Developer: MercurySteam
Publisher: MercurySteam
Release date: September 22, 2017 (Prologue and Alien Myths pack, three more packs to be released into 2018)
Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One (reviewed)
Multiplayer shooters are a dime a dozen on consoles, and those that mix in cooperative missions are also fairly well represented. The key then becomes how to set your game apart. Destiny accomplishes this by giving you a nice sized campaign that can be played solo or with others, with a separate PvP arena. Evolve tried to change things up by pitting four players as hunters against one, who plays a large monster. The Dark Souls games allow players to join in on quests through a summons, though it also allows players to invade another game as malevolent entities. Developer MercurySteam has decided to join the mix with their own take on the genre. Raiders of the Broken Planet has a decent if not wholly original concept, allowing four players to join in on a mission in a story line involving the titular Broken Planet and the Raiders who are trying to remove humans from the world. Missions can also be attempted solo, which then allows you to pick the difficulty level. Every so often, one player can join in as an Antagonist, making the game a 4v1vE. It’s an interesting idea.
Too bad the execution stumbles in trying to carry it out.
Only the Prologue (which contains two missions) and the Alien Myths pack (which contains four missions) is currently available (the Prologue is free, but the Alien Myths pack will set you back $9.99 USD). Three more campaign packs- Wardog Fury, Hades Betrayal, and Council Apocalypse- are slated to be released between now and early 2018. The story is fairly thin. The Broken Planet’s core contains a substance called Aleph, which is desired by various forces. A group of individuals called the Raiders is trying to prevent these outside forces from getting the Aleph, and to aid the planet’s Protectors, an ancient race with incredible powers. The Raiders are aided and ferried to missions by a shuttle pilot named Cortez. The Raiders’ goal is simple- uncover the ability to send humans back to their own world. Since the full game isn’t available, what we get of the story is incomplete and doesn’t quite come together. It may once all the packs are released, but for now it’s a bit underwhelming.
The Raiders themselves aren’t wholly original either, each feeling like a stereotypical copy of a character from a better game. Harec is your sniper. Shae uses a plasma rifle. Lycus has a powerful pistol. Alicia uses a shotgun. Hans has an automatic rifle. And Konstantin is the group’s tank, wielding a chain gun. Each character can also engage in melee combat, and can gain an extra attack if they surprise an enemy stealthily. Each character also has their own power (Alicia can launch herself into the air for an aerial attack, Lycus can produce a shield, and so on) activated by the right shoulder button. Ammunition can only be resupplied through melee combat, and at times you’ll need to gather Aleph for specific tasks, which can only be gained through melee combat with certain enemies. Their personalities are brought across through some poorly written dialogue. Alicia’s is among the worse, which trots out multiple Australian stereotypical phrases, like calling someone a “son of a dingo” and referring to a woman as a “Sheila”. Harec is your British guy, Konstantin your Russian, Lycus as a leering American. No of which makes sense, when they all want to send humans back, even though they’re humans themselves.
At least each character lends him/herself to different styles of gameplay. Harec gets only a single shot before reloading, but is useful if you can find a camping point to strike targets from afar. Konstantin moves slow, but once his chain gun gets going, he can pack a powerful punch with superior firepower. Shae moves quickly for melee combat, but her plasma rifle is weak and at times needs time to recharge. Only Konstantin can deliver any type of lengthy barrage, with the others limited in their attacks before the need to reload. Range can make a big difference as well. Alicia’s shotgun is great up close, but useless when too far away. Harec’s sniper rifle is great from a distance, but looking through a scope at close enemies make sit awkward to use. Konstantin’s chain gun takes time to spool up, sometimes at cost. There are some simple gestures/commands you can issue from the directional pad to try and get your group to work together, but the way enemies come at you from all sides it becomes difficult to form any real strategy. You heal by hiding and staying still, so all you can do for a teammate is stand guard while their health bar refills. The stress feature (where enemies can spot you through cover if your stress level rises too high) doesn’t feature in much when playing co-op. Playing solo it can figure in, but for most missions it just doesn’t feel like it makes much difference. Even on Easy while playing solo you can be overwhelmed by enemies, forcing you to stay on the move. Which raises your stress level. Which makes you visible. Which makes it a nice idea, but one that ultimately doesn’t matter much.
The missions have some variety, with all but the tutorial have two parts to them. A couple of missions are rescue types, you have an escort mission, and one with back to back bosses. Bosses all have four lifebars to get through, plus dealing with the hordes of minions trying to kill you. Also, avoiding falling from heights. If an Antagonist is present, you then have them to worry about as well. You’ll get so many respawns, until the shuttle runs out of Aleph. Then Cortez will leave, putting you in a timed survival mode, where death means “Mission Failed”. Each time Cortez needs to go on an Aleph run, the length of time you need to survive without dying gets longer. Playing solo is real tricky when this happens, and even co-op the tension can be quite high if only one member of the party is alive. You can only sit and hope they make it as the seconds tick down, especially when you’re getting close to a mission’s end. The game doesn’t play fair, and will often resort to cheap tricks to artificially increase the difficulty. Hazards and enemies that can one-shot you can strike without warning, especially if you’re locked into a shooting animation. If you’re lucky, you can limp across the red colored screen to a safe place to recuperate. Too often an enemy takes a cheap shot, resulting in your demise. The game seems to make things hard just for the sake of making it hard. I never mind a challenge, but I do demand that it be fair. The fourth mission in the Alien Myths pack is especially bad in this regard, as every time, either solo or co-op, when the boss’s health was on its last bar, you’d get swarmed from off screen by enemies you cannot fight off. Once they’re close, they have you. Mission Failed, and frustration achieved, and sometimes, controller shoved away in irritation.
It doesn’t help either that matchmaking is sporadic at best. Often it took me up to 10 minutes to get into a match, and then I had to hope the other players responded in time. If they didn’t, you needed to wait all over again. This is a game the needs to have a good sized and regular player base, especially since upgrading characters and weapons requires not only a lot of gold, but it requires you to have performed a required number of tasks, like earning so many points as an Antagonist. It feels like a forced way to increase the game’s longevity and replayability. Choosing to go solo requires a high level of skill, even on Easy. This is definitely not a game for those who play their shooters more casually. While I can understand challenging players, when you have an easy mode, it should be Easy. Constantly respawning enemies doesn’t help matters at all. I’m not saying things should be a cakewalk. But they do need to be fair. And this game isn’t.
Raiders of the Broken Planet tries to set itself apart, but by borrowing different things from different sources, it’s not as unique as it wants to be. Stereotypical characters spouting poorly written dialogue doesn’t aid its cause, but at least all of the currently available characters play differently and require different strategies. The game’s strongest suit is its visuals. The cut scenes are well done (even if you can’t always skip them, even by pressing the skip button), though the camera work (which is like Tony Scott on crack, with its constant camera in motion, zooming in and out) can make one dizzy. The gunplay is decent but a far cry from a Destiny or a Call of Duty title. This game does have potential, but it remains to be seen if players will want to make the investment in future packs (or pay the 40 bucks to get the Founder’s Pack, which gives you access to all four campaigns). The Prologue is free, but doesn’t really offer enough of a hook to get players to invest in the game. Sporadic matchmaking really hurts the game, as most won’t wait that long to get into a match. The potential is there, and it has a decent concept. But its execution stumbles in this debut, making this hard to recommend. Time will tell if the game will grow into the title it wants to be. It just has to hope gamers will give it that chance.
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