The REAL Ravaged Review

Hey, do you remember Rage?

Well for those who don’t (which is the majority of you), Rage is a FPS / RPG that take place in a post-apocalyptic world. It had an old west meets Mad Max feel with awesome gunplay and car combat. As great as that sounds, Rage tanked in sales due to its dry boring story and car only multiplayer mode. As gamers, we wanted so much more out of Rage, but we were left hanging. Enter the developers of 2-Dawn who tries to take the look and feel of Rage, and turn it into an all-out multiplayer first person shooter named simply “Ravaged”; unfortunately 2-dawn miserably drops the ball.

PRESENTATION:

At first glance you’ll say to yourself “so this is what Rage would’ve looked like on the original Xbox”. The levels (or should I say level because I kept playing the same one without any rotation) are painfully bland. No destructible environments and no defense for your camp meaning that spawn trapping is not only easy, it’s expected. The only saving grace of the level design is that you can approach an objective from multiple angles, allowing you strategize your next move. Campers beware. The character models are as high res as those seen in GoldenEye on the N64 and the guns look… well… they just look like shit. The vehicles on the other hand look alright. Their designs are lifted from films like Mad Max and Death Race. It’s just too bad that the driver can fire any of the weapons unless you’re on a helicopter or in a tank.

CONTROLS:

Okay. I don’t know how else to say this… THE DRIVING CONTROLS ARE BY FAR THE WORST I’VE EVER ENCOUNTERED IN A VIDEO GAME! It’s so easy to either lose control of the vehicle or to crash from not having enough control of the vehicle. You’ll swear the sensitivity has it in for you because you’ll constantly fight your controller or keyboard just to get somewhere. There’s no way to drift, no control over gas intake, and no way to do a quick 180. Ravaged is advertised as a game that emphasizes on vehicular combat. Basic and unresponsive vehicle controls like this are unacceptable for this kind of game! The ground controls on the other hand are great. Very responsive, you can even plug in a controller and get down. Perfect for console gamers. So on one hand we have really great controls and on the other had we have really shitty controls. This game’s about as balanced as fox news.

GAMEPLAY:

Speaking of balance, let’s talk let’s talk helicopter: This vehicle is just plain cheap. Pilots can reach altitudes that are out of a rocket’s range, and its weapons are overpowered. There were times were my entire team was spawn trapped by a helicopter. It like being attacked by a chopper-gunner with no time limit. When not getting picked off by the overpowered ghetto bird, your objectives are pretty straight forward: capture control points, retrieve the enemy’s resources a la capture the flag, and of course kill the enemy team. Racking up kills is pretty fun, but it doesn’t help the overall score as much as playing the objective. While playing the game, my kill/death ratio was negative, yet I was in the top three on the lobby’s leaderboards. It’s refreshing to play a shooter that rewards objectives over K/D.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Bottom Line: Ravaged is a mess of a game that gets two things right for once in an FPS title: Strategic map layouts and objective over K/D point system. However a game with selling points ranging from stolen concepts from failed titles to emphasis on vehicular combat with the worst driving controls known to man is not a game, it’s nothing more than false advertising.

Until Next time, keep your game on.