Review for Raiders of the Broken Planet. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 22/09/2017
Until recently, the name of MercurySteam did not bode well for video game enthusiasts. The controversial second chapter of the ill-fated Castlevania: Lord of Shadows series has in fact disappointed many users, so much so that they lose much of the trust that the Spanish studio had painstakingly earned with the first iteration. MercurySteam is evil then?
Absolutely not: the partial success of Lord of Shadows 2 is in fact due to the tumultuous direction of the project by Konami, which in 2014 was in the midst of a radical internal restructuring that led to the disastrous divorce with the Kojima Productions studio.
In such a climate, it is therefore not surprising that such a complex project has suffered repercussions, so much so that just recently we had the confirmation that no, MercurySteam is not evil and indeed, if well directed, it is able to show all its hidden potential. We are referring to Metroid: Samus Returns, a project that is anything but devoid of pitfalls but which they were able to masterfully manage thanks also to the help of the maternal Nintendo.
Castlevania and Metroid are however intellectual properties with a well-defined identity: What would happen if MercurySteam went on its own and developed a title that is 100% its own thing? The answer is very simple and responds to the name of Raiders of the Broken Planet, first episode of a very particular action in which the development team has chosen to adopt an asymmetrical competitive multiplayer for the online component.
A new hole in the water like in the case of Evolve? Absolutely not, and now we will explain why!
First of all, the sales model chosen by MercurySteam is extremely user friendly: the prologue is free to allow everyone to fully understand the identity of the title, after which the price of each campaign or episode will be only 9.99 € for about 6 hours of content. Content that, we would like to point out, can be played both alone and in the company of other users. Finally, the accessory elements, such as new characters, weapons and skins, can be purchased both with real money and through the internal currency of the game, thus avoiding the tedious imbalances between "paying" and "non-paying" players typical of other online multiplayer experiences.
Each campaign will then bring with it new unlockable characters through the completion of missions, expanding the roster available and thus making it suitable for every need.
With any doubts about the title acquisition formula resolved, it's time to move on to raw gameplay. You know Left 4 Dead? Here, this game is reminiscent of Valve's multiplayer masterpiece in several moments but with the necessary differences. Raiders of the Broken Planet consists of medium-sized levels designed to be faced in four players, are populated by hordes of enemies of various types and each of them requires different objectives to be completed to achieve victory. To this basic structure are then added other components including the four different classes into which the characters are divided, the stealth dynamics, the hand-to-hand combat system and finally the firearms.
The classes of the various characters are the classic ones, to which every online shooter has by now accustomed us for years, even if each character belonging to one or the other category has peculiar characteristics and abilities that differentiate him from the others. In addition to this it will be possible to further customize your fighter by choosing, from a fair range, various secondary attributes that will significantly change some of the aspects. Raiders of the Broken Planet: however it is not really an online shooter: MercurySteam has in fact contaminated the gameplay with elements from other genres that are also very different from each other, producing a result that we could actually define as unique.
What is it about? Well it's very simple: the direct and brutal approach to enemies is not the only way in which it will be possible to bring home the leather, thus opening the doors to a great variety of situations. The title presents simple but functional stealth dynamics, particularly useful if you choose characters from the sniper class, while in the event that the ammunition runs out it will always be possible to recover them thanks to an intriguing hand-to-hand combat system. Dodging, attack and catch are the three actions available to the player, which therefore constitute a rock / paper / scissor system that requires a minimum of effort to be effectively mastered.
The maximum potential of Raiders of the Broken Planet: Alien Myths is reached when four players from around the world participate in a match: it is evident in fact how level design, missions and boss fights are specially designed to be faced by several people. MercurySteam still wanted to include the possibility of undertaking the missions entirely alone, however, it is in the collaboration that the maximum fun is hidden also because, alone, everything almost takes on the appearance of enormous training sessions. This would clearly not be possible without an adequate netcode at the base of the entire online infrastructure, a netcode which during our tests proved to be reliable even in the most complex situations.
Of the whole package, however, perhaps the least convincing thing is the asymmetrical competitive multiplayer as too much power is given to the villain played by the fifth man. In fact, we found that many of the matches played through this mode were irretrievably lost by the "good guys", so we hope for a future patch able to remedy this age-old problem.
The PC edition, the one we tested, is then to be commended for the optimization of the graphics engine, which manages to be light and extremely scalable even on configurations that are no longer current. If, on the other hand, you decide to push your hardware to the maximum, the show offered by Raiders of the Broken Planet is one of those very satisfying and although it does not scream a miracle, it still manages to prove itself captivating and always adequate. Part of the credit, however, is also to be attributed to the excellent artistic direction, a cross between Overwatch, Borderlands and a western film, which thanks to bright colors, over-the-top characters and absurd alien settings manages to create its own clearly recognizable identity. at glance.
There were several doubts about MercurySteam's solo debut yet Raiders of the Broken Planet: Alien Myths has unraveled every possible doubt about the actual ability of this development team. The first of the four planned campaigns, Alien Myths, is a great start to what could soon turn into a great online co-op shooter. Of course, it needs to be further improved from numerous points of view, first of all the balancing of the asymmetrical competitive mode, but many of the potential of this production have already emerged from now on.
► Raiders of the Broken Planet is an Adventure-Action-indie type game developed and published by MercurySteam for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 22/09/2017
