The formula of the game
40% Diablo 3
40% Borderlands
10% s.T.A.L.K.E.R.
10% Guitar Hero
Release Krater – As a first date with a girl who came running to “grow” in a hurry: a slaughtered face, with a swollen face and in shabby, in shabby slippers. Here she is kidding, confusedly apologizes, nervously takes out a cosmetic bag and begins to bring a marathon. And it is prettier, I must say, before our eyes! Hedly painking her lips, she simultaneously talks about her older sister, who will come to Christmas – she, they say, is smarter, and more beautiful, and in general ..
I suspect, any male creature will have two questions during a similar representation: “What am I actually doing here? "And" Not at me, they are mocking?! ". The author is more than once, not twice, but ten times – after each obscene patch to Krater , changing balance, – asked himself these questions, replaying the already passed dungeons and rewriting the text. And all because the Swedes from FatShark, deciding to release an ambitious multi -part "sandbox" in the Hack’N’Slash genre, forgot to pour sand into it.
[[Video1]]
Beat your own to buy strangers
We note the heroic act of the Swedish screenwriters who dropped a bomb on their own country in spite of marketing calculation, although the post -apocalypse in the United States is commercially more profitable. But, as they say, whom I love, I beat. Years later, the remnants of mankind stumbled upon the bunker – a new name for what remained of the good part of Sweden – and discovered a huge funnel, radioactive bears and an inexhaustible technological clondike from the past. Adventurers from all living corners of the planet rushed to master wealth. We are from these gentlemen of good luck.
► Walks of a huge arrow on the world map from paragraph A to Point B Book Nostalgia for the Final Fantasy series.
By the time of our arrival in the world Krater The power struggle has already unfolded. Three factions, each with their goals, began to fight for the spheres of influence and try to reach the lower world – the center of the crater, a huge abyss, lurking many unknown technologies and secrets.
You do not spare colors on your native fence. To hell with lifeless deserts! Scandinavian apocalypse – bright and defiant. Here they started with what they came to Borderlands 2: deserts are adjacent to dense forests, rivers and lakes, and the characters are more like panka and street revolutionaries. And the general mood resembles either the first "Borders", Either about Torchlight their spitting-shirt-haired attitude to problems. Everyone for himself is a given, and most of the inhabitants of the bunker is far from the standard of nobility.
► Only in Krater a guy with a familiar name dude will teach us life.
Empty to the bottom
At first, the scale of the idea is amazing – the extensive map of the world has been reduced by accessible locations, some names of which are promised by dangerous adventures and interesting quests. But it is worth visiting at least a pair of settlements, and you see that Krater is naked! Cities collected from what came from, look funny and atmospheric. But in addition to the notorious atmosphere, several shops with all sorts of things and a pair of quests served in the ironic, and in some places and the ulcerative style: “Come-kill-bring-do not forget to pump,” they have nothing to boast. We dare to assume that the Swedes rushed “for ten thousand, like five hundred”, swinging to a new Fallout. But there, every location has a solid worked out story, which I certainly want to know, and there are piece NPCs in that world, which is interesting to chat with. Krater can only answer this humor of quest dialogs. And you won't be full with one grin.
► The plot leaves a lot of questions and hints of continuation. For example, for us the path to these technological islands does not open.
The main plot is completely circumcised by the living – at first we are arranged a tour throughout the map, stretching a short narrative to the size of the royal dachshund. And to the finale of the game … More precisely, the first episode, it turns out that all our efforts will have to be postponed for later. Because the developers have global plans, which will be revealed only in the next series. And if at Borderlands the ending, although crumpled, was still, then there is a victory over the local boss, flashing at the very beginning, almost does not bring satisfaction. And for what they fought?
► final boss and his retinue in all its glory. They are separately dangerous, and together … pray and reproach, mercenary.
However, the Hack’n’slash genre refers to the plot-quest problems with the coolness, its basis is that the colorful massacre, the variety of monsters and hunting for rare trophies. But here not everything is okay in the Swedish kingdom.
Poor relative
Remember Darkspore, in which we landed on the bell-and-corridor planets and cleaned them with a ligament of three fighters of different classes, gradually opening new and new characters? Krater followed in the footsteps of the brainchild of Will Wright.
The trinity of active characters is devoid of individuality (dialogs are conducted on behalf of the leader-player), and you can change the members of the team like gloves, but only outside the battle. There is a whole "bench", a collection of mercenaries purchased or joined.
So that the spare ones do not sit down, the developers introduced a class mechanism-it slightly gives the Squad-Tactic in the manner Commandos. In our arsenal, a ready -made set of mercenaries, divided into four classes – thugs, physician, shooter and maniac. Each with their weaknesses and strengths, requiring work in the team. Thus, having limited the detachment up to three fighters, the developers hooked three radioactive hares at once – the possibility of choice, the relative complexity of microcontrol and ease to manage the detachment. Each representative of the class has only two active abilities, so the detachment can easily be conducted using six buttons. True, closer to the final of the battle, they begin to resemble guitar solo from Guitar Hero.
► The design is motley here – cities and dungeons always envelops a multi -colored haze, and the characters are decorated with Pankovskaya attributes and road signs.
