Tokyo 42 has a futuristic view, but it’s very different from that of the real city. It is designed with a cubist labyrinth of buildings with bold colors, and there are plazas having sculptures of giant human heads and smiling cats. From the isometric perspective, you’ll see the city as a stunning diorama that is bubbling with life and animation. Hordes of pedestrians move on the road, and flying cars make their way, and who you are in all this chaotic environment is a killer for hire. You are either targeting someone from a distance in a bid to snip that person, or you’re targeting them in a crowd.
What’s exciting about the game is when your target has some form of protection like armed guards, and you have to employ some tactics. This situation gets you creative, where you can use a path to the target, leveraging your character soaring and floating jumps to navigate the map. When you succeed at this, you can decide how you want to kill them.
Tokyo 42 is more or less a dreamlike action game. Like I said earlier, you navigate across bright and dreamy toytown landscapes where you do jumps from a building to another, and you exchange gunfire. It has a dreamy feel but that not really a problem. Even at its dreaminess, it doesn’t lack in impact. In Tokyo 42, action can go so fast that you’re trying to understand it all.
The story beginning is about you being implicated for murder and you have to clear your name. To do this, you become a hired killer assassinating hundreds of people. You undergo your first kill contract where you’re the boss of a mini-golf empire. In this mission, you go through a tutorial where you’re trained on the pistol weapon and you’re part of the setup for a character’s punchline which is “I told you to cap off a golf tycoon and you put a hole in one”.
You’ll find some of the black humor present in Io interactive’s Hitman series in Tokyo 42. This humor presents itself as a mission where you kill a yoga instructor mid-downward dog at one point, and execute another target known as Wallace. When compared to Agent 47, Tokyo 42 also share similarities in the area of disguise. Hide from a guard, and you can employ your rechargeable ability that will change your appearance.
You progress through the game as you complete missions. The more missions you complete, the more missions you have access to. You get your money through missions and by successfully executing a Nemesis before they attack you. To help you, a cat companion is attached to you to monitor and track down the Nemesis when there’s a prompt. The Nemesis system introduces tension into the game because you never know, someone might be after you. There’s also a motorcycle race present in the game, which is also called “Redline.” That where part of Tokyo 42’s fun is.
The isometric visuals and futuristic aesthetics make Tokyo 42 cool to the eyes, yet simple. If you need a hitman kind of game, shoot for Tokyo 42.
