Infinite as stripping it for parts, resulting in a firstperson action game which resembles Columbia with the serial numbers filed off. This extends to combat, which takes cues from immersive sims: one power allows our protagonist to electrify a set of spinning blades, for example, while another grants them the ability to manipulate time. And although its narrative shifts its focus from American frontierism to British colonialism, it’s not enough to quieten our sense of déjà vu. We remain cautiously optimistic, however, that the Wasteland studio will take a more nuanced approach in its depiction of revolution.