Replaced is a graphically gorgeous cyberpunk side-scroller that channels a big hit of 80s nostalgia. While it’s worth playing for the incredible 2.5D art, its reliance on science fiction storytelling tropes lets down an otherwise impressive game.
Replaced covers well-trodden plot territory. If you mixed Robocop with a dash of Demolition Man, a pinch of Duke Nukem and Kazuo Ishiguro’s incredible novel Never Let Me Go, then you’d have the mash-up that is Replaced.
What’s Replaced about?
The story opens with scientist Warren talking to an AI program, R.E.A.C.H. when things go terribly wrong. After a dramatic explosion, the AI consciousness of REACH uploads into Warren’s body. Soon Reach is on the run, finding himself in a rag-tag outpost of Phoenix City rejects. It’s here he learns what it is to be human. If that sounds familiar, you’d be right.
AI and androids becoming human is a story as old as Pinocchio’s nose. It’s a retelling of the idea of the inanimate puppet coming to life. While solidly written, the dialogue around this plot relies too much on cliches. It sounds like a story I’ve heard a hundred times before. I would have really liked the writers to flip some of these archetypes. Can AI really be human? Do they even have a sense of gender or identity, when they’re all things to all people? What does an AI learn from humanity, when it witnesses them doing terrible things?
Sure, 80s action films weren’t known for their deep philosophical content. But a game like Detroit: Become Human does a much better job of addressing these profound questions, by allowing the player to navigate these uncertain choices. In that game, Markus is torn between his programmatic nature and his emerging identity. As a result, his choice between peace and violence hits the player hard.
Nostalgia modes
In fact, there’s a philosopher whose work addresses these exact storytelling issues. Fredric Jameson wrote about how nostalgic media is actually viewing the past through the eyes of the present. So making a cyberpunk game about the fear of AI in 2026 is very relevant, but Replaced channels the 80s fear of AI and technology, rather than the 2026 view. And that makes it seem slightly dated. Not to mention rehashing stories we’ve already seen before.
Reach, as an AI, is never given a solid identity. He’s implied to be a super soldier, but before this mind-merge with Warren has never had a body – at least that I can tell. He’s also an expert data analyst, which makes more sense given his original nature as an AI. It’s almost like the game is trying to figure out his identity as it’s going along.
The story is a little light on the details of how Reach actually merges with Warren. I accepted this first plot hole, because of the over-the-top nature of 80s action stories. It’s not about explaining things, it’s about exploding things.
But the internal logic of the game has even more significant holes than how an AI occupied a scientist’s brain. You find out early on that Phoenix Corporation is harvesting body parts from humans, and tossing away the bodies like trash – hence the name, Disposals. Except, they’re only harvesting a single body part – a larynx here, an arm there – before they trash the body. If this is an all-efficient corporation, why aren’t they harvesting all the organs? Why are there any survivors? For me, this was the biggest plot hole and the hardest point to look past. These kinds of glaring plot holes break the reality of the world for a player.
The flawed logic of the worldbuilding follows through to the dialogue. At one point, Tempest, Reach’s radical sidekick, refers to a subway station as “once being packed like a cattle market,” but as a character who grew up outside the walls in a mining outpost, how would he know what a subway was like, or a cattle market? As a writer, you really need to think about what a character knows, and how their upbringing changes this knowledge.
Likewise, if you’re writing a game, you need to ensure that scene transitions motivate the player to achieve their objective. Reach’s inquisitive nature does a solid job of guiding the player (perhaps a little too much for my liking, but I hate being told what to do). But there are logic gaps between scenes, because the game fails to emphasise why players must **do a certain thing in the next chapter of the game. As a player, I need to know why I need to find this specific battery. Why do I need to go back to the laboratory? At points I found myself confused, wondering if I’d missed something. The reason? There wasn’t enough motivational dialogue to keep the player propelled forwards towards the chapter’s goal.
Game mechanics and combat
As for the rest of the game? The mechanics are somewhat inspired by classic climbing game Uncharted. Some of the levels require you to solve platforming puzzles, moving boxes and air vents into the right locations, while dodging electrified floors and platforms.
Once you get the capacity to hack devices, these puzzles open up into more interesting challenges; there’s a particular level in the late game which requires you to hack devices, relink a power grid, all the while dodging electrified surfaces. It took some thinking to puzzle it out, which was why it was so deeply satisfying when I did.
And while some might think spamming the attack button endlessly is repetitive, fighting off hoards of bad cops is a lot of fun as the camera tilts with each combo. I felt like I was an 80s action hero taking down bad guys as they fell to the ground one by one.
Do I recommend Replaced? That’s a complicated one. I certainly didn’t mind my time playing the game, and enjoyed a lot of the crash and bash combat, alongside the climbing puzzles. The artwork is absolutely stunning, especially on later levels set in Phoenix City. The moody lighting sets the tone for the story. And for that alone, the game is worth playing. But I didn’t come out of it with strong feelings either way, and that’s because it felt like a story I’d seen before. Replaced reminds us that good games are made by their story, not just glossy graphics.
If you’re the type of player who gets their kicks off great art and leaping around platforms, then by all means, you’ll enjoy Replaced. Otherwise, you might just feel like another android in the machine.
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