Marauders - Escape from Early Access

What could be easier than to follow the beaten path without stepping on the same rake that previous fortune seekers have stepped on? It turns out that this task is beyond the power of many.

Times have fallen on hard times. Developers have become less risky and ambitious, but more greedy. While countless re-releases are more and more common on release lists, the industry has added at most ten worthy projects over the years.

Marauders is not about innovation or a new word in the genre, Marauders is about trying to repeat the success of Escape from Tarkov. How and for which audience the game is designed - about that further...

Better than Escape from Tarkov

Both Marauders and Escape from Tarkov were released in early access. Tarkov had high expectations back in 2015, but the success of the game surprised even the hardened optimists. Having been in Early Access for years, Escape from Tarkov managed to raise almost zero development funds, sell for dearly with a Pay-to-Win donation, and acquire a book based on the game. In many ways, Escape from Tarkov's success can only be explained by two arguments: the game came out in time, subtly played on the right strings of nostalgia, and was not a carbon copy of others' ideas, creating a new genre - a session-based survival game. Escape from Tarkov was even forgiven for its distribution service model and MMO elements.

Marauders went the same way, adopted from the idea inspirer as the root mechanics, as well as controversial moments:

The success kept many people on their toes, before Marauders we could check out one "Tarkov Simulator" - The Cycle: Frontier, but the copycat did not fix the main disease of Tarkov - stuffiness. The stuffiness in Escape from Tarkov was that the game had too high a threshold of entry: you could use a game guide to help you acclimatize and not lose valuable items as you learn to fight. Unlike many other shooters, in Escape from Tarkov you risk screwing up your account by playing in minus. Before the next session match, you're going on a hike, and if you're killed, you lose all the items you find. Striking the right balance between better, more expensive gear but more risk and budget hikes with little output and the inability to wrest the kush from more trained opponents is the element that has ensured Escape from Tarkov and its imitators popularity.

In fact, only Escape from Tarkov awakened excitement in players without the elements of gambling. But over time, all the wealth in the coffers of experienced players has created the game wild imbalance, and the shooter has turned into a natural MMORPG, where it was not the reaction rate and tactical thinking, but the level of body armor. Beginners had to plant magazines in armored players, while the "old-timers" had enough for 1-2 rounds to send the enemy to the loading screen.

Marauders approaches the imbalance problem in an original way - with setting. In the story, World War I did not end, but completely impoverished the earth by 1990. Human technology developed only to the harsh realities of war: the economy, medicine and high technology in decline, but the space and arms industry marched into the future by leaps and bounds. Not everyone was tempted to die in the trenches, many turned to space marauders. It's one such marauder we'll have to play as: search abandoned space stations, shoot for a piece of rusty metal, and board up scum like our protagonist.

And here the mechanics of piloting a spaceship are the same "magic wand" that was missing in Escape from Tarkov and The Cycle: Frontier. Even having gone broke, having lost everything of value in an unsuccessful raid, you can humbly wait out a battered enemy with the loot on the approach to the coveted portal, kill him like a jackal and snatch a handful of valuables from the dead grip of the deceased. After all, there's a good chance the marauder would come back beaten: almost no ammo, no medkits, hungry, and wounded. So why not squeeze all the ill-gotten gains from the exhausted creep by infamously shooting him with a free first level pistol?

Every marauder in the shuttle has a loaded gun. It's both logical and gives you a chance to go up even from zero. In Escape from Tarkov, however, being left without savings and friends who would share your gear out of the goodness of their hearts is tantamount to being banned. The Cycle: Frontier also has free weapons, but they are weak, you need to be very persistent and lucky. In Marauders, on the other hand, you just need to change your play style from aggressive and greedy to patient and calibrated. Just wait until a wounded enemy appears on the horizon and visit him:

While piloting the ship, players lose control over their character, which gives other players a chance to take out a competitor, no matter what armor he is wearing.

However, there's no guarantee that they won't pull the same trick on you. In Marauders the victim often swaps places with the hunter. And here you fly to the portal in a dilapidated ship, here you pray that no one notices you, as suddenly some creep starts shooting at your shuttle with ship's guns and rockets. Here you are already rushing to the fire extinguisher in the smoking engine, frantically trying to put it out...

...Here you are already at a disadvantage, losing control of the situation, putting out the engine, muttering under your breath: "How can you be so *Censored* to be torn *Censored* mother *Censored*, *Censored*!" ... Although an hour ago you were *Censored*, gloating when you got your hands on someone's loot...

Flying spaceships in Marauders is perfectly realized: the space expanses fascinate with their visuals, and the muffled sounds of firing in a vacuum plunge you even more into the atmosphere. I won't pick on the fact that sounds can't actually travel in a vacuum. The space is deafeningly quiet, the main thing is that the visuals synergize with the sonic content. Eventually you notice that the space location is small and the asteroids are not interactive, the space is rather decorative. But by then the game already manages to leave a lasting first impression.

And the last thing that makes Marauders a head above Escape from Tarkov is its loyalty to newcomers. Recall: a successful start in Escape from Tarkov is possible only under the strict guidance of a curator, donating or with phenomenal luck, Marauders to the mistakes of newcomers is conniving. In addition, Escape from Tarkov has too many non-obvious, non-intuitive mechanics: if wounded, your character will bleed, and how much blood will flow out of the wound depends on, attention, blood pressure. You raise your blood pressure with medication, get shot and bleed out without a bandage - it's a common story in Escape from Tarkov...

...Fortunately Marauders manages without unnecessary realism and without hanging weapons with dozens of modules. During the early access there were not many modules, but all of them are useful: silencers, butts and sights - no underbarrel sniper rifles on the shotgun, fortunately, no.

Worse than Escape from Tarkov

But everything that does not concern space battles in Marauders is implemented much worse than in its mastermind. Let's start with the main thing - the shooting system. When it comes to shooting, Marauders is reminiscent of its indie roots: wooden animations, no weapon impact, random scatter pattern, no ballistics, and invisible walls are all present. The level of development of shooting in Marauders is the level of shooters from 2003. Even in Counter-Strike: Source, the weapons fired more realistically.

One time I noticed my enemy, squeezed the trigger and the bullets got stuck in the air. I wasn't shooting at Neo from The Matrix, but there was a through lattice railing between us - okay, you can't get through it with a tank, I give up...

...If there's a hell in the world for Unity developers, they're forced to play Marauders forever. But it's not just the mediocre shooting that frustrates Marauders...

...Oh, the MMO elements of "Tarkov"... you can't do without them. How can we do without active games, endless grind the same type of missions for the sake of the butt of the weapon, which is possible, we will not use?

It is scary to imagine what will happen in the future, if at the start in Marauders grind for hundreds of hours. You will have to upgrade a lot of things, starting with weapons and ending with a spaceship. At the same time to lose everything overnight here is even easier than in Escape from Tarkov, in the latter things could at least be insured...

Meta-progression will take you no less time, about 100 hours. But the scary thing is not that it takes dozens of hours, because that's the point of the game. The scary thing is that with good gear, the game loses more and more momentum. The time to kill one enemy in the game is not even measured in milliseconds, it is measured in seconds. Pictures of one player shooting 15-25 rounds into another player are commonplace in Marauders...

...and it's $19.99.

Is it worth buying Marauders?

If you're reading this while Marauders is still in early access, don't buy it. $19.99 is the price of a good B-game, but not an early access indie game with a handful of content for 5-10 hours, but with 50-100 hours of routine grind.