"If with a friend got out of the way, the road is more fun" - these words of Mikhail Tanich are quite suitable for video games too: for good reason projects of various genres oriented to cooperative passage remain invariably popular and in demand since the first consoles appeared with two gamepads.
Raiders of the Broken Planet - a cooperative thriller, designed to co-pass a team of four people. And still there is a PvP mode, a distribution model by selling episodes-campaigns, sets of "skins" for characters and a very interesting design and setting. Enough to "shoot"?
Everything in this world revolves around a rare substance, a source of enigmatic energy that allows not only to travel between the stars, but also empowers those who take it, with increased physical and mental capabilities. The substance is found only on one planet in the entire known universe, and its extraction is difficult and far from safe. No, no, this is not a retelling of Frank Herbert 's "Dune" about spice - it's a tie of the rather complicated plot of RotBP .
Aleph, the most energy-rich substance, was available only on one planet, located a quarter of a hundred light-years from Earth. Local residents (similar to us, but still different from ordinary people) extracted Aleph from the earth's interior, over the years, increasing and increasing the rate of extraction, which eventually led to a large-scale catastrophe, which killed many of the inhabitants of the planet, and she herself was half destroyed. Realizing what they did, the former insatiable miners settled down and stopped working on the remaining deposits, sending all the forces (and the remains of Aleph) to quiet and peaceful self-development. A few opponents of such a course of events were expelled from the planet.
The outcasts, however, did not grieve for long and engaged in their dark affairs, as a result of which, according to the authors of the plot, our beloved humanity appeared on the planet Earth. Many years later, it was people who, having learned about the power that Aleph could give, decided to capture the Destroyed Planet. And our task is to confront them in the role of mercenaries.
In fact, the plot, or rather, the world and the setting of RotBP , is one of the strongest aspects of the game. Before us are not already become a standard for fiction "good" earthlings and "bad" aliens and not even poor aliens and evil people. Here everything is more confusing - there are four factions here, each with its own history and with its characters.
The original graphic style all this eccentricity just once again emphasizes. Characters are beautifully revealed even in the local small dialogues, and each of them is a very bright personality. Locations also turned out to be quite amusing - the game clearly has something to admire. Well, a special thank you for one of the minor characters - the shuttle pilot, who sums up the results of each mission quite funny and origin
As already mentioned, the Raiders of the Broken Planet is a cooperative thriller. No, you can perform tasks on your own, without connecting to other players, but this is a very boring task, and you can recommend it only in the most exceptional cases (which, incidentally, will not take long to come about - just below). We select an available task and wait, when the server finds three more associates. Sometimes one more person joins this four - this time in the role of a dangerous enemy. When the team is assembled, everyone chooses a mercenary (two or more of the same can not be taken, so you should hurry if you want some particular fighter). A small video explaining who and for what should be killed or saved this time - and forward, to fight for a just cause.
It is necessary to recognize that in missions the developers tried to observe a variety of goals and tasks. No, in all cases, without exception, we have to fight with crowds of enemies who receive constant reinforcements, but for success it is necessary to perform some specific actions - to launch a mechanism, to destroy a certain object, to find and escort to the desired point of an ally ... It is noticeable that many newcomers are forgotten and they are trying to just kill all the opponents, although it is useless - they have an endless respawn.
The fight itself is a typical team shooter with a clear division into roles in the team - a sniper, a "tank", a support fighter, a face-to-face fight fan and so on. Nevertheless, a special variety in these roles is not yet to be expected - available mercenaries at the moment are less than half of the promised sixteen. Each in its own way is unique, each has its own story and character, but also its own style of play.
In addition to shooting often have to use melee techniques. Firstly, sometimes it's just not so easy-there are a lot of opponents, and when they get close, there's simply no time to shoot. Secondly, a victory in hand-to-hand combat gives much-needed ammunition, and if you manage to kill an elite enemy, then Aleph. The latter, in turn, is needed to successfully complete the task (for example, with its help the necessary objects or mechanisms are activated) and gives an additional effect to the skills of the character.
Everyone's skills are unique - Likus puts a power shield directly in front of him, and Harek is able to teleport for a short time to any location in the location to carry death with his sniper rifle from there. Weapons, as well as passive skills, can be "customized" - for this purpose the rewards received (based on the results of each mission) (money and drawings) are used. However, there is still more than a scanty: three available "trunk", a small set of cards for skills, several "skins" for characters - and only.
In addition to the command and single modes, there is a third - the game for the antagonist. All the same, only now a normal player joins the crowd of mindless opponent bots. For the team, the difficulty of the passage increases at times, but a single enemy with the proper skill can get a pretty funny experience - especially if you do not run headlong into death. The most relish is, of course, the sniper Harek: what can be more fun than, choosing a convenient position, send the enemy team to the "respawn" time after time, until they run out of attempts?
It does not matter if you succeeded in winning or had to surrender, in any case, after the round, all participants are awarded points (and sometimes a drawing of weapons is dropped). Then everything goes on rolled-up - you spent your money and start the next task. Repeat until you get bored. Bothers, unfortunately, very quickly.
It seems to be all in place: the original storyline, excellent design, orientation to the cooperative (in good company, as you know, you can sometimes have fun and playing in a frank slag), but popularity and online rates have fluctuated somewhere near the mark with a half-thousand man, so there and remain. And this is with the emphasis on multiplayer and free prologue, I will remind you!
What's the matter? And the thing is completely banal miscalculations of game design. The most important and key is the rejection of procedural content generation. Because of the very small locations and a small set of currently available missions, there is no clear motivation for these tasks to pass over and over again. The model of the distribution of the game, if anyone has forgotten, is by means of separately sold chapters. The first mission, the prologue, is free for all comers, but the following episodes already have to be bought. At the moment, the first campaign - "Alien Myths" is available. You can complete it in a matter of hours. What to do next? Over and over again the same missions, performing exactly the same actions as before, just to accumulate more points and money? It's boring. Despite all its merits,
Oh, yes, there is also an antagonist regime, in which you can really have fun, but he will get tired too quickly - the missions are still the same. In addition, the small popularity of the game affects the duration of the selection of the team: until five people are dialed, it can take up to half an hour - and this is a couple of days after the release! Single Player? A more dull occupation is hard to imagine, to all else, individual missions are very difficult to go by alone - the narrow specialization of the characters makes itself felt.
The situation could be saved by changing course towards procedural generation to create a unique gameplay on each mission, or releasing the whole game, without fragmenting into episodes, or switching to an f2p system - or it's even better to use all these methods at once. Then RotBP would have all the chances to become an excellent example of how to make cooperative shooters. But, as we see, not destiny - apparently, MercurySteam considered a secondary task to work on the basics of gameplay and the variety of content. It's doubly frustrating that the game process itself turned out to be quite fascinating, moderately complex and interesting, but the lack of any kind of diversity leaves no chance for the Raiders of the Broken Planet .
My personal rate would be 7.5 out of 10
