E.T. Armies

E.T. Armies can be seen as milestone. Developed by an Iranian indie outfit named Raspina Studios, the launch of this title represents the first game released from Iran after the lifting of trade sanctions back in February. Let's hope it's the first of many. Unfortunately, though, it seems that E.T armies doesn't set much of a precedent for game that will follow. It tries to replicate western triple-A shooters to no avail, and while the potential is there, the game falls flat in too many areas.

It's a first-person shooter, and has just two sides; a single-player campaign, and a multiplayer mode. Unfortunately, we can only talk about the single-player portion of the game, because every multiplayer server is completely empty less than a week after launch. The story mode has three different difficulties: easy, normal, and brutal, and brutal mode truly does mean just that. The difficulty curve is harsh but fair, and even easy mode might still prove to be something of a challenge for those who aren't well-versed in FPS games.

The main story, however, is pretty lacklustre. It has the quality of a B-movie, and it's full of forgettable moments and clichés that turn a great concept into a generic one. Sometimes this isn't a terrible thing, however, and while the story is generic you could look past that and enjoy the experience for what it is. However, if you do indeed manage to ignore the narrative you'll find that the voice acting is poor, and draws away from the experience even more. Bad voice acting could be excused, since it's an indie game made by a studio working in their second language, but there are obvious mistakes that make you wonder why they decided to have it voiced in English in the first place.

As far as the actual gameplay goes, the gunplay and movement mechanics are solid in some cases, but extremely fragile in others. There is a somewhat small selection of weaponry at your disposal; two or three different assault rifles, a shotgun, and a sniper rifle. You also get a pistol that has infinite ammo, but it is pretty much useless on the damage front. The assault rifles have sizeable clips but are super weak and feel like paint-ball guns; sniper rifles and shotguns are a much better way to go, being much more satisfying to use too.

Level design is fairly standard; you're shooting clusters of enemies and moving onto the next area, shoot some more enemies and move on again. There were multiple occasions where the segments between shooting galleries were far too long, and you find yourself walking a little too much. There are times when the devs try to throw in a unique mechanic, but these get stretched out over the course of the entire level, and by the end you want to get back to the run-of-the-mill combat. An example of this is when the player must hide behind a moving cart, using it as the sole piece of cover as enemies come in waves. After a few waves, the cart will move on and the same thing must be done again. This is fun for a little while, but it repeats the trick a few too many times and before long you just want it to end.

Enemy spawning is odd at times, especially in the indoor sections. You can just sit at a door and shoot the enemies as they spawn, watching them pop into existence and blowing them away with your shotgun seconds later. It all gets so boring that you end up getting to a new shooting section and trying to find the spawn points just to get through it quicker. There are times, however, when you need to get into cover as the enemies come at you in hordes, and the difficulty bump in these sections is what makes those parts of the game quite fun. This is especially true towards the end of the game, where there are quite a few moments where you find yourself having to move to various objectives, but you're unable to due to the sheer amount of enemies in the area, making for a few fun firefights.

The soundtrack for the game is decent, there's a good instrumental score for most situations you find yourself in. There are times when the music is a little out of place, with a dramatic score being used at an otherwise calm moment, but it doesn't happen very often. The sound effects could use some work, with most guns and explosions sounding grainy and underwhelming. The best part about the game is easily the visuals, and you can tell this is the area where the team is most talented. For an indie title, the game is extremely pretty and, while not on the same levels as the triple-A games that it aspires to be, the graphics hold up, mostly due to the way the lighting is implemented. The guns are well designed and the character models aren't bad either.

We previously mentioned that the game feels like a B-movie. Sometimes there are cases where this isn't a bad thing, and the clichés make for an experience where you can shut your mind off and enjoy yourself. This could've happened with this story, but the gameplay at times doesn't match up to that. There were a few moments when we were immersed in the action, particularly towards the end of the game, and those moments were genuinely fun, but the negatives are just too many and outweigh the few enjoyable moments there are.

E.T. Armies is not the greatest of shooters by a long stretch, and it's hard to recommend a game that has as many flaws as this one. The developers had the opportunity to bring something new to the table, to make it stand out in the genre, but instead they tried their hardest to make an FPS along the lines of something more traditional, and they ended up making a game that's generic and boring, which is a real shame. With Superhot a recent example that innovation in the genre is still possible, we were left with the feeling that this could've been so much more. The price point at £10.99 on Steam seems a little too steep for a game with two hours of a barely coherent story and empty multiplayer. This is a solid shooter from a technical perspective, but it never builds on the ideas that inspired it, which makes us wonder why they didn't do something more personal in its place.