Relooted Review – Cultural Heist Of A Lifetime

Relooted is a puzzle runner game developed and published by Nyamakop. You are Nomali, a parkour expert who is roped into stealing some of Africa’s most prized cultural artifacts. Plan your heists by looking at every inch of the target location, learning where your targets are. Move objects around and prepare your path to minimize problems. Carry out the actual theft quickly, evading security as fast as possible. If all goes to plan, you ensure these artifacts go to a proper home instead of being hidden from the world.

Stealing African artifacts from private collections, museums, and bank vaults is an intriguing premise to follow. Reclaiming artifacts of great cultural, historical, and spiritual significance is no small task and the story emphasizes this. You aren’t stealing to redistribute wealth or take revenge. Instead, you are ensuring that African culture doesn’t get hidden away and can proudly stand in a museum. The story focuses on how these artifacts are hidden because people don’t want to return them. Instead, they use loopholes to keep important parts of Africa’s culture hidden away or only available for private viewing. Having your culture hidden away is a poignant thought, especially when you know there’s great significance that’s not being shown. It highlights the task in your head and invests you in the mission, motivating you to find every artifact.

Relooted does a great job of teaching you the history and/or cultural significance of each artifact; every artifact exists in real life and you get a quick summary of the story behind each one. It’s enough to make you curious if you want to learn more, but short enough that you aren’t distracted from the heist. The significance behind each artifact helps to reinforce the gravitas of your mission. You aren’t taking statuettes or weapons for safekeeping. It’s a piece of Africa’s culture that would be hidden from the world without your efforts.

This is what motivates everyone on Nomali’s team in some way. While they aren’t all initially onboard with the idea of stealing artifacts, reclaiming their culture usually convinces them. But as you carry out more heists, characters begin to solidify their motivations. Learning about your team through cutscenes and casual chats fleshes them out and helps you connect with them. Their stories take time to develop but eventually you see the team as comrades-in-arms.

Everyone must work together for a heist to succeed. You must view a location, identify your target locations, and position your team members. It’s essentially a puzzle, creating the circumstances for your success and experimenting with solutions. As your team grows, you gain new capabilities that make your heist easier. However, your actions don’t go unnoticed and security tightens at future locations.

Preparing for a heist is a complex activity that immerses you in the process. Deciding how you infiltrate, keep doors open, and bypass guards isn’t easy. Everything must be perfect as there is almost no time to revise your plans when the heist starts. There are also side objectives like retrieving or scanning other artifacts that you must factor in. It captures the difficulty of an actual heist, ensuring that no stone is left unturned to avoid capture.

The downside is that heists become increasingly complex to test your skills. While you do get new abilities to help you overcome obstacles, it’s a lot of thinking and planning. Increasing the amount of mental work you do when the actual heist is short is exhausting at times. The payoff can also feel unbalanced when the heist rarely takes more than a minute. For those who aren’t into solving continuous complex puzzles, pacing yourself is highly recommended.

Even when you set everything up properly, it’s nothing compared to the rush of the actual heist attempt. The moment Nomali triggers an alarm is when the pressure begins. Doors close, a time limit starts ticking, and a drone begins hunting you down. Nomali must use her parkour skills to gain speed boosts as she passes over obstacles. Your reaction times must be quick, coordinating with teammates and speeding out of the location.

It’s a high-stakes activity that is fun, frustrating, and rewarding. Seeing your plans work out with Nomali smoothly executing the heist is a rewarding feeling. If something goes wrong, you realize it immediately and must restart to fix it. But seeing your plans come together makes you feel confident. It helps that even if you do fail, it’s not hard to fix mistakes and ensure everything comes together.

However, the frame rate can drop during intense chases and certain cutscenes. Especially when areas have lots of action going on, your heist can sometimes move in slow motion. It takes the thrill away because you aren’t speeding through hallways like you anticipated. Some cutscenes also lose their gravitas when the scenes move faster than the voice acting. This doesn’t happen too often, but you will notice the impact on the experience at times.

Planning a heist is hard work but its thoroughness immerses you in the task, making you feel like a professional thief. Utilizing every tool in your arsenal along with Nomali’s parkour skills emphasizes the high-stakes and the thrill. However, the graphics performance occasionally slows down gameplay and cutscenes. Your heist capabilities are also limited in the beginning and it takes time to truly develop. While Relooted isn’t the easiest game to master but nothing else comes close to capturing the spirit of a cultural heist.