Streets of Rogue is a fast-paced action roleplaying game where your overarching goal is to take down the mayor, and how you do it is completely up to you: clever hacker, charming bartender soldier, thief or assassin. It's all about experimentation and discovery, encouraging you to solve challenges by trying wild ideas, then if you fail playing again with a new character with new abilities and figuring out a different way.

Each time you play you choose a character and gain a unique special ability and big mission, traits, starting items, and you head into the city. You can be a clever hacker tapping into anything electronic and using it to trick your targets, or a charming bartender who can talk your way past any guard, or a soldier decked out with weapons that approaches any situation head on, leaving the subterfuge to the thieves and the assassins.

Play involves working through a series of increasingly difficult floors. Each one gives you missions to complete: getting items from a safe, “neutralizing” a specific character, destroying an object, rescuing someone, or a wide range of other non-specific tasks. These appear on your map, clearly marked, and the rest is up to you.

As you move around and interact you realise the city is always changing because of all the other people living their lives. This creates scenarios and situations you can use to your benefit to complete your missions.

You might come around a corner into the middle of a gang shootout and have a pickpocket decide to try to lighten your load while you watch. Look suspicious in or around a shop and the clerk and their guard might try to send you away with a shotgun, or a bazooka. Pull out your laptop near an ATM or a slot machine and you could have a cop chasing you in no time.

The result is a game where you can progress in so many different ways. It's a masterclass in rewarding outside-the-box thinking. The more you explore, play and create your own epic stories the more you get from the game -- and the more you develop your characters. Along with this, the progression from region to region of the city draws you along to encounter new challenges, opportunities and even playable characters..