Intravenous
Developer: Explosive Squat Game
Publisher: HypeTrain Digital
Release: July, 26, 2021
Playtime as of writing: 4.5 hours (Code provided)
Intravenous is a stealth action game. You play as Steve, during a night out with your brother you get mugged by some druggies and your brother ends up dying in a hospital after getting a glass bottle to the head. The cops are unable to do anything about it so it is up to you to get justice… street justice! Basically you play as The Punisher and you even get your own Microchip. After your first solo revenge mission you get a call from “Accomplice” who offers to outfit your operation with a safe house and guns. At the start of each mission you can choose your loadout of a primary weapon and secondary weapon and as the game progresses you can unlock more guns.
The controls are standard mouse and keyboard: move with the keys and aim and shoot with the mouse. Left click shoots, right click uses laser sight. The mouse wheel controls your movement speed which in turn controls how loud you are while moving. If you come up behind someone while they’re unaware you can choke them out, or just use a melee attack to knock them out instantly. If you leave bodies around other people will see them and be alerted so you can dump bodies in dumpsters or just anywhere that no one is since thugs seem to patrol in a pretty set path. If you down an enemy nonlethally you have the option to kill them which will leave blood behind. You can also swap your current gun with whatever they were carrying or just empty out the magazine which is good to remember in case a fire fight happens and you run out of ammo.
The game emphasizes stealth, if you are seen everyone will know where you are right away and come for you guns drawn until they’re all dead or you can run away and hide. If you get away from them or they see any dead or unconscious bodies around they will be on alert and looking for you and just like any normal person Steve can not take many bullets before dying. You want to take a stealth approach by sticking to the shadows like Batman, if he used a gun, and killed. Like Thomas Wayne Batman.
I have yet to beat the game, so maybe the ending of the game completely ruins the rest of it but for now I like it. If you are a fan of stealth action games give it a shot. Also I’ve never played the original Metal Gear so I have no bases for comparison other then stealth action.
A game to surpass Metal Gear
Stealth Action, like Metal Gear if the weapon of mass destruction was drugs.
