The “Tactical Shooter” continues to grow with titles such as Darktide, Back 4 Blood and GTFO which are absolutely excellent, yet didn’t leave a lasting impression compared to the likes of Left 4 Dead. Personally, I feel these titles are rather safe at the end of the day, which is great for the casual gamer, but those looking for the ultimate challenge with high risks and rewards will venture elsewhere. Marauders is a tactical shooter who decides to push the line and the level of punishment/incentive to a new height, taking notes of another difficult, yet highly engaging shooter; Hunt: Showdown. With a rather compelling foundation for a narrative, and all the right-sounding hooks to entice you into the life of a cruel mercenary looking for loot, across the vast ruthlessness of space.
What is Marauders?
Team 17 decided to put their hat in the race and brought us Marauders, a brutal and immersive tactical first-person multiplayer shooter. Taking place in an alternative 1990s where The Great War never ended, resulting in Earth becoming a complete hellhole to the point where it’s facing a bitter end. You and many others have decided to flee to the vastness of space and become space mercenaries known as ‘Marauders’.
Gearing up, and taking to the star in your ship, players will fly through the most hostile reaches of the galactic to scavenge, salvage and acquire through any means necessary anything they can to survive.
Embark on various vessels, shoot, steal, upgrade and become the most fearless and dangerous mercenary in the absolute darkest reaches of space. Venture forth alone or team up with three other friends to take on audacious raids on gigantic frigates and make daring touchdowns on moving asteroids. But be warned, other players will be out there, waiting to claim the glory, or rather more, steal it from your cold dead hands!
Experience this gruelling diesel-punk world, where you will loot, shoot, raid and make daring escapes from the most brutal of heists to reap the rewards of deep space in order to survive. Do it alone, or work with friends to pull off these raids, but be wary of other players. You can upgrade your gear and ship, to pull off even bolder, and more dangerous raids and take everything you can by force.
Maraudering good time
You'll see a familiar gameplay formula, with a few neat tricks of its own to tickle your curiosity. It’s a bold-looking game, adding in some grand layers to elevate the presentation and mechanic structure. You will pilot a ship across a beautiful vista of space, littered with shattered asteroids and decaying, industrial shells which are filled with riches and resources. It’s often a beautifully haunting sight, as the sun burns bright, the nebula feasts on the space in the distance, and the use of colour will often leave you uneasy. It’s immense and flying around, searching for the rig to embark on and scavenge brings in some high stakes and enjoyment.
The solar system is broken up into many sectors, so it’s not just a case of a vast, open solar system to explore seamlessly, which is a shame, but I can see would be immensely demanding on any gaming PC. But it could be an idea the developers can explore in the future. I did find embarking on vessels and stations a little underwhelming, as the introduction showcases fierce ambushes from multiple parties on a massive ship, and violently boarding to take the loot. There wasn’t anything as grand and spectacular in my time with the game, yet their smaller instances of this, but more on that in a bit.
However, in the spaces you zip between, they are still pretty grand in scale and flying around feels awesome!
Now I mentioned the fierce boarding of an enemy ship in the introduction which never truly showed itself in-game for the most part. But there are still some cool little moments, which I hope will be expanded upon.
When it comes to bailing out and saving your own skin. You can decide to flee a location via escape pod if the intensity is too much and you wish you to keep your loot. But doing so will cost you a small fee for your active ship. But with an escape pod, you can shoot yourself into an enemy ship and do some damage, and even take it over, allowing you to continue flying about and make a final escape from the area with your loot.
I loved this mechanic, as it’s a neat way to only further the tension when you decide to make a quick exit. You will lose your active ship, yet by means of an escape pod, you can push towards the most unconventional of plans and take over an enemy ship to make your own. It was really cool and while I failed in most of my attempts at this, when I managed to pull it off, I was absolutely thrilled at my accomplishment.
