Review: Raven Squad (X360)

In a world full of sequels, prequels and remakes of all kinds, players value videogames with an original flavour. Thus, when Raven Squad came out boasting about its brand new mix of FPS and RTS, fans of the genre were thrilled. Alas, their happiness was short-lived. Let me explain why throughout the Raven Squad review, also known as the How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Concept Workshop.

Visual shock, audio horror

If you are trying to shoot down your own promising game, first you have to make it as unappealing as possible. Poor, outdated graphics with a lack of texture are a good way to start. Set your story in a jungle, duplicate the same ugly vegetation, mountains and small buildings in every single mission and it should be fine. Don't forget your characters: they should look like stiff puppets, be deprived of the smallest spark of life and have awful facial animation during the cutscenes. And by facial animation, I mean slight and awkward lip movements whenever they speak. Of course any sign of emotion, human or not, is strictly prohibited.

You can also throw in some small collision bugs with squad members just for fun or write mission objectives in white over white cloud, smoke or light-coloured sky. Be creative, folks.

Graphics aren't everything, sound also plays a great part in a game. That's why atrocious voice acting will be a big asset in ruining your concept. Dull voices speaking in a monotone sprinkled with fake ethnic accents and bad, repetitive dialogues are the way to go to make gamers grind their teeth and tighten their grip on their controller while playing. Some may even find it as ridiculous as American-dubbed anime, but only if you're lucky.

Bedtime story

Let's take one step further and deal with the story. Try to picture this: you are a mercenary and you are sent along with your team, the Raven Squad, to South America to retrieve a disk full of crucial data from a plane crash site. But your own plane is shot down and you all end up stuck in the Amazonian jungle with very hostile and well-armed local warlords around. Then the pilots that came to take you out of this hell are taken prisoners by the said warlords. To sum up, you and your squad have to get rid of the bad guys, save the oppressed villagers, rescue yourselves, rescue the pilots and rescue some young female archaeologist named Xian that was kidnapped by the bad guys too. Tough day, right?

Now that your FPS has a pretty unimaginative story, you need to make the shooting parts boring as well. Don’t worry, it's easy, just give two overly common weapons to each of your team members and make them fire endlessly at very stupid enemies who fall without a single drop of blood or any special animation. And remember to give them as much ammunition as they can waste.

Oh, let's not forget the RTS part, although it's so thin you could almost miss it. Well, if you divide your squad in two teams of three men each, issue very basic commands (move, get the health pack or ammunition pack, throw a grenade…) to them and check their movements and your foes' thanks to a top-down view, it should do the trick, shouldn't it?

Dumb & Dumber

Now, it's time to add the finishing touch to your plan of butchering a good concept. And what better way to do it than making the AI as terrible as one could? Like really dumb enemies being shot at again and again without trying to escape, or making the slightest move for that matter. Better yet, they'll run to you and wait to be killed. Of course, they won't ever try to ambush you nor follow you if you walk past them.

But in order to add some serious fun to it, the main characters must be as stupid as their opponents. They won't be able to jump, climb or open a door and have only one way to go through the different stages. And they won't ever take any initiative. Ever. Thus, to make up for everyone's stupidity, the game will be overly easy and linear so players won't feel too annoyed or frustrated by the inability of the heroes to do anything right.

Hit and miss

Raven Squad started off as a really promising game: movie-like opening scenes, good music, smooth controls and view switching and a very interesting concept blending FPS and RTS. Unfortunately, good intentions alone are not enough to make a good game. Plagued by poor and outdated graphics, horrid voice acting and some of the dumbest AI of the year, the potential hit quickly turned into another bitter miss. Too bad.