Get Even is a 2017 First-Person Shooter Psychological Thriller Stealth-Based Game made by The Farm 51 and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It was released on June 21, 2017 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
The game takes place on June 20, 2015 where Cole Black, a mercenary for hire, is recruited by an unknown party to raid a compound in the forests and rescue a girl named Grace, who is held hostage by armed gunmen. During the mission, he stumbles upon the girl with an IED device strapped onto her chest. Despite his best efforts, the explosive detonates before Cole can safely disarm it.
He awakens inside an abandoned asylum on June 22, two days afterwards. He is aided by a scientist by the name of Red as he explores what memories he has with a device known as Pandora, researching them to find out what had happened to the hostage and who was responsible for kidnapping her.
Be warned of spoilers, the game's key focus is on one's perception of reality and thus it has a heavily emphasis on plot and plot twists.
This game provides examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: Cole and several other "patients" are interned at the abandoned Lithurst Asylumnote , outfitted with Pandora headsets. It's not actually real, being just a Pandora construct, and the inmates themselves were constructs created by Black's own mind from things he knew in media to fill in the blanks in the "creepy asylum" setting.
- A.K.A.-47: The Cornershot is known as the CornerGun, developed by Advance Defense Strategy (ADS).
- All for Nothing: In the bad ending, Grace can choose to destroy the Pandora, rendering all her father's sacrifices meaningless.
- All Just a Dream: The asylum Black finds himself in between memories is only an illusion, as are the inhabitants.
- All There in the Manual: More details on the events and characters are found by reading newspaper articles, patient biodata, etc.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The last part of the game has you playing as your narrator, Red, complete with his own new narrator. He also plays significantly differently from Black, due to having direct control over the Pandora code. He doesn't have the smartphone, starts each level unarmed, and cannot reload guns, but can teleport across the world and even take over the bodies of enemies to acquire their weapons.
- Boom Head Shot: An effective way of killing enemies (not to mention ending shootouts).
- Dead All Along: Robert Ramsey, as well as Howard and, depending on your actions during the game, Black.
- Downer Ending: And how! Ramsey's dead, Howard's dead, Grace is permanently handicapped, and depending on your actions Black will be either dead or (probably permanently) comatose. Rose gets off scot-free (although Grace finds other means to punish her). Depending on your choices, you can make it even worse by destroying Ramsey's Pandora tech.
- The "Bad" ending can also be seen in a more positive light, because Grace makes a point about letting go of the past and not being consumed with work at the expense of family.
"Nobody should be obsessing over things they can't change, shutting themselves off from the present. Memories belong in the past." - Dream Within a Dream: The memory missions that Black goes on turn out to be this when it's revealed that the asylum is actually a construct within the Pandora. The asylum and Red's memory missions also turns out to be this since The Reveal is that Red is having his memories reviewed by Grace via the Pandora.
- Driving Question: Who hired Cole to rescue Grace and who was responsible for kidnapping her? Why does Red agree to help Cole investigate the mission?
- Enemy Chatter: If you don't make a move against hostiles, you can hear them talking to the others. Some of what they said are just personal info, others can help you make progress.
- Go Back to the Source: The entire point of the Pandora is to go back through Black's memories until Ramsey finds the source of the conspiracy.
- It's All About Me: Robert Ramsey has some shades of this, seeming not to understand until right at the end of the game that his family isn't second to his work. Lenore accuses him point-blank of this, saying even family tragedies (like his mother's Alzheimer's) were only ever excuses to work harder.
- Karma Houdini: In the end, Rose never faces any legal consequences for her role in the kidnapping and bombing, and makes a big deal about how everything seen in the Pandora device is completely inadmissible in a court of law. However, Grace is at least able to fire her.
- Memory Wipe Exploitation: A scientist named Robert "Red" Ramsey takes advantage of Cole Black's memory loss by helping him investigate the kidnapping of a girl named Grace. Prior to his memory loss, he knows about the kidnapping and was involved in it before things changed.
- Multiple Endings: At the end of the game, you'll play as Grace and you'll need to make two choices. One ending consists of revealing the whole truth about Pandora and continue with the simulation. The other choice is to forget what you see and instead, use the laptop to end the Pandora connection. Grace will then decide what to do with the Pandora technology based on what she experienced in her fathers memories - if the player decided to make Black so insufferable that Red ended up killing him, she understandably isn't thrilled...
- Murder-Suicide: In the end, Robert "Red" Ramsey does this with Roger Howard, feeling that someone has to pay for what became of his family and his life, given everything.
- Never My Fault: Both Black and Ramsey have this. Black repeats with increasing desperation throughout the game that he has nothing to do with the plot, and was only involved to save Grace, even as it becomes more and more obvious that he's in it up to his neck. Likewise, part of Ramsey's driving motivation behind the Pandora is to prove beyond doubt that it was not his fault Grace was kidnapped. He comes to realize his responsibility towards the end of the game.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The "patients" inside the asylum. Some of them would mind their business, but they'd attack you when you go near them, forcing you to use your gun. Red will call you out if you decide to shoot them.
