Greed Abandoned Dogs describes itself as PVEVP Shooter. It has 2 main modes, Plunder and Survival. In the first mode you have to collect treasures and money and extract to them to the future, while the second mode essentially works as a Battle Royale mode.
The scenario of Greed is actually pretty interesting. The players take the role of futuristic soldiers, who get send back in time to ancient Rome, to steal treasures from there. That sounds pretty interesting, but the game doesn't do a great job at explaining why this is happening at all and why specifically ancient Rome got targeted. (Perhaps there will be other time periods in different seasons upon the full release of the game...) The game also of course doesn't address the fact, that these time travels and slaughtering of roman soldiers with futuristic weapons would completely change the timeline of human history, but let's not get into that.
There are supposed to be 3 different maps in the game, but right now the access is very limited. The default map is Damascus, which should be able to be played in Plunder Solo/Squad or Survival, but can currently only be visited in Plunder Solo. Players have to loot relatively empty and nearly identical looking buildings in order to find chests with loot. Some chests can be opened per default, others require a key and some have to be opened with money. Roman Soldiers are patrolling the city and attacking the looting players with bows or their swords. Players can defend themselves with modern weaponry, which makes these soldiers look pretty weak. The aim is to extract all the found loot via time-loop transporters during the match or via time machines (in the form of escape ships) at the end of the match. Human players can kill each other in order to collect all their loot. That doesn't seem so bad, but you can see the position of all players on your map as soon as they have at least 1 piece of loot, which strongly encourages players to raid each other immediately before they can transfer their loot. This feature really seems a bit weird and not thought through to me.
Mahendraparvata (which apparently is an ancient city in Cambodia) is the only map currently being 'playable' in Survival. It is at the moment not accessible in Plunder and 'playable' is a bit far fetched, considering I couldn't get a single match going after queuing for more than 1 hour at a prime time (which for this game is 15-20 concurrent players). The highest amount of players in the queue was 2 (including me), but 5 are required to start a match. You could say, that the Survival mode turned into an 'abandoned dog'. Plunder on the other hand just requires 2 players for a game and seems to be the more popular mode (probably because it is the default one, or perhaps players just don't want to try out another mode after experiencing Plunder). I only saw Mahendraparvata in the game's trailer, but it at least looked more interesting and less dull than the Damascus map.
The third maps is Athens, but that one isn't playable in any mode at the moment.
What I really don't like about this game is the role of money in form of the ingame currency. In order to start a match you have to pay an entrance fee or use a limited amount of tickets. You can alternatively buy weapons to start into a match with, which is a huge advantage over players with default pistols. The money can also be used to purchase skins. Weapons and skins can alternatively also be bought with real life money, but interestingly enough not the entrance fee. So theoretically you could run out of ingame currency and tickets and no longer be able to start matches... This is not a good system. If you wanted to be nice, you could point out, that you at least don't have to purchase ammo and you can not loose weapons after you unlocked them once. On the other hand you can even purchase improvements for armour and the damage of weapons or temporary stat boosters (higher running speed, weapon accuracy etc) in the shop... I would strongly suggest simply unlocking either all weapons or at least the most important for all players from the start and remove these entrance fees/ ticket system and all kinds of stat improvement items.
By the way, all progress will be wiped upon the full release of the game, which means that all real money purchases during Early Access will simply be lost without compensation... This is not a good idea either...
Even though Plunder certainly has an PVE focus, there are also PVP elements in it, but there is no real kind of satisfaction or progression. You can kill other players and take their loot, but you can not see anywhere how you did relatively to them in points of loot or kills. At the end of the match you can just see how many goods you stole and how much ingame money you produced, but not how the other players performed. This gets very unsatisfactory after the second or third match. Even if you acquire more and more money after every match, there is no real goal except to collect even more money for the sake of it. Greed is clearly lacking a motivation/ goal for the players.
Other issues are performance problems, which give you a gigantic lag for the first 1-2 minutes of every match (it improves after that). This is not being helped by the fact, that there are only 2 servers worldwide, which are based in Virginia and Oregon. If you are an European player (like me) or an Asian player, you will have to additionally deal with those Pings.
The options customization is decent for visuals and sound, but lacks key binding options. The quality of the visual engine is actually pretty nice. The only map I could play on however (Damascus) still didn't look all at that great and had way too many reused textures, empty buildings etc. Soundeffects are alright, nothing really worth writing about.
Since we are still within the first week of release, it is difficult to comment on the playerbase. It is however safe to say that the game didn't really take off at the start (All-time peak is 24 players and reviews are overwhelmingly negative at the moment). If I would have to guess, I would assume, that the playerbase will die out within the first weeks. Unless the Full Release drastically turns the ship around, which the developer goals do not suggest, I would be very surprised if the game would ultimately succeed.
Pro:
- Cool scenario (Time travel to ancient Rome)
- Multiple game modes (Plunder + Survival)
- Decent options customization
- Graphics engine is rather good
- Gunplay is okay (no more, no less)
Contra:
- No real purpose of the main mode (no progression, goal)
- Only limited content access so far
- Ingame currency/ tickets required to play matches
- You can buy unfair weapon/stat advantages!
- Massive Performance problems at the start of a match
- Damascus map is pretty dull (many reused textures, empty buildings etc.)
- Playerbase? (Survival mode already abandoned)
- Progression wipe at Full Release, but paid content in Early Access
Result:
Greed Abandoned Dogs has a cool idea behind it with the scenario of futuristic soldiers travelling through time to the ancient Rome. The game however totally fails at explaining the reason for it and to give the players a motivation to keep playing. The graphics look nice and the gunplay is okay. Unfortunately the game has many flaws. Survival mode is practically unplayable since nobody queues for it and Plunder lacks a real target. The default Damascus map isn't really well done, the Roman Soldiers end up as underpowered victims and I haven't even talked about the performance problems in every match or the awful money system in the game, which totally unbalances the matches. The concept of Greed definitely had potential, but the execution is even in consideration of the Early Access status of the game simply too fundamentally flawed.
3.5/10
Update:
In the latest Update Greed has reduced the player minimum for Survival matches (from 5 to 2) and also decreased the prices of all weapons. The later one is a step in the right direction, but I am still not fan of the money system. I have now been able to play some Survival matches and have to conclude, that Mahendraparvata is indeed a better designed map than Damascus. It is a jungle map with a lot of verticality and different paths and places (some temple ruins, lookout points and bridges through the dense jungle vegetation). Survival is a classic Battle Royale mode with the twist, that players could instead of killing each other, also alternatively escape with a relic (comparable to games like Scavengers, the Cycle or Code2040). I probably enjoyed this mode more than Plunder (I also have to correct my original review: The weapons and cosmetics are not yet buyable in Early Access, even though you can already see the prices).
This Update is a step in the right direction and improves the game. I will therefore upgrade the score from a 3.5 to 4.5. The major problems remain nonetheless, but there is now a lot more hope for improvements in the Full Release, which would justify a recommendation.
3.5/10 -> 4.5/10
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