Scavengers (PS4) Review

 

Scavengers was a PVEVP game, that mixed Survival with Battle Royale aspects. Set in a deep winter environment, players had to survive against the weather, animals, NPC foes and groups of other players in order to gather the most resources and escape the battlefield with a large space ship in the end.

The PC version of Scavengers released into Early Access on Steam and the Epic Game Store on the 1st of May 2021. This however was more of an Early Access in name only and could be seen as the Full Launch of the game. The previous Closed Beta on the other hand would be the real Early Access. There are plenty of Reviews of the PC Version of Scavengers, but I would like to write a bit more about the Console version of Scavengers.

PS4 and Xbox One didn't get this 'Early Access'/Full Release, but instead only a hidden Closed Alpha, starting in Autumn of 2021. This however was also an Alpha in name only. All matches in the 'Closed Alpha' were being played with forced full crossplay with all PC-Players. Calling the PC-Version Early Access, but the Console version an early Alpha doesn't make sense, if the versions are identical and all players are participating in the same matches. This structure was problematic for a couple of reasons.

All of those reasons are in regard to Balancing, which unfortunately was probably Scavengers biggest weakspot. Forcing Full Crossplay (instead of only making it optional) between PC and Consoles is already controversial and less than ideal, if we only consider the difference in input type. Scavengers also gave a big benefit to veteran players, who had grinded enough resources for a very powerful loadout of weapons and armour. Veterans could than craft this much better equipment during their matches, while new players got significantly worse equipment. This was probably one of Scavengers main reasons for failure.

Since the Console version was released much later than the latest Progression wipe of the PC version, new Console players did not only have to play against Teams of Players with a Mouse and Keyboard advantage, but the PC players also generally had much better weapons. This was an absolutely horrible decision and the devs didn't do anything to change the flawed progression system. New players on Console and PC alike were scared away by the unbalanced progression system. I remember certain Teams only doing the minimal looting and than starting to actively hunt all humans players on the map. It was a real bloodfest. Competition is obviously intended in a PVP game, but it has to be at least somewhat balanced. Some Players being able to craft legendary equipment early on and other having to collect trash weapons is not fun for anyone.

The other big flaw of the console version was obviously to hide it in a Closed Alpha. You could not find Scavengers anywhere on the Playstion Store or the Xbox Marketplace and had to instead sign up for a key on the website of the developers. If you wanted to get a high player count, than this was the worst possible way to do so. Nobody would be looking onto the website, because no one has ever even heard of it. Console players were sharing matches with PC players anyway, so they should have just released the Game openly on Playstation and Xbox too. The players numbers would have certainly been much higher and the game would have surely survived at least longer than it ultimately did.

When they closed the Console Alpha in June 2022, a couple of months before the game shutdown on PC on the 16th of December 2022, they told players on Reddit not to worry about potential progression and characters wipe and ensured players the console version would return in the future. This proved to be a lie, even though one might claim, they kept the claim about future wipes. Overall, if you never release again, than you obviously don't have to wipe anything.

Before I talk about the strengths of Scavengers I would like to address some of the other most frequently managed criticisms of the game. A point of criticism I agree with is the lack of PVE modes. Scavengers allowed you to play your first two matches as kind of Beginner PVE matches. Those matches functioned pretty much the same as the regular matches, only all PVP elements were deactivated. Other human players could participate in the matches, but human players couldn't hurt each other. This was a clever way to introduce new players to the gameplay concept of Scavengers. After the first two matches however this PVE mode wasn't available anymore. The only pure PVE alternative was a short term LTM called Horde mode, which for unknown reasons was removed pretty quickly. Having a permanent PVE alternative to grind resources would have probably helped to retain a much higher playerbase, if you consider that many players got scared away by the horrible Balancing in Scavengers.

Two other common complaints were the game being Pay-To-Win and the gameplay to be too generic/bland. I have to somewhat disagree with both points. Crafting better Resources or more powerful weapons/armour had a crafting time of multiple hours till a full day. These crafting times however could be eliminated by paying with real money. This was definitely a douche move and very annoying, but I wouldn't call it P2W. All resources still had to be gathered in match and neither weapons nor resources could be straight out bought. An annoyance for sure, but I had much more a beef with the awful progression system and balance in general, than with this monetization aspect. If they had changed this system later on, so that you could just purchase resources with money, than I would agree with the critics.

