Raiders of the Broken Planet is a third person shooter where you pick your protagonist and work together with other players in a counter-operative adventure. The biggest idea underpinning the game is something akin to Dark Souls, whereby a single player, The Antagonist, can invade a match just as it begins and choose to fight alongside the bad guys against the four-player human team. The goal of this Antagonist is stop the Raiders and prevent them from achieving their mission objectives, which change from scenario to scenario in each mission...

We've been playing Raiders of the Broken Planet for quite some time now. It seems like an age since we got our hands on the beta (which was open for a number of weekends before launch) and were looking forward to seeing how the game panned out on its full release.

While, on balance, it's an enjoyable game, sadly there are too many issues that make it frustrating. Firstly each mission is made up of numerous segments and if you fail to complete each section... back you go to the very start. Now this makes some sort of sense on the online multiplayer version (but even then they could have just started from the beginning of the section you're on), but on the single player mode this is just laughable... It's almost as though they're stretching out the game because it's not very long.

Then there's the annoying cut sequences at the start of each segment. You do have the option to skip... but you might as well not bother as it takes the game an age to finally skip the sequence and thrust you into the action, For some unfathomable reason it then goes to the next cut sequence. Why? I'd say that it's a pretty safe bet that if you've skipped the first cut sequence then you'll want to skip the next one too. Again, on the online game this is fine as you may be a player who hasn't seen the cut sequence before... but for the solo missions this just seems silly.

The next issue, and this is a biggy... it's actually too hard. Whether you're playing the multiplayer or solo missions getting the right character for the level you're on is key. In the first level you're going to need to play as Alicia, as her mid-range shotguns make light work of just about everything. Don't even think of using Harec (the character you use in the opening tutorial) as you're not going to get far with a sniper rifle. But in online multiplayer games it's useful (if a little boring) to sit back and pick of the enemy.

The final issue was the rather poor matching of online gamers. It could be that there weren't many players online (something that was made more likely by the fact that it was hard to get into a game. There would always be one player who failed to confirm in time) but in the Antagonist levels (where your team plays against an opponent whose job it is to scupper your mission) it was easy for them to wait by the spawn point and quickly kill you.

I wanted to love it - it deserves to be a huge hit... but sadly there are just too many issues stopping it being a must buy. It's worth downloading the free prologue to see if it's a game you think is for you. Despite the frustration it causes, this is a game I'll continue to persevere with.

7

Darren Rea