Satan’s Little Piss-Pot
System’s: PC, Xbox 360 (Xbox 360 Version Reviewed).
Publisher – Southpeak
Developer – Atomic Motion
Genre – FPS/RTS
Pros: *Smooth and easy transition between RTS and FPS modes.
Cons: *Awful, hideous voice acting. *A confusing and nonsense story. *Both the RTS and FPS sides of the game are equally bad. *Ugly graphics. *Broken control scheme. *Only 3 hours long, with a co-op mode no one will ever touch. *Terrible AI for both FPS and RTS modes.
That mythical hybrid of FPS and RTS is one we gamers have dreamed of for many years. With the depth and strategy of Starcraft and Company of Heroes fused with the high-octane action of Call of Duty and Halo, it seems like an almost impossible task to create such a game that combines these two genres flawlessly. Atomic Motion and Southpeak hope to fulfil that dream with Raven Squad, a FPS/RTS hybrid.
But let me just get this out-of-the-way now so I don’t have to disappoint you later. This game sucks.
Hard.
In Raven Squad you play as (Surprise!) Raven squad, a mercenary team going out on one last mission before they hit the slots at Las Vegas. Unfortunately their plane gets shot down over a third-world country and now they’re out for revenge, and a way out of the mess they’ve crashed in.
If the story doesn’t already sound weak, don’t worry it gets worse. To enhance this games terrible story it also adds on the worst voice work I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s so completely life-wrecking that I almost stopped playing the game solely on the fact that the voice overs were so terrible.
But of course that wasn’t all that nearly stopped me from beating the game.
The game is fond of mention that it is a FPS/RTS hybrid, unfortunately both of these modes are broken and terrible. The FPS mode showcases just how ugly the graphics are, especially the character models and animations. Enemy AI is poor and dull, they’ll just stand around while your shooting at them. Also the control scheme is broken and makes no sense. I thought we’ve figured out FPS controls by now, stop changing it!
Though, if you get tired of FPS mode you can just switch to the equally bad RTS mode at the press of a button. This is probably Raven Squad’s greatest achievement, making it quick, easy, and smooth to switch between the two different modes.
The primary issue in the RTS mode is the terrible unit AI, sometimes they’ll just stand around when you’re telling them to do something, or they move in the opposite direction completely. Or if you order them to shoot something, instead of shooting at it from where they are, the have to run up to it and get killed.
Another issue is just how shallow the RTS mode is, you only control two squads throughout the entire game, and can’t really do anything interesting with them. There’s no ecnomic or building part to the RTS, you’re just ordering dudes around and making them shoot things badly.
But make no mistake, don’t let me make it sound like it was some amazing test of will that kept playing through Raven Squad, the game is really short at around 3 hours. There is a co-op mode for people to play, but I don’t know why you would subject anyone else to the torture of playing this game.
Raven Squad is ultimately a victim of reality, just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean everything will just flow together to make a good game. It takes dedication, follow-through, and hard work to turn a good idea into a good game. And Raven Squad is an example of a good idea with lazy execution.
Raven Squad is not the FPS/RTS hybrid game we’ve been waiting for, it may switch between the two modes nicely but it suffers from many issues including poor story, terrible voice acting, broken controls, dumb AI, crappy graphics, and a short length. Maybe one day we’ll get a developer who’ll give the FPS/RTS hybrid idea the respect it deserves, but until then Raven Squad ain’t going to make it to Vegas.
Score: 2 – Terrible (Borderline unplayable, filled with lazy issues that it doesn’t even try to hide. There may be some interesting concepts here but it isn’t worth losing your sanity to experience. You’ve been warned.)