Early in the Fortune’s Run demo (opens in new tab)an FPS recently featured in the digital event Realms Deep, I stepped into a sci-fi nightclub that has more personality and world-building than any single dive in Night City combined.
The demo’s only level, Trouble At Club V’heni, begins with a covert infiltration of the titular nightclub as a different character from main character Mozah. As this unnamed antagonist, sneak through the bar and environs to the VIP lounge at the back.
It then cuts back to Mozah’s perspective, pottering around with V’heni’s Mos Eisley Cantina-esque clientele. You can ask the dancers how they’re coping with recent political instability, chat with the vaguely left-wing revolutionaries the bar has turned to for muscle, and start a growling contest with some Totally-Not-Bossk-From-Empire- Strikes-Back type thugs.
It’s an incredible little sci-fi space, with music and atmosphere that have blown me away in each of my three playthroughs of the demo. After talking to club owner and former revolutionary collaborator Z’tar and working your way around the back, you realize your contact has been killed (by that other guy from the playable intro no less) and the dope club you just came from. is being attacked by forces of resident space fascists, the Federation.
Club V’heni is an expansive playground, with multiple paths to goals, creative shortcuts, and a plethora of immersive sim-style details. It reminds me most of the levels of the phenomenal Jedi Knight FPS series, or Arkane’s early gem, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (opens in new tab). Indeed, V’heni feels like a tribute to the Hutt city planet Nar Shaddaa’s renditions of Dark Forces, Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast, with dingy cantina interiors contrasting with dizzying outdoor parts. One particular piece with snipers on adjacent rooftops feels like it was lifted straight from Outcast.
The star of the show in Fortune’s Run’s arsenal is the katana melee weapon, which feels like it builds on the fantastic lightsaber mechanics of the Jedi Knight games. You have to time and scramble attacks where on the bodies of enemies you try to confuse their guard, block their attacks in turn and even ward off bullets with well-timed swings.
You’re not as invincible as wielding the Jedi Knight series’ auto-parry lightsabers, but that makes it even better – for my money – taking a sword into a gunfight in Fortune’s Run is intense and exciting, balancing success or bust on the edge of a knife (or space katana). A big part of what keeps me coming back to the demo are these addictive, heart-pounding combat, a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance level fulfillment of that cyborg ninja fantasy that all cool and normal people have.
You’re extremely vulnerable in Fortune’s Run, but luckily Hotline loads Miami-fast (at least on my SSD). Unlike recent immersive sims like Gloomwood (opens in new tab) who quickly removed rescue completely, Fortune’s Run enshrines it as a tactic, encouraging trial and error in its firefights. I especially like the little Deathloop/Prince of Persia-esque rewind animation that plays quickly. The demo is rarely auto-saved, so spamming F5 is a must. These frenetic encounters never seem to go the same way twice, and I’m sure I haven’t discovered every secret of this map yet, hence the never-ending repetitions.
Expanded Universe
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The writing and world building in this little slice of the game exceeded all my expectations. The main character, Mozah, is a failed revolutionary turned samurai in business, on release from work after serving a 10-year prison term. Bar owner Z’tar and other patrons of the establishment allude to some job gone wrong, a revolutionary move that led to mass death. The oppressive yet prosperous Federation is about to withdraw from the game’s setting, New Zabra, promising freedom, but also a power vacuum and political instability. Most of the bar’s wealthy patrons have left, and Z’tar has joined that band of ideologically ambiguous revolutionaries, who trade his supply connections for their muscles. I really like all of this tangible worldbuilding, stuff with a sense of history like Disco Elysium, and it’s aided by naturalistic dialogue and excellent voice acting.
Fortune’s Run’s supplies this group of characters with incredible art direction – it has a real feel of that old, Star Wars Expanded Universe grungy craziness. The alien species take a lot of cues from the rubbery practicalities of old Star Wars, with main character Mozah feeling extremely Twi’lek adjacent. Those characters all posed and captured that weird clay look of 3D models as sprites, and the whole bitch has a real ’90s lost masterpiece.
There are some pain points in the demo. As with the Jedi Knight games, I sometimes found it difficult to know where to go. After a fight, I might find every door locked and have to spend a few minutes finding the vent valve to break or a clogged ledge to climb up. This is a stylistic choice that usually works for me – rough edges have a better grip anyway – but there’s one jump puzzle in particular that still feels more like breaking a sequence than its intended path through the game. The path forward isn’t particularly well signposted, and the sequence requires some Destiny Raid-level navigation of the wall geometry to make it out of a strange, gated silo above a death trap.
I’m still running hot and cold on the game’s wall jump, an essential tool for dealing with verticality and occasional platforming puzzles. Team Fortune has released a handy guide to Twitter to the variations and input needed to bounce off the walls like a pro, which helped with my later playthroughs of the demo. However, I still feel like it’s reaching combo levels of memorizing input fighting games, and there were a few moments when I felt like I should have covered a ledge and fell to my death instead.
Even with that caveat, Fortune’s Run has instantly jumped to the top of my personal most wanted list, surpassing even Dread Delusion (opens in new tab) and toe-to-toe with the unannounced, but inevitable Elden Ring expansion pack in my crazy little consumer-enthusiastic cosmology. I crave more of this world, the game’s fantastic imm-sim-lite exploration and arresting swordplay. Act 1 early access really can’t come soon enough for me — time for a final run through Club V’heni I think.
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