Consortium: The Tower Demo

Making stealth games is not as easy as you might think, because many factors contribute to the overall atmosphere and gameplay quality. Thus, sneaking around is no fun if the environment is linear, or if the AI is too dumb to notice you when you run anyway. Hence, only a handful of franchises have managed to get the concept just right, with the most notorious of them being Hitman, Deus Ex and Splinter Cell.

Consortium: The Tower is a first-person action game with shooter, stealth and RPG elements, which allows you to tackle a difficult mission in the desired manner. Hence, the core concept is the idea of freedom, because you can always just shoot your way out of trouble. However, you are limited by many factors when it comes to using force, such as enemy intelligence, their superior numbers, and rather flimsy main character health.

The story is actually very interesting as well, given the fact that you are put in the role of a special operative sent through a time rift in order to solve a hostage crisis. Naturally, something goes wrong and you end up in a very different part of the tower, which means that you have to find your own way to the hostages. The sci-fi tech allows other people from your time to watch your actions in real-time using VR headsets, so the whole thing is presented like an unfolding mission with an audience.

Since you are pretty much encouraged to use stealth most of the time, it’s important to know that you have the freedom to use a variety of high-tech equipment to achieve your objective. Thus, your character can perform super jumps using the jetpack on his suit, but it does require quite a bit of energy. You can improve your suit with a variety of parts to make yourself more silent or more resilient.

Speaking of which, the game can be a tad disorienting at first, mainly because the interface is very crowded if you decide to take a look at your upgrades. There are not too many explanations to help you along either, so a bit of patience is required in the beginning. As for the graphics, they are very reminiscent of the classic Deus Ex franchise, which is obviously not a bad thing.

Consortium: The Tower somehow hits most of the right notes, especially in terms of gameplay and stealth. Thus, you are truly free to approach the mission as you desire, and multiple playthroughs are far from boring or repetitive.