Raiders of the Broken Planet Beta Impressions

Raiders of the Broken Planet is a cooperative multiplayer third person shooter that aims to provide an online story that players can enjoy at any time. The game is mostly focused at being an online experience, but the option to play by yourself is also present. It's currently in a closed beta to test servers/other aspects and I was given an invite to take a look at things. The first thing to notice is that it carries a cartoon-like look to it while still aiming more towards realism. I liken it somewhat to Borderlands with its attitude, but perhaps a bit more serious in all regards. It's an alright game, I wasn't particularly blown away while playing it though we were given just a small tease for now with more beta weekends to come.

The current build offered a tutorial mode as a sniper and then some extra missions to try. The game can be played by yourself or with some friends and I think the cooperative aspect is the heart of the game. It features fine gunplay with a selection of unique characters to control. Each character has special abilities, narrative and attitude which works well. I'm fairly curious just how advanced this system is with multiple characters across stories and how it gets adjusted since its campaign/story focused.

I really can't do much judging based on such a small viewing of the game, but it was average thus far. Each level had a separate set of enemies to deal with though these were your run of the mill troops. To tackle them you have a couple options, one being a blast your way through or you can brawl them out. There are also specials to some degree and you have to play it to really get what the option is. The combat was alright though fairly simple and it might have been nice to see some gun or classic customization. I did however find it interesting that one of the levels was somewhat like a boss setup and I'd like to see that continued in future levels. It was one where this floating creature had tentacles gripped to the world and you needed to shoot them out, very War of the Worlds like.

Playing by yourself can be rather difficult, just in feeling overwhelmed. I was often left with no bullets and the quantity of enemies caused a problem. I'm very interested in seeing what this game turns into as I'm left curious right now. It seems like an average cover shooter at the current moment, but if the story is well developed or if side modes come into play it could be great. I'm going to set myself as cautious and watching on Raiders of the Broken Planet for now. A final mention is that the game will be available on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC from which I had tried it on Xbox One.

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