The accusation of being too bland is often being mentioned by fellow Reviewers, who simply seem to assume that an unsuccessful game must have been too generic to stand out of the crowd. I have heard this complaint both mentioned for Scavengers and for Hyper Scape for example and totally have to disagree in both cases. Scavengers mixed Battle Royale with Survival elements and I don't know many other PVEVP games, who do that. The Cycle would nearly be the only one somewhat similar to the Scavengers gameplay formula and even that one certainly differentiates itself from Scavengers. Scavengers is obviously a third person shooter, so gunplay will feel somewhat similar to other third person shooter games. I however don't see how this could be enough to be classified as generic, but each to their own.

So now to mention some positive aspects of the game: I liked the map and general gameplay formula of Scavengers. Fighting animals, mobs and even Boss NPCs in order to loot resources and weapons as a preparation of the mayhem between players, was a really cool idea and certainly kept me engaged. The map really had an arctic feeling and was quite immersive in being a very natural winter landscape without the artificial theme park elements, we see in so many other games. The cold meter, which showed the degree of your player freezing, was also a nice touche and reminded me of the Darwin Project. The big difference being that there were real icestorm elements in Scavengers, which not only looked nice, but also forced you to seek a warm shelter, till the storm passed. The Gunplay in Scavengers was overall well done. Automatic weapons, as well as Bows or Melee weapons all felt exciting and neither seemed in general too overpowered (only the crafting could heavily unbalance them). Movement was even better. Sliding down a snow hill was extremly fluent and satisfying.

Scavengers used a hero system with characters, similar to games like Apex Legends or Rogue Company, which means it wasn't a real hero shooter like Overwatch or Paladins, but instead gave players unique abilities and strengths in addition to the general gameplay, which was the same for every character. I would neither call the decision for hero-like characters a big strength nor a real weakness. It was okay and I at least managed to unlock all characters in the game within a few months through daily login bonuses alone. This is also not the case for every Free-to-Play Game.

Scavengers also had some Battle Passes, but they are not really worth talking about. Some of them featured a couple of cosmetics, but one of them primarily consisted of resources. It might make sense giving the importance of the crafting system, but I just don't see anybody being excited by the prospect of getting 10 earth magnet materials on the next level.

 

Pro:

+ Nice PVEVP mix (BR+Survival)

+ Gunplay and Movement worked well

+ "Cool" map and environment

+ Influential Weather effects

+ Generous login bonuses

 

Contra:

- Massive Balancing issues (Crafting Loadouts)

- Horrible (lack of a) Console Launch

- Forced Crossplay

- No permanent PVE mode

- Purchase reduced crafting times

 

Result:

Scavengers could have been a great and successful game, but you can't be making too many mistakes without at least trying to correct them. The Gameplay itself I don't have too many complaints with. It might not have been the best in the genre, but it certainly would have deserved its spot in the crowd, if they managed to launch the game much better, do much better marketing and actually listen to the player feedback and completely revamp the progression system in order to tackle the unequivocal Balancing issues. A permanent PVE alternative would have also done wonders for the game. Nonetheless, Scavengers still managed to be a flawed, but fun experience and a game I for the most part enjoyed playing despite its issues.

 

7/10

RAMS (PC) Review

 

Research Automatic Military System is a game, that tries to be more than just a Battle Royale, but fails in most ways imaginable. Let's start with the good, the visuals are very beautiful. I liked both the optics in general as well as the design of the map. The matches take place in a large forest area, which looks really idyllic and peaceful (not what you typically expect from a Battle Royale, but I like the design quite much). The forest is only divided by two suburban towns and a handful of industry plants. Even though I visually like the design, there are just too few POIs for a Battle Royale map. The map was supposed to get expanded and updated in the future, but that never happened. There is also a player limit of 30 people for a match, which is honestly too low for a BR game. Another aspect, that probably didn't work out so well, but at least was a cool idea, has been letting all players start inside of a train, that was constantly cruising across the map. Players could choose for themselves, when they wanted to hop off. In reality however players were often just waiting for the first to jump out in order to rush him.

Something that RAMS does well, is the option to switch between first and third person view. Shame however, that in third person perspective sometimes clothes of the character will be clipping and crouching animations for example look a bit weird. Gunplay is also not amazing. It sure looks smoother than the worst games of the genre, but it could still use more polish.

