History VideoGame / Loopmancer

2046, Dragon City a.k.a Neo-Hong Kong - after two decades of technological advancements, a MegaCorp who went by the name Tompson Technologies controls much of the city's facilities, from urban development to resource management and the medical sector. Especially the medical sector, where thanks to a breakthrough in organ transplanting technology five years ago, Tompson Technologies' lab-grown implants can now cure all diseases and extend lives of citizens. Within half a decade, millions of citizens now bears implants from Tompson's labs in their bodies.

Not that the PlayerCharacter have any interest in all these. Players are in control of Xiang Zixu, a detective, private eye and a disillusioned, broken man with a troubled past - losing his family in a car accident, Zixu was rebuilt from the brink of death and granted the ability to rewind time thanks to nanotechnologies, allowing him to travel back via "looping", the catch being that he can only do so by dying, and within a fixed point in the past. The time-frame of his daughter's demise being beyond his powers to reach, Xiang Zixu decides to use his abilities to good use, maintaining the peace within Dragon City.

Xiang Zixu's latest case sees him on the trail of a missing reporter named Lisbeth, abducted by the triads, with the city's lead crime lord, Wei Long, suspected to be the same man responsible for destroying Zixu's life five years ago but released because of a judicial loophole, being involved. Intending to further pursue Wei Long and put a stop to their further activities, Zixu throws himself into the case - only to uncover a far more sinister conspiracy involving Tompson Technologies. Inevitably, Zixu is the one hero who can reveal the truth to the public.

* AnArmAndALeg: Zixu lost his left arm and part of his legs in the backstory (after Wei Long ordered the accident that cost Zixu his family). The mooks tend to suffer this fate as well, having their appendages severed by Zixu's sword - expect mooks to audibly shout, "My arm!" every now and then.
* AteHisGun: [[spoiler:Zixu does this on ''purpose'' in order to restart the loop in a few cutscenes. From a first-person perspective, no less, where he stares down his pistol's barrel and the screen goes black after a gunshot]].
* BareHandedBladeBlock: The oil rig boss fight against Hiroyuki have Zixu grabbing Hiroyuki's katana by the blade in the finishing cutscene, though using his mechanical hand.

* BodyHorror: The effects of bio-growth from Tompson Technology, [[spoiler:which Zixu uncovers after investigating Ditch Village and entering their hidden, underground lab filled with captured ex-villagers]] - besides growing multiple extra limbs, the unwilling test subjects also grows almost twice in height and sprouts a hump on their backs, their faces becoming distorted as tumors and lumps starts bulging through random parts of their bodies.
* CatStereotype: A stray black cat appears in the cutscene where Zixu confronts Wei Long the first time, after defeating the Brute, right before Zixu gets killed by an unseen sniper and sent back the loop. In the re-confrontation, the same cat appears, and players needs to pass a QuickTimeEvent to avoid death this time.

* CutscenePowerToTheMax: Downplayed, since Zixu is a highly-capable asskicker and fighter even in gameplay, but the cutscene before he confronts Hiroyuki on a rig sees Hiroyuki flanked by twenty or so ninja minions. [[ThePawnsGoFirst The ninja mooks goes first]], and Zixu kills ''all'' of them in under ten seconds, including dealing a OneHitKill on mooks that, in gameplay proper, can tank multiple hits. Then comes the boss battle where player regains control.

* ExplodingBarrels: Tends to show up randomly throughout the game, even in the most implausible locations (what are these barrels doing in the middle of Dragon City's streets is beyond anyone's guess). Hitting them once will set them to explode within a couple of seconds, and Zixu needs to retreat from the blast radius - mooks caught in the explosion will be messily ripped to shreds.

* GhostTown: Ditch Village, a rural area in downtown Dragon City, which was evacuated years ago because of an alleged pandemic outbreak. Lisbeth, the missing journalist, was somehow reported to be near the area, despite it being cordoned off by the authorities, leading to Zixu's decision to investigate. [[spoiler:And then he finds the civilains in a state he's ''not'' expecting them to be - sealed in an underground research facility and mutated to grotesque proportions, by Tompson Technology's biological department]].

* HugeHolographicHead: Kouga Industries' lobby area has a projector for displaying either their boss, Shizue, or the second-in-command Hiroyuki as a full-bodied hologram that reaches the ceiling.
* HumanResources: Originally, the highly-revered bio-tech company, Tompson Technology, was assumed to have their resources grown from chimpanzees, but it turns out [[spoiler:lab tests using chimpanzees tends to yield unpredictable results, and aren't as compatible with human bodies as intended. So instead, they form an alliance with the triads, led by Wei Long, to have the rural Ditch Village abducted and used for their experiments, with ''horrific'' results before sweeping the aftermath down the rug]].

* {{Mutant}}: Tall, deformed, lanky humanoids with multiple arms appears in an underground level in Ditch Village, and shows up in large quantities in the last levels. [[spoiler:They are the results of Tompson Technologies experimenting with the abducted civilains of Ditch Village]].

* ObstructiveForeground: Defied (thankfully, seeing how action scenes tends to get ''really'' hectic at times), in the case where foreground objects like pillars, trees, and stray walls gets in the way, Zixu and enemy mooks will be highlighted as orange silohouttes.
* RobotSoldier: The police and military in futuristic Dragon City uses robots as security guards. [[spoiler:The final level in Tompson Technology sees them as MechaMooks instead, where Zixu battles them in large numbers to reach Song Boyong]].

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: The game's very premise; the player hero, Xiang Zixu, can reset time by ''dying'' and restarting the time loop, allowing him to try to set things right again and again and again. Unfortunately there are limits to where the loop can extend, where he can't stop his daughter's death five years ago [[spoiler:unless he unlocks the best ending]].