There will come a point in time where the gigantic, super-hot ball of gas and flame in the sky that we all depend on will run through its lifespanand kill off all life on Earth. While current science dictates that the sun won’t die out for another few billion years, one can’t help but wonder what would happen if this event came much sooner and how we would be forced to react. Taking place in 2016, Exodus from the Earth is a “Cyberpunk FPS” that explores the scenario that humanity has roughly 20 years to clear away from Earth before the sun goes kaplooie, and has invested great power in a company known as the “A.X. Corporation” to find a solution to this problem.

In the year the game takes place, two possible solutions have been found. The first is to use a controversial experimental drug developed by A.X. that could allow humans to survive on any planet, but the long-term side effects of this drug are unknown, and being forced to adapt to a completely different and hostile environment would be much worse than having another Earth-like planet to live on. Fortunately, among the group of astronauts sent out to explore the cosmos and try to find a decent planet, a returning explorer allegedly found a so-called “Second Earth” – a planet ideal for humanity to adopt as a new home.

Upon returning home however, the astronaut mysteriously disappears. The A.X. Corporation is suspected to be at fault due to their vested financial interest in their “miracle drug” option, but the government cannot act due to the crisis at hand, and the amount of power they’ve already given to the corporation. To resolve the problem, a special operation is commissioned to infiltrate A.X., find the missing astronaut, and verify if this “Second Earth” truly does exist. Naturally you, as the player, are at the helm of this operation.

Playing through the four-level demo I was provided, I quickly got a feel for what the game’s focus is. While the phrase “Cyberpunk FPS” immediately brings memories of classics like Deus Ex to mind, Exodus has taken a simplified approach and has put most of its stock into run-and-gun action, rather than a background stat system or things like hacking mini-games. But don’t take that to mean the game is all flash and no fluff; each level is interspersed with little pieces of backstory in the form of readable PDAs left lying around, a number of engine-rendered cutscenes, and numerous NPC dialogue fragments. In addition, certain computer terminals can be interacted with, complete with a nifty virtual mouse cursor in a style reminiscent to Doom 3 – a concept I really hope the final games takes far, as a lot of fun could be had fiddling with the various computer terminals. All of these things help fit the game into a decidedly “Cyberpunk” theme and a bleak, high-tech corporate environment.

The demo showed me some fast and furious action, although interestingly I found I couldn’t really take much damage at all before being killed. One merit to this is how it forces careful tactical thinking to make full use of the available environment, but players may also find this frustrating given the annoying accuracy the AI enemies seem to have. On more than one occasion, I died instantly when I was at low health simply because I stepped around a corner too quickly and ended up getting filled with bullets in the half-second I had to react. This is something that I definitely hope is tweaked a bit; challenge should be more about finding creative ways to keep the player thinking and on the move, rather than forcing him against the raw number-crunching might of an aim-bot.