The most controversial aspect of the game is probably, that weapons and ammo can be bought outside of matches and players can start with them, which obviously gives them a gigantic advantage in comparison to people, who don't buy weapons before the matches. There are also only very, very few weapons and ammo hidden on the map, which makes buying them essential. This feature was probably implemented in order to create this 'more than just a BR' theme, the developers where going for (They also planned to implement some kind of skill system further on). In reality however this idea was a mess and lead to players getting quickly destroyed by others, who bought their equipment. Sure, you would get the ingame currency by just playing matches, but this can be no excuse. In a BR game you should never make some players start with such big advantages. Balancing in RAMS was therefore a disaster. 

Part of the 'More than a BR' narrative was also, that the menu of RAMS was a house, which functioned as a base. This house was also part of the BR map and players apparently were supposed to be able to upgrade it in the future, or something... In any case players could walk around there, while queuing for a match and buy as well as sort their weapons and ammo for the next match. This house as a menu is a cool idea, but in my opinion only a bonus and far less relevant than the actual matches.

RAMS problems in combination with an asking price of around 15/20 Dollars lead to the gaming flopping in the steam charts from the start. Even on launch day there were barely more than a handful of players, who all abandoned the game quickly. Devs promised some "massive updates", but never delivered.

(Edit: According to Steam user reviews the servers don't seem to be working anymore for around 3 years now. It seems deeply troublesome that the game is still being sold on Steam)

 

Result:

Beautiful visuals are nice, but they don't make a great game. RAMS had some cool ideas with the house as a base approach or the train, which was cruising around the map. Unfortunately nearly all of these ideas were executed poorly or simply didn't work out. The ability to buy weapons completely unbalanced the game and the lack of marketing and relatively high asking price lead to a nonexistent playerbase from which the game never recovered. RAMS promised much more, than it could deliver and shows that a nice facade isn't enough, if the content sucks.  

 

3.5/10

Survive.com (PC) Review

 

Today we are talking about Survive.com (weird name for a game) or Survival Battle Royale (as bland as you can get, not to be confused with Battle Royale Survival, which is also pretty bad). This game is a rather cheap Fortnite Rip-Off attempt, which nowadays can't be downloaded from Steam anymore. Interestingly enough this didn't happen because the servers had shut down or the game was purposely removed from the market place, but instead because the developer broke the download option on Steam and was too incompetent to ever get it fixed and abandoned the project instead. I have heard of many reasons why games have failed, but this is a new one...

Survive.com is a 30 player Battle Royale game, which stole the UI and character models from an early version of Fortnite (it is practically 1:1 copy). One might even say, that they generally took a lot of inspiration from Fortnite (There is for example dancing characters on the loading screen, which is probably one of the best parts of the game). The visual style might be very similar, but the visuals of Survive.com are much more muddy and, outside of the main part of the map, lack a lot of detail. The gunplay is also noticeably inferior to Fortnite and rather lackluster (At least Survive.com didn't attempt to copy the building aspect of Fortnite). Something unique about the game is the fact, that you start the game by dropping out of a small one person plane and land via a Jetpack. This Jetpack remains part of the equipment and has a fuel bar, that needs to be refilled in order to fly around again. Players don't only start with Jetpack already equipped, but also with all weapons already present in the inventory at the start of a match (Sniper, Shotgun, Pistol, SMG, Melee axe and grenades). So looting isn't really a part of the game and players immediately get into killing each other (I don't have any evidence, but it looks to me like most players were also Bots in this game, and they for the most part behaved rather braindead).

The previously mentioned main part of the map consists of a small American town, an airport and a street block of larger apartment buildings. The sections actually don't look so bad and could have been part of an interesting map. The developers however left them pretty disjointed and didn't bother to really connect them. Everything else on the map is rather hideous and very low effort (ground looks super muddy and monochrome, a lot of trees are half sunk into the environment, no objects anywhere outside of the center part of the map). It looks like they started to design the map and just gave up in the middle of the process and released it as is. There is also an additional 3v3 Team Deathmatch mode, which plays on an extra map (an abandoned walled parking lot). This is actually not a bad idea, but for some reason the game mode is time-limited to 2mins, which is ridiculously short.   

 

Result:

Survive.com showed some potential in the decently designed street blocks and the idea of having Jetpacks and all weapons present at the start of a BR match. The execution however killed this game. Not only was the developer too incompetent to allow players to download his game, but hideous visuals, ripped off elements, lackluster gunplay and retarded Bots left much to be desired. I don't think Survive.com could have ever been a great title, but it at least had the potential for mediocrity.    

 

3.5/10