I’ll be the first to admit that “Cell: emergence” is not a perfect game. The controls (where you can move in every direction, in 3D space) take some getting used to, and the game’s difficulty ramps up fairly quickly. It doesn’t help that the game’s instructions seem deliberately obtuse, as if half the fun is in puzzling out their meaning. So why would I recommend it against the backdrop of those challenges? Because the game’s story was written by a writer who worked on the Deus Ex games, and because the game’s complexity (once mastered) allows for some pretty amazing gameplay.
The game has you fighting for control of the human body against various pathogens. While it is niche, games that have you zooming into the body and trying to repair it in some way is nothing new as Imagic’s classic Microsurgeon console game demonstrates.
And yes, Microsurgeon has the scariest-looking eyes and mouth I’ve ever seen in a video game.
I’m writing this on a tablet (now I understand the appeal of the keyboard cover on the Microsoft Surface tablet), so I’ll end the review hear. But if you watch the tutorial video carefully and are willing to invest yourself in it, C:E is absolutely amazing.
Here’s what the developer (alloplastic) has to say about the game:
“Against the “smart germs” of tomorrow’s biowarfare, nanites will be our drone soldiers, but for how long? Enter the fluid living world of Cell (built from “dynamic voxels”) to witness the emergence of new life: YOU, a nanobot who shoots deadly colloids, builds defenses and supercharged weapons, deciphers enemy nanotech — and learns.”
Writings of Mass Deduction 