Whether you like Monaco or not comes down to two things. Firstly, whether you have people to play with. Secondly, whether you think the art style looks intriguing and cool, or whether you saw it and couldn't understand a damn thing you were looking at, and didn't much care to find out.
The basics, first of all. Monaco is a game about heists for one to four players. It's played from a top-down perspective, and features a rather nice art style. In each of its many scenarios you're given a multi-floor robbery to carry out, in various locations such as banks and casinos. The objective on each level is to find a certain number of key objects and then escape. Along the way you'll also be collecting coins on the level, and there's a certain completionist satisfaction gained from scouring the entire level for every last coin.
It's a system-driven game at its core. The story is loose, difficult to follow and generally irrelevant. It's all told through small text-only dialogues between missions, and somehow manages to be completely impossible to track despite the relatively small cast of characters. Still, the important part of the game is how it plays in the missions, and thankfully this is much better, although it isn't much easier to follow what's happening. The main problem is that the art style, whilst beautiful, isn't terribly clean. Any areas of the level you don't have vision to are greyed-out in a blueprint style, whereas anything you can see is fully coloured and detailed. Unfortunately due to the art direction and design of the characters and scenery, it's often pretty close to impossible to tell what's actually going on at any given time. When several people are playing at once it becomes even more difficult.
Two things saves it. The first is that it allows for mistakes to be made without it being curtains for your team, and the second is that it consistently remains fun. The cast of characters, including such tropes as The Redhead, The Cleaner and The Hacker, all have different abilities to aid in the heist. The Lookout reveals all the enemies on the map whilst standing still or crouching, where The Gentleman has a rechargeable disguise, allowing him to walk around without arousing suspicion. What all of the characters allow for is a number of different approaches to the stealth routes through each level. The Lockpick lets you get through locked doors quickly, and as such lends himself to sneaking around through back doors. On the other hand The Mole allows you to smash through walls, opening up routes which allow you to avoid guards. When it all inevitably goes wrong, there are various rechargeable items scattered around the levels, such as shotguns and bombs, which can let you get out of sticky situations.
The diversity of the characters sometimes does mean that several will end up being essentially useless on some missions, but the variety means that everyone should find at least one character they enjoy playing as. Again though, the different characters don't look different enough to really be able to tell what's happening at a glance. In multiplayer it's especially a problem, as you'll often find yourselves in a hectic situation, completely unable to tell what's happening or where you are. Monaco's also a game that doesn't really lend itself to teamwork in any meaningful way. Because it's so fast and frantic, and the skills are so diverse, what usually ends up happening is a bunch of people making their own way around a level, occasionally lending one another a hand or reviving someone who got caught in a bad spot.
It's important to play Monaco with friends. Ultimately it isn't a terribly good singleplayer game. There's too much going on and there isn't enough control for it to be satisfying to play on your own. On the other hand, with three friends you're looking at an exciting, if chaotic, time which can be very enjoyable.
Monaco is the first game developed by Pocketwatch games and is currently available either from the website or from Steam.
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