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Imagine for a second if the Mad Max universe and Battlefield had a baby. Turn that into an online multiplayer game with objective based missions with a big emphasis on vehicle combat in wide open spaces in a post-apocalyptic setting. That image is basically Ravaged in a nutshell. The guys at the newly formed 2 Dawn Games have some decent experience beneath their belts with the likes of Battlefield, Frontlines: Fuel of War and Desert Combat. With Ravaged, they’ve come to take on the genre with their own flavor.
Ravaged is an online-only first person shooter that pits players against players in team-based objective missions. As I stated above, there is a large emphasis on vehicles for both getting around the maps and combat. The game really feels like a Battlefield title once you start looking at the different modes and how the game plays out.
There are multiple modes to play: Thrust plays like a capture point mission. In a linear sense, the team tries to capture points that move them closer to the action. Once a point is captured, the enemy team can no longer spawn there. Once a team has no spawn points left, killing the remaining players wins the match.
You like my wheels?
Capture the Resource is a capture the flag style mode where you must go into the enemy base, steal gasoline from their supplies and return the fuel to your base. You can also capture smaller bases for quick spawning points around the map, and there is a variant of this mode that has one resource in the middle of the map, two teams trying to grab it and take it back to their base. Chaos ensues.
There are five classes to choose from on each team. Each feels like a mirror of a role on the other team. They are what you would expect from a FPS game: the sniper, the explosions expert, the assault class, etc. They each have multiple weapons at their disposal that fit well within their class. If you do not like the class you have been using, you can switch it up at anytime during respawn.
There are a multitude of vehicles in the game that include ATVs, giant buggies with mini-guns strapped to them and small helicopters that seem more like a death trap for the pilot than the people he’s attacking. These are essential for getting around the map and stopping the enemy forces. I did find that maneuvering around in the vehicles got a little cumbersome. I confirmed it wasn’t just me when I saw that my teammates were running into obvious objects and walls while I was riding with them.
The shooting feels fine and works the way you would expect, and the guns feel very balanced and offer up whatever you want when choosing a class. Even with dedicated servers, you are going to run into some lag when other players’ ping levels are not satisfactory, but for the most part, it runs smoothly.
Yeah, we got tanks too.
Graphically, it’s fair, but nothing really to write home about. The draw distance is nice and allows you to see where you need to be heading. The character models are rather mundane, and I had a difficult time telling who my teammates from my enemies for a while. The game does have a few glitches here and there. These include clunky animations and a few random occurrences where things just didn’t make sense. There were a few times it took me out of the experience, but never broke the game for me. 2 Dawn has been on top of getting some things fixed, and their support has been rather impressive.
The biggest let down for me is the exclusion of a single player mode, more specifically, a training mode of some sorts. You only have the option of jumping right into a multiplayer game and getting your face stomped in by players while you figure out the controls. This is also a worrisome feature because as many people know, online-only games are only as good as the community that plays them. As of this review, I have very little trouble finding a game with a good amount of people playing, but that is during peak hours. After hours or during the day, you may not be so lucky, and when it gets to be 2 months down the line after release, will there be anyone playing? Only time will tell.
After a few matches online I was able to get the controls down, figure out how to take on each game mode, and have some pretty good fun. For fans of Battlefield or other big scale battle games, you can get a good time out of Ravaged for 25 bucks. It’s a decent price for a game that can offer you a good substitution for Battlefield 3. It won’t knock your socks off, but if you’re looking for some old-school shooter action with some vehicle combat, Ravaged is not a bad deal. There are a few hitches here and there, but there’s also a good amount of fun to be had.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
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