Mercury Steam is one of the most famous Spanish studios, founded in 2002 by the members of Rebel Act Studios, creators of Blade: The Edge of Darkness , a third-person action with a medieval setting and which today is considered a title of worship. Its mo
st recent release has been Metroid: Samus Returns , very celebrated by the followers and nostalgic of the saga. In addition, the saga of the most beloved bounty hunter has not been the only one rescued by the veteran studio, as the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow are also his work. In their career they have other titles such as Scrapland , a science fiction adventu
re located in a city inhabited by robots; Zombies, a title for mobiles in which to eliminate hordes of zombies and with multiplayer mode by Blutetooth; and Clive Barker’s Jericho , a first person horror shooter whose script was played by the well-known writer.
A shooter with the possibility of four against one
On September 22 comes Raiders of the Broken Planet for PlayStation 4 , Xbox One , Steamand Windows 10 , a multiplayer s hooter in the third person with an aggressive and reckless aesthetic , set in the remote Planet Roto, wh
ere the greatest wealth is the Aleph , a powerful source of energy whose control is disputed by different factions in a war in which good and evil are diluted in a wide range of grays. We will adopt the role of the Raiders , some space
outlaws, coming from different from the aforementioned factions and with some inspiration in The Magnificent Seven, united against a common invader. Mercury Steam proposes a title in which the development of an elaborate story and dynamic action sequences are balanced. For this, the campaigns, although not consistent in the same timeli
ne -motivo by which since Mercury Steam are not comfortable with the label of “episodic adventure” – follow a plot that we know details not only
during the cinematic, but also through the development of the missions As an extra, in the initial menu we have a section in which we can explore the background through brief, but multiple, lore entries on the same Broken Planet, its crisis by the Aleph and their characters.
The game is divided into campaigns, as we mentioned in the previous paragraph, which will be released periodically and from which we already have the Prologue available , for free, and Alien Mythos , for € 9.99. We have three game modes to enjoy them: solo, cooperative multiplayer and antagonist ; and throughout their missions, we must plan the best strategy to achieve an objective that we can not divert attention from, so that we should not only focus on kill for killing, as this could lead to losing the game.
In solitary mode , we can choose between four levels of difficulty – easy, normal, difficult and very difficult – and a character -with their respective talents, advantages and defects- among a cast that will be completed as we successfully complete missions. with a development tree in which we can invest skill points or virtual money to acquire new talents and weapons, represented in deck cards. After this, we will be alone before the danger, since we will not have any ally to face the hordes of characters. This way of game is a little unbalanced with respect to the cooperative, since at all times it is missing some colleagues with whom to carry out a team tactic.
In cooperative mode , four players will create a team. Each one will choose a character and together they will have to overcome the different missions together and share in an intelligent way the tasks to be done. In contrast, we have the antagonist mode , in which a player infiltrates a game and, supervised by a perverse god who is a ward
, must do everything possible to sabotage the mission of others , for which it will have an army of henchmen controlled by the artificial intelligence of the game. These two modes, combined, are the most fun and challenging, since they encourage teamwork and competitiveness, in addition to presenting a much more reasonable challenge and mo
re dynamic games than in the solo mode. The only aspects that can be improved are the waiting times during matchmaking , which we assume will be shorter as the number of users grows; and the decompensation in case of disconnection of any
of the players, with which his character remains motionless without possibility of relief.
More organic mechanics and greater relevance of the melee
Another incentive of Raiders of the Broken Planet are the game mechanics, which provide a more organic experience and that we tested in Xbox One and PS4 for the present analysis. First, the navigation between coverages is much simpler with respect to other shooters . To cover us, we must only approach the desired coverage, without pre
ssing additional buttons, and to move to another coverage, we just have to focus the camera on it and move. We point and shoot with the tr
iggers and launch the special ability with RB (XBO) and R1 (PS4). Between both consoles we have found a subtle difference, and that is that in the Microsoft controls are somewhat more sensitive than in the Sony.
Unlike other shooters , in Raiders of the Broken Planet, shootings and close combat take on the same importance: the ammunition is finite, and to get new we must defeat enemies with punches and / or kicks. In addition, in some missions we
must defeat opponents in the same way to get their Aleph, and at a strategic level we must bear in mind that it is more efficient to dispense with weapons when the distance is short,since a kick does not need recharging.
The enemies will not be anonymous assassins, but each one will have a name and surname . The game will remind us if one of them has ki
lled us more than once and, on the other hand, if we beat a rival that has previously eliminated us, the game will signal that we have avenged ou
rselves. In a panel we will see the damage received in the form of classification according to the enemies that have caused the most damage to us. This detail will encourage desires to compensate us with the henchman who has killed us the most times.
