Review: Raven Squad (Xbox 360)

Author: Tigervamp | Date: October 16, 2009

Very few hybrid games, which mix two or more genres, manage to achieve anything great. More often than not the biggest problem is that each element might work if expanded into a full game but fusing them together results in a less than impressive Frankenstein’s monster. I am sure we all remember the following failed hybrid attempts – high jumping/dinosaur poking, kitten dancing/bank robbing, foot tickling/nun slapping, Nazi raping/bubblegum chewing, and worst of all Sonic/Mario/Olympics. Bloodnet is one of my favourite games of all time and it manages to combine Point n Click Adventure with RPG to great effect. Raven Squad is an FPS/RTS hybrid which is at least an interesting idea but whether it proves to be a stroke of genius or a complete failure remains to be seen.

The game begins in FPS mode and after only a couple of minutes into the game I started to spot some obvious flaws. You can’t jump. It appears you can’t walk through one inch of water unless it happens to be specially designated water. When the enemy starts to shoot at your squad one of your men utters the line “they’re shooting at me!” as though he is shocked to be under fire in a war zone. No Ravens.

The water looks decent enough as do the reflections on that surface but I can’t see anything here which justifies a release on the current generation of consoles. It has been a while since I played the game but the visuals in Black, on the original Xbox, look just as good if not better than what you’ll find in this title. The character models in particular fail to impress as they have an unfinished look about them. The limb proportions look wrong with considerably longer thighs than the lower legs and whenever my team-mates stand around and point their guns forward they appear to have elongated monkey arms.

For anyone familiar with the UFC there’s a voice in my head which informs me of guards in the distance and it sounds a lot like George Saint-Pierre. It’s a shame that isn’t actually the voice of GSP because that would be worthy of an extra point on the final score. For those in the know, I wonder if the person behind the voice wears similar tiny underwear to GSP, he’s a lover, not a fighter.

I had some entertaining times in the FPS mode. You can stand pretty much directly in front of an enemy and they’ll look right at you but do absolutely nothing at all. Awesome. After you shoot that guy in the face his friends will run straight past his corpse and then return to their starting place. From that point they will walk over to the corpse once more, turn and look in your direction, and then dance back and forth in unison without firing a single shot. Impressive. If you happen to play this game and want to take your frustrations out on someone don’t even bother trying to shoot your team-mates because the bullets go right through them and not in a satisfyingly bloody and killing sort of way. The RTS sections are even clunkier than the FPS ones and I wouldn’t have believed that were possible had I not sat through those too.

Needless to say, but I’ll do so anyway, there are far better examples of FPS and RTS games out there so please avoid this title unless you have masochistic tendencies. Still no Ravens.

3/10

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