And it's not even about Hard level. Anarchist fighters are not trained in such simple things as an attacking or protective formation – and in Krater it would be useful. More precisely, there are buttons of attack and defense here, but for some reason the detachment on them does not spit from a high pine … as a result of AI, which leaves to be desired at least to the level of annelid worms, often takes the number.
“Heroes store” at the first acquaintance can drive into a stupor: all characters are divided into three groups, each with their “ceiling” development – to the fifth, tenth and fifteenth level, respectively, respectively. This resembles the principle of jrpg parties, for example The Last Remnant, Where, in addition to visits to plot characters, you could walk around the city bars and look in the list of mercenaries of the strongest. And after some time, return to the same bar, find the characters stronger than the previous one and hire them. But this approach was more auxiliary than the main.
THIS IS INTERESTING: There will be the opportunity to hire mutants – developers and radiation made them superior to ordinary mercenaries in size and characteristics.
► All humanoid characters hide their face with scarves and masks. Two in one – plus to the atmosphere and fewer problems with physiognomy models.
But what about getting used to the heroes? Passed to the fifth level and quit? Everything looked like that, until the developers caught on and released a patch with the opportunity to improve the characters. True, this is … the original move, in the spirit of the mechanism of conditionally paying games, only on the contrary-we are not forced to spend money on weapons and characters stronger, but they offer to spend on the development of the already beloved old, so as not to take it in utilize ahead of schedule.
On an elk with a naked slot
But from time to time, you still have to write off the characters-thanks to the spied only Dragon Age injury system. True, in Krater, the system differs in the depth and a series of consequences. Fighting wounds later begin to affect the characteristics of the hero, and you can get rid of the fine only for money from the doctors in the city. But sooner or later, the old fighter receives too many injuries, which not able to cure a single doctor, and becomes a cripple, so disabled veterans must be replaced with younger O pouring potential. So the developers understand entertainment: with tears in their eyes to say goodbye to the already familiar character and go to educate a new one, as they say, from young nails.
► Nikolai Drozdov, it seems, would be happy to put on a respirator and go to Krater Fauna to study.
This will have to be done repeatedly: the deeper the crater, the fierce the monsters. But, alas, not more diverse. Ennems are either aggressive mutant animals, nurtured by radiation to unprecedented sizes, or bandits-as well as mercenaries, divided into four classes, with one active ability in each. Scanty, very scarce; The only relatively original creature is the Goliaf sizes. That's perhaps radioactive bears ..
Passing here is an extraordinary entertainment, in which a new level is just a wrapper, but the cells opening for implants (increasing the main characteristics) and amplifiers (improvement of characters' abilities) – hint of filling. Just a hint. Recipes and ingredients for amplifiers and implants we must get on our own. Here Fatshark made a fatal mistake.
► This is how the pumping menu in the case looks. On the left of the development of abilities, on the right – standard characteristics.
Not a blacksmith, but a collector
The huge world of Krater has a gigantic potential: invent new ideas at least until blue, but lion's (moose?) The share of the creative efforts of Fatshark went into funny names for the same https://rollino-gb-casino.co.uk/ weapon. And even in a separate column of inventory, which is called – garbage, container for jaws, bones, lighters, cans and other waste of post -apocalyptic activity.
Recall Diablo 3 Or the same Borderlands : Each useful item (weapons or armor) has many species, each species is crushed for a dozen subspecies. And what we have? Almost the same rifles and sledgehammers, sometimes differing from each other externally, characteristics and color – at least add them immediately to the same laying “garbage”.
► Before the release of the fourth patch, nameless characters walked in some cities.
But the craft part, declared developers as one of the three gameplay pillars, is a one -sided movement. The ingredients here are worth its weight in gold – it is impossible to break objects into components, and they fall very rarely.
But even such distant brothers in post -apocalypse as Dead Rising 2, the opportunity to make weapons out of everything, turns up by the arm, emphasizes the atmosphere. In Krater, this moment was left to eat the next patch or even a new episode. It remains only for a possible editor (as Neverwinter Nights), who would allow the players to participate in the "filling" of the game world.
Pleased
Sharped
- Rainbow and cheerful apocalypse
- The collective image of the mercenary
- Dynamic combat system
- Design a la Borderlands
- The dank dampness of the game
- trophies cannot be disassembled into components
- Shark balance
- The meager choice of everything
The main ratings
8/10
Gameplay
8/10
Graphics
7/10
Interface and management
7/10
Sound and music
"Achivka" of the editorial office
Tushchik
Become a post -apocalyptic king of parties among radioactive teenagers.
Special ratings
10/10
Innovations
Then the zeal with which the developers rushed to cut and redraw templates and stamps, with dignity praise.
9/10
Sense of humor
The names of weapons, the names of the characters and dialogs – everything is filled with both good irony and caustic sarcasm.
Verdict
Site assessment
6.5
Above average
Taking the post-apocalyptic world and painting it in their own way, the developers called Kirka on a gold mine. But instead of a hit explosion, we received a raw, barely smoldering fit of the first episode. What will happen next, time will tell, one thing – the developers realized in time, and a series of subsequent patches can still bring the game to mind. And there the new series is just around the corner.
