Finished this, and I feel quite russian now. iv damke. i personally thought the game was great and beautiful.

According to the longplay the game has a bit of a dispute right. Reminds me a bit of fallout's early development. Whew (right?)

So this game is in fact a bit like a russian fallout or fallout tactics. It's actually a rather good game and tells a story and has good central character (despite being quite gopnick lol). but i will not mislead you TBT comrades, while there is a lot to like about the fluff in this game and It's very much the kind of thing a lot of fallout/Ja2/Xcom classic players are wanting, there are rough spots, some quite rough indeed. vodka is needed to play this game. (it is made on the 7.62 engine after all) and at times feels very barebones. I wasnt sure it would even be playable at first. There was a guide helped me set it up and I wouldn't advise playing it without these steps. Also the long play is really helpful. It is a bit easy to miss some of the side quests and it's probably best to not miss anything in your singular playthrough of the game.

The game has lots to love. First off the scope picture in picture is AWESOME and amzing idea to implemenet in this kind of infrastructure. You can literally see the POV of your snipe rand see them get shot from multiple camera angles at once. HOW COOL is that? But not only that. you'll lock your target, thus being able to aim at body parts, weapons, etc... ZOMG right?

Unfortunately its a bit buggy and kinda gimmicky. You can pretty much use your imagination if you have experience with 7.62... between physics, impacts, etc. and the snipers accuracy is never enough to really land hits right where they want from a good deal of distance, Still it's cool. thsi game has massive amount of detail in little places. the camera is a bitch though. you can see the grenades loaded in your 40mm, see random soviet era art murals. make out markings on weapons (for some reason they 'blew up' serial numbers and things like that to be visibile) my favorite is the artwork on the cigarette brands. the market is a good place to look at stuff, and there is always stuff in mission levels to look at too it seems.

a lot of things have been stripped down removed or reworked from 7.62.. a lot of them in ways i dont particularly like. For example they took away most ammo's that have JHP and AP properties. For some odd reason only one remains: Buckshot and slug ammo. You can alternate and stagger the cartridge types in magazines in the same fashion you could in 7.62... sorta. It's clunkier.

Lots of stuff in the ui is clunky. the camera, etc. it feels worse, but its been a while since i had played 7.62. I would imagien the patch that removes camera limititations is a boon, but i was afraid to try it for some reason.

inventory management is real annoying. with a lack of vehicles hoarding is difficult. The fact you can't revisit most places puts a lot of presure to pack rat it each map. This is nothing new. It's sort of the bottleneck in this genre of games right?

shoppkeeper power playing is a big part of the game and it feel kinda in the way, it would work better if packrating had some kind of progression system. imo the game suffers from being a narrative and linear progression and having a shoppkeeper mechanic. BUT, it's quite balanced really. You dont have to do the shoppkeeper gaming, but its too tempting anyway. I would suggest only goign to the shopkeeper and hoarding stuff when you feel that you are getting 'poor' the only thing that seems to matter is tricking out a good weapn, like the shotgun, and maybe a sniper rifle, because your sniper is really very good in the game. Other than that you do not have to succumb to trader temptation XD

If you like guns this is cool. really good job on the russian weapons. It's fun to one two these bandits. lol. all these ruskie machine guns are wicked but only having a few members in your swuad doesnt bring the same utility they had in 7.62... i hate this, but improvise adapt win. i guess lol.

having 1-3 guys is real cool in a game like this. most maps are actually really well made and reflect an urban setting nicely and allow you to play the map in terms of cover mechanics, alleys, doors etc. there are scripted reinforcement events too that tend to pivot the player against environemnts (you walk deeper into an area and there can be combat in it with enemies coming in the way you came through) the lack of a proper sneak system (fallout tactics style) in the underlying engine limits the utility of mines... which would really work well with small unit team. i can't help but want it.

the cutscenes are pretty good and artsy. i must say i like it and they reflect the strong narrative tone. the game is a bit frothy in it's aspirations for something that is really low brow (nolsatgic retrogamer vlad) It's downright shameful but i enjoyed the broken english/mistralation of the story in this game way above most things i play in my native country XD Maurader is basically a metaphor for the breakdown of the soviet union that resmebles most post apocalyptic settings, and how humans tend to get worse and behave like animals. The central character is basically a true neutral figure whose strength lies in his passive apathy to the world around him and only focusing on himself as he kicks out his neighbors and turns his tenemement block into a post soviet/post nuke fortress to protect himself his 'friends' and his wife.

i love these characters. the central character is ahkmet, which i guess is ahmed. supposedly he is a muslim. he's not exactly the kind of background you'd expect in a russian game like this, other characters constantly makr reference to his race. warrior of allah, etc, etc. also americans are the bad guys. your other friends/supporting characters have very amusing sterotypical names, like: Serb, Cop and my personal favorite: WIFE! it sounds bad but it was really good this way. It's a bit JA2 in spirt. I enjoy the foriegn languages being barked at you when things happen in the thick of combat. Yes.

Oh wife. How i love this character, and the cutscenes in which you speak to her. most of them take place in a very dirty kitchen or bedroom. (It reminds me of fledgling Tetsuo the Iron man, but it takes place in Russia. HAHA)

in the end you get a very on the rails RPG type questing system with good tactical combat that isn't too save scummy, its true to the spirit of JA2 more than anything i've yet to see. While this game (and 7.62 High Calibre) Aren't new it's probably a testement that games can be made like this and new ideas can be explored. I've played those old games so much that I can probably appreciate this more easily than most, but I can't help but reccomend this to those in the know. I liked planet alcatraz this one is way better in the story adpation without a doubt, its similiarly amusing in the poor translation and irreverent tone (its not as offensive as that game though lol). It's well worth looking at if your spidey sense tingles at looking at this one. Everyone else will get tired of it in 10 minutes and demand a refund. I give this game a low score because with a straight face no, it's not 'good' but it's authetnically russian, and hey it works, you slap it a bit and hit it against something until it works (I like to hit mine with a big heavy lunchbox filled with Fallout 3 savegame bloat) and cry out "Kalashnikovodka!" Play this through and you will have more respect for the AK47 than you ever thought you could XD

Oh also it is rumor to hack your computer to western spies. so keep the firewall up, while running the E8.exe lest boris steal CC info or NATO bomb your house. (Meta Marauder)

score: One, Two stars but your on top XD

only play it if you accept the challenge of "You too would challenge a machinegun with your bare hands when your skeletal kids are eating pinecones."

okay then, moving on XD