- Not Quite Dead: The ending of the game reveals that Despite all odds Ramsey's doctors actually managed to save Grace's life, although she's permanently crippled from her injuries. Sadly, Ramsey has already killed Howard and himself believing that Grace was already dead.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: In general, freeing the other asylum patients turns out to be a bad thing, and contributes towards getting the bad ending. This is because most of them are dangerous psychopaths. It's also because helping them involves going against Red's orders, causing him to evaluate Black as antagonistic and rebellious and thus hate him more. The sole exception is helping a former security guard who survived Cole's attack on the ADS building and ended up at the asylum due to his PTSD; presumably the fact that you're directly responsible for his condition makes helping him morally responsible rather than irresponsible.
- Once More, with Clarity: The final playable section of the game as you playing as Red, who revisits the levels where Black intentionally or subconsciously obscured his memories.
- Papa Wolf: Ramsey definitely gets his revenge on those who hurt his daughter.
- Police Are Useless: They have zero interest in investigating Jasper's murder, writing it off as a gangland shooting, and it's implied they've been bribed to ignore the kidnapping. Newspaper articles suggest they've been corrupt or disappointing for a long time. The only exception to this is Bart Fair, who disappears after trying to reopen Jasper's case.
- Private Military Contractors: The armed gunmen Cole encounters in the prologue. They become a recurring enemy later on.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the patients in the asylum is Leonard Shelby. The date he became a missing person is even identified as in September 2000, the same month in which his film premiered in Venice. According to Robert Ramsey, a.k.a. Red, this is because he is Leonard Shelby. Cole Black created a fictitious version of him as one of the inmates of the asylum simulation, taken from film.
- As Red delves into Black's memories in the second half of the game, he quotes Alice in Wonderland:Curiouser and curiouser.
- Shown Their Work: The game correctly shows how a British zip code is portrayed by a 6-digit alphanumeric code.
- A Simple Plan: The bombing turns out to have been a Fargo-esque simple plan gone wrong. Black's original plan was for Jasper and his men to grab Lenore and ransom her for the Pandora device. However, the whole thing goes bad when Jasper (who's kind of an idiot) accidentally grabs Grace instead and to make things even worse decides to strap a (dangerously poorly constructed) bomb onto her for no apparent reason other than it seems cool. Upon learning of this colossal screw-up, Black abandons the plan, kills Jasper, threatens Rose to find out where the mercs are holding Grace, and (unsuccessfully) tries to save Grace before she gets blown up.
- Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: While using stealth is encouraged, sometimes doing something risky like bumping a guard would lead to a shootout.
- Optional Stealth: The game prompt does encourage you to use sneak attacks so that you don't have to worry about getting involved in a shootout. You also have the option of sneaking past them. An achievement/trophy will be unlocked if you sneak pass the enemies at one point without firing your weapon or letting the enemy spot you.
- Take Cover!: Cole can take cover behind walls and other hard structures during a gunfight. He can use the CG to make shots from cover.
- Tap on the Head: Averted. Stealth takedowns (which generally involve chokeholds and the like) are still counted as kills by the game's Karma Meter. If you want the good ending, you'd better be good at completely ghosting through stealth games.
- Videogame Caring Potential: When Cole leaves his cell at the asylum, you come across a "patient" who wants to escape with his Pandora headset on. You can help him do so...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: But when you do so, you will need to shoot him since he'll kill you if you don't. Some of other "patients" you encounter as you investigate the asylum will charge at you, forcing you to kill them.
- Villain Protagonist: Cole Black was the mastermind behind the kidnapping in the first place, having planned it out with Rose, Jasper, and Roger Howard. He never finds this out, but Red does, and deals with him accordingly.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Deliberately making stupid decisions, like fooling around with the asylum's circuit box, really annoys Red. Choosing to shoot patients instead of finding a peaceful solution around them also generates a fair amount of snark.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Ramsey is a workaholic who is obsessed with the Pandora, and struggles to balance his work and family, something that Grace deeply resents him for.
- Would Hit a Girl:
- The armed gunmen strapped an IED onto Grace's body, although this seems to be for dramatic purposes only as they're as shocked as anyone else when the bomb actually activates. However, at the end of the game it turns out she survived the explosion, albeit losing the use of her legs.
- Cole claims to have murdered Rose Atkins by pushing her out the window. This is probably a subconscious attempt to deceive Red or himself—in reality, he doesn't lay a finger on her, since they're co-conspirators.
- You Bastard!: Play the game like a standard first-person shooter and the game will rather
Anviliciously call you a complete psychopath. This really isn't helped by the fact that the stealth gameplay the game's plot wants you to use instead is incredibly simplistic, hard, and janky.