Trading also has some compelling tweaks, feeling somewhat like an economy in some ways. Now a lot of people, including reviewers will note a game’s in-world economy, but what an economy truly is quite complex and strafes far from just the shop in Dead Space. The closest to an in-game economy would be GTA 5 where your actions could impact the market and thus give you finance again. But it doesn’t affect the price of guns and ammo.
Marauders has it’s far share of merchants, and all of them belong to different factions. You can indeed befriend and make yourself an ally with certain factions, thus improving your standing with various merchants, and increase trading values and maybe even decreasing the price of goods you need. You can do this by doing optional quests and thus raise your ranking with a particular faction. Another simple, yet immensely gratifying detail which pulls you further into the world and makes you feel more part of it actively.
Now the way factions work, is not Hughley dynamic, and you won’t be visiting colonies and making deals with a bunch of colourful characters. But instead, your interactions and mission selections for the various factions are made through a menu. A little underwhelming, as it might be nice to have a face or two with each faction, and feel like you’re dealing with an actual organisation and not just a menu. But this could be a limitation for now, or again something the developers could look into, as it would help with the immersion factor.
Zero, to Zero, to zero .... to Hero!
One of the biggest changes to come to Marauders is “Zero to Hero” quests, which are vital for character progression and unlocking certain important crafting recipes. They again act very similarly to Faction missions and will see players either embark on certain vessels for highly desired items or blow up space satellites.
The interiors compared to the vast solar system outside of the ships, stations and vessels can be rather plain looking and lack environmental details and designs which could build the world in interesting ways. Most places are grey, smooth and a little empty, whereas other games which feature dieselpunk or steampunk are beautifully dense, rich in detail and have great lighting, and atmosphere. There are some cool places you do visit and the space outside looks amazing. But often the places you venture to are lifeless in all the wrong ways. Darktide and GTFO are great-looking games, as they have everything I mentioned before, and have environments which have history and personality. Marauders environments are remnants of the past and decaying shells of what once was, but I never felt they were places where people worked, lived, breathed and died in possibly a violent manner.
Shooting is simple yet has the potential for improvement from the developers. There is a good variety of weapons, and there is enough room for upgrading and altering them in meaningful ways, making you even deadlier. The core shooting itself is just a typical point, click and shoot and hope for the best. There are some cool power weapons, and in general, the weapon designs all look awesome. Feeling truly like something you would find if WW1 expanded into the reaches of space. The multitude of upgrades does heighten the impact and carnage on board each vessel you board. But I didn’t find much to add layers to tactical combat, aside from taking your time to check corners and firing as much as possible into an enemy until they drew their last breath.
Yet I do feel a little more could be added to enhance certain aspects of the gunplay or tactical survival elements. The inclusion of some game-changing gadgets would have been interesting, adding another layer of tension and advantage/disadvantage to all players, but having different ones meant a range of exploits and pushbacks could occur. Proximity mines are a cliché choice, but games like GTFO have some cool ideas, like glue guns, radars and fog clearers to aid in the team’s progression. I understand however that with multiple people on multiple teams, it could be a complete mess and sticking with guns is a safe bet.
Regardless the shooting serves its purpose, but it doesn’t feel as enjoyable or dynamic as flying around space, managing your ship with a crew and avoiding ambushes. This along with the risk and reward factors, and the cool boarding mechanic, really do make Marauders a very promising title.
Overall?Marauders has some big shoes to fill, especially with so many co-op squad-based shooters coming out of the woodwork. There are some classics already embedded in the gaming spectrum, but many follow the same formula and the genre has become a little stilted. But Marauders shows a lot of promise, expanding on the formula and introducing some neat concepts seen in other, cult classic titles (such as Hunt: Showdown’s devastating risk/reward system), and forging its own identity with its dieselpunk themes, awesome sense of exploration, and piracy to be potentially one of the most immersive and engaging co-op shooters to date. It does need some more elements to flesh out the combat and introduce elements such as more intense, bigger dog fights in space, to really push the foundation even further.
But at this moment, Marauders is looking promising and worth checking out/keeping an eye on.
A review code for Marauders was provided for this preview by Team 17.