Warning: Spoilers ahead
I’ve been reviewing video games for a little over a year and a half now. I’ve gotten to try new games that I never would’ve played otherwise, games I’ve ended up loving. Few times have I found a bad game, though.
The last terrible game I played was Alphadia Genesis way back in January 2015. I gave that game a 2/10, and it completely deserved it. Never did I think I’d ever actually want to play that game again–that is until I played ET Armies, a game that makes any title I’ve played in my life, good or bad, look like a total masterpiece.
ET Armies is a game developed by the Iranian “Raspina Studio” and published by Merge Games. I picked it up only because I wanted a first person shooter to kill some time. From the trailer and screenshots, the game didn’t look half bad. It looked like your average sci-fi shooter with no real interesting elements to make it stand out. I expected a pretty “eh” game, but what I got–what I got was worse.
Upon starting ET Armies you’re greeted with a slow, boring monologue explaining the backstory of the game’s universe, though I’d be hard pressed to remember any of it. I think the story involves a faction of bad people trying to steal energy from a faction of good people. I’m not entirely sure.
The first thing you’ll notice in game is that it looks quite nice; this is thanks to the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately, as you’ll come to see, the visuals are the only good thing this game has to offer.
Right off the bat I noticed something off about ET Armies: the writing. Immediately I could tell this game was written by non-English speakers because the dialogue between “characters” (I put that in quotes because they possess the personalities of cardboard boxes) is so stiff, unnatural, and downright hilarious. After that I noticed how robotic and strange looking the game’s animations were–this wasn’t boding well. I had a bad feeling in my gut that I had made a mistake.
Some of my favorite bad quotes include: “We’ve lost contact with headquarter!” “Looks scary, isn’t it?” “Their reinforcement are coming!” “Can you move this cart? They make a nice covers!” “Thanks for the good news, now give me a nice backups.”
Imagine hearing stuff like that, except for two straight hours. It’s the only thing that kept me entertained through this whole ordeal. I would give it a pass if it were infrequent enough, but almost all of the dialogue is like this. It was frequent enough to detract from my experience.
I also quickly noticed how weak and boring the guns were. I feel like nerf dart guns would pack more of a punch than the weapons you’re given. It takes forever to kill enemies with these guns. You’ll come to realize how ridiculously powerless you are when the game starts sending 10+ enemies at you (which it does almost all the time).
This is made even worse by the fact that there’s almost no cover in the areas where you must fight hordes of enemies. The cover that is provided doesn’t actually protect you from gunfire, or is placed in such a way that the enemies will have perfect line of sight on you regardless.
The AI is also rather stupid. Multiple times I would find enemies standing behind a wall doing nothing until I shot at them. One particularly funny instance of the AI’s incompetence came when I was holding out with an ally and the enemies had the high ground. This is supposed to be difficult, but I avoided danger by simply walking up the stairs to where the enemies were, and their programming was so awful that they didn’t even notice me.
Another example of horrid programming is one of the flying robot enemies in the game; they can’t hit you. I tested this–I stood in one area for almost a full minute and didn’t move while two of these things shot at me. I never took damage even once.
These are the kinds of things I had to do to entertain myself with ET Armies because playing the game the way it’s meant to be played is either too boring or too infuriatingly unfair. I don’t ever remember experiencing any semblance of fun when I was actually supposed to be. The only entertainment I got was from messing with the game’s faulty design.
There’s potential for an okay game here, but it’s just squandered with an unimaginable amount of laziness and terrible execution. The levels, while decent in scope, are simply long hallways. You start the level, run in a straight line, kill some baddies, rinse and repeat until it’s over. It’s uninspired, and most importantly, it’s not fun.
I even remember a point at which I went through a room, died, respawned in an area after said room, pressed forward, and found myself in the exact same room. The room was literally copied and pasted within a 5 minute period. I had initially thought something was wrong, but no, it was really made that way.
Another shining example of how ridiculous the game can be came in the second to last level. You’re stuck on a rooftop where you must defend yourself from enemy ships. These ships can kill you in seconds. The only way to kill these ships is by using a gatling gun which can only be turned so far (and the ships are never within its range), or by waiting 20 seconds for an air strike.
Sounds easy enough. Except imagine that with two enemy ships at once, as well as multiple weaker enemies shooting at you, and no cover. And finally, you have to take down about ten of these ships before you can proceed. After a while 20 seconds felt like 20 minutes.
As I said before, the “characters” in ET Armies barely have any interesting traits or dialogue whatsoever. You’ve got the standard characters of “Hero,” “Grumpy Commander,” “Sidekick,” and “Girl.” Given those characters, the game goes through the usual hum drum plot you’d expect. Grumpy guy did something stupid years ago and now it haunts him, but in the end he kills himself to stop the bad guys as some form of poetic redemption, but really it’s just a lazy way to kill a character. The end.
That’s basically the entire story. None of the other characters even have stories. You don’t even play as the character with the backstory.
And the final kick in the face is that the game takes about two hours to play through. I’ve played simplistic indie platformers that last longer than that.
I’m simply at a loss for words with ET Armies. The trailer and screenshots, as well as the stellar concept art that was created for the game, are extremely deceptive. I’ve looked around the game’s steam forums, and there are so many people who were actually stoked for this game.
The game even won an award. Most Anticipated Game of 2013, Player’s Choice on IndieDB. This is how deceptive this game is. It’s borderline appalling to me. I can’t tell if the developers just can’t see their work objectively and thus have no idea how bad it is, or if they know full well how bad it is and they don’t care. Either way, it’s bad.
According to BagoCast host and good buddy, Logan Schultz, watching me slowly have a psychotic breakdown at the hands of this game was entertaining. At least somebody ended up having fun in all of this. I certainly didn’t.
If you want my advice, don’t buy ET Armies. Don’t even think about it. Maybe I made it sound funny, or maybe you think it even looks fun, but it’s not. Don’t even buy it to satisfy morbid curiosity because it is simply not worth it. There is nothing to make this game even worth $5, much less $15. It’s boring, it’s lazy, and it’s just bad. You’ll thank me later.
A PC code for ET Armies was provided by Merge Games for the purpose of this review
E.T. Armies
$14.99
Pros
- Decent visuals
- Though ultimately bland and excrutiatingly linear, the levels are impressive in scope
Cons
- The laziest game design I've ever seen
- Hilariously awful writing
- The gameplay is either horribly boring or horribly unfair
- Incredibly short playtime (Though that's almost a plus in this case)
- Uninspired level design
