QCF: Ravaged

In a world with several team-based shooters made for a PC audience, here comes one more. Ravaged is a first-person shooter that pits two teams against one another for control of territories and fuel. While the core gameplay is solid enough, the lack of any real audience and overall polish on the game may prove to send this one out to the bitter wasteland alone to die a slow death.

Developer 2 Dawn Games successfully funded their game Ravaged earlier in the year through Kickstarter, and promised a fun multiplayer experience with the use of open battlefields and vehicular combat. The game plays and operates like an older Battlefield game, with off road vehicles and aerial machinery adding to the warfare.

Not much is known of the two opposing teams, the Resistance and the Scavengers. Both are fighting on areas of the world overrun with death and destruction on a grand scale, in order to control strategic areas and for control of fuel that is needed to survive.

Why? I honestly have no idea.

That’s sadly one of the many things wrong with this title. It's understand that multiplayer only games normally don't waste much time on exposition. However, even a small intro at the beginning of the game or any text would give some insight into why this world looks like a scene ripped straight out of Mad Max. The characters that you will control fill in the tried and true roles of similar online shooters such as Solider, Sniper and Fat Gross Looking Cannibal with Machinegun. Coordinating as a team and planning an offensive utilizing vehicles and helicopters to rain down terror from above are the keys to winning the match. The only problem with that is finding enough people to form an actual team.

This is not the fault of the developer, but it still needs to be mentioned that there is a very low number of people currently playing this game online. During playtimes, the only server populated was the demo server that 2 Dawn provided for people looking to try the game. The demo does not seem limited at all, which makes me wonder why people would buy the actual game if they can experience almost just as much in the demo of the game. There is no incentive to leveling up or progressing in the game, and there are no unlocks or additional abilities to obtain. At a price point of $24.99, it is quite a larger amount to pay for a game surrounded by other options that are less expensive or free to play. I hope for success for any independent developer but this rational seems like it is doing them no favors.

The gameplay is well designed, and any PC gamer could play through matches with no real difficulty. The vehicles, however, proved to be troublesome. The off road vehicles and ATVs were okay to maneuver, but the camera seemed to be at odds with controlling the movement. I often found myself getting stuck in the middle of a cannon because I could not seem to make the jump necessary to clear the gap. I am sure that most of this was due to my lack of skill in playing, but the camera always seemed to hurt me more than help. Even switching to controller seemed to do very little to assist in my traveling the large open areas. The controls were also very unforgiving when attempting to pilot any helicopters whatsoever, but I know for sure that’s because I suck at it; everyone sucks at flying helicopters in this game.

The world is beautifully realized, with a desert covering what seems to be what is left of New York and a completely different map covered in snow and ice with the remains of capsized cargo ships. The selection of maps, however, seems very small. And with only two game modes supported in online matches, it feels like this is an unfinished game. Again, it is hard to push any bad feelings towards a newer company, but with a market of so many other options it is crucial to somehow set yourself apart from the crowd. Sadly, all Ravaged can do right now is compare and fall short of so many other already released shooters.

Perhaps Ravaged can truly succeed in a saturated field of many online shooters, but with a lackluster list of modes and maps available at launch it seems like many will try for a moment and then move on to something else. If a community can truly form in this game, the play can be fun and very reminiscent of shooters that truly shined in the PC market. I hope that 2 Dawn Games supports this quickly and efficiently, because in its current state it does not hold up.