SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
An atmospheric journey through a wonderfully realised near-future dystopia, Neo Cab’s intriguing side stories are weakened by a trite central narrative.
There are a lot of games set in futuristic dystopias. Neo Cab however is defined by the question of what comes before: the place where that future intersects with the present day. Where games like Cyberpunk are decades off, Neo Cab is a chillingly plausible tomorrow. Its world is rooted in our anxieties over the infinite reach of Big Tech, the erosion of personal privacy, and the social disquiet caused by automation. Backed up by this rich backdrop and innovative mechanics, Neo Cab’s developers set the stage for an intriguing story about a woman, one of the last human drivers in a world where cars drive themselves and one of the last human beings stubbornly clinging on to individuality in a world that reduces everyone to advertising data.
You are Lina. Having driven hundreds of miles to move in with your best friend Savy in the nation’s automation capital of Los Ojos, you soon find she’s gone missing. Now back on the streets as a gig driver in search of passengers and relying on an Airbnb app for places to sleep, you’ve got to figure out the mess that Savy has gotten you both into. But the city is a big place, and things are rapidly coming to a head between Capra, the monolithic tech megacorporation that dominates it, and the radical protesters that oppose its rule.
Los Ojos and its inhabitants are more interesting than the story of Lina and Savy, which as a whole, disappoints. It’s a perfectly serviceable narrative of course, but while you may not have heard this particular tale before, it treads well-worn paths. Neo Cab builds up a complex world for its characters to inhabit, but finding Savy and figuring out what she’s doing is comparatively straightforward. There’s too little room left for nuance, especially when the game also starts posing complicated questions about just what it means to be human in this world. But even as the overarching narrative disappoints, Neo Cab excels at one thing: the busywork.
It’s at its best when Lina is on the job, roaming the neon-drenched streets of Los Ojos listening to the game’s potent synthwave soundtrack in the early hours of the morning, and picking up passengers. It’s a city at odds with itself: corporate and nightmarish, but with pockets of humanity and warmth throughout and richly, almost tangibly, atmospheric. In these encounters, Neo Cab’s first-rate writing truly shines as does its effective characterisation of Lina and the people she meets. You have the option of choosing different clients, from tourists to ex-convicts; each has a different story to tell, and maybe even clues as to Savy’s whereabouts. Each encounter provides a snapshot of that passenger’s life, and the game gives you the chance to pick up those conversations again; being one of the last few human cab drivers in a city full of automated taxis means you have the option to pick up the same people on different nights. In its own take on the hardships in the life of a gig economy worker, you need to keep your own driver rating up or risk losing your job, your income and your only means of following Savy’s trail.
Even though it seems like you’d have to do incredibly poorly in order to lose your job and run out of money, the game ensures that you never feel totally secure. Getting those coveted five-star ratings means directing Lina’s conversations with her passengers via dialogue options so they feel comfortable or heard, or even just given the opportunity to rant. It’s all about reading them and there are no real “right” answers. You might want to be agreeable just so they don’t tank your rating, but if your passenger is actually looking to engage in real, substantial discussion, then you might lose out regardless.
At this point, the game’s main innovation comes in. Lina receives a Feelgood device, itself a mark of Capra’s reach, which reads the chemicals in her blood and displays colours that indicate what she’s feeling, and how intensely, at all times. It’s a clever mechanic, and one that serves a dual purpose as a talking point as well as a twist on dialogue-based games. You can’t directly influence Lina’s mood, but other things might. Sleeping in a cheap dumpy motel rather than at an expensive homestay might mean she starts off her night feeling down on herself, or chatting with a client about Capra might get her angry. Once that mood intensifies, dialogue options are closed off to you while others might open up. Lina might not have the option to defuse the situation with a wisecrack if she’s too angry, pushing you towards choosing aggressive, confrontational dialogue for example. Neo Cab hits a sweet spot here, as being locked out never feels like the game is restricting you. Rather, conversations become much more organic and natural, and they almost feel unscripted.
The atmosphere, the side stories and the richly defined depiction of the near future are a potent mix, but the unfocused and simplistic central narrative unfortunately doesn’t break new ground. What does break new ground however is the Feelgood mechanic, and for that reason alone, this is still a ride worth taking, though I was never quite convinced to give the driver a big tip.
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