Marauders - Early Access - Review

Back in May of this year I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of the early builds of a new game called Marauders from Team 17 and Small Impact Games, even though the build I played back then seemed a bit barebones and lacking certain features it left me excited for the games official release, the game is now available to the public, though still in early access, so it is a great time to go and revisit the game to see what improvements have been made in the last few months.

When taking a first look at Marauders it’s very hard not to draw comparisons to Escape From Tarkov, so much so that in many circles Marauders has been nicknamed “Starkov” since the game is set in space. In the Marauders universe Earth has been industrialised to its breaking point and many have fled to the stars. As space mercenaries known as ‘Marauders’ players will gear up and pilot their ships through hostile galactic reaches to salvage anything they can and survive by any means necessary. The basic premise and gameplay loop in Marauders sees you jumping on to a server either solo or with friends and jumping into a spaceship in order to reach certain structures within the system and then dock and salvage equipment from the installation. Danger is everywhere in Marauders though and even getting yourself to an installation can be a tricky affair as your spaceship is vulnerable to attack and boarding attempts from other players and from the games AI, thankfully your spaceship is upgradeable, so you do stand a better chance once you have grinded enough in the game to have the ability to upgrade your ship.

Once you do reach an installation on the map you then have a chance to choose what gear from your supplies that you want to take with you to infiltrate the facility, bearing in mind that if you die you will lose all your precious gear so what you choose to take with you here is critical. Once you choose your loadout it’s then time to leave your ship and see what you can scavenge, this is where things get tense as you only have 25 minutes’ worth of oxygen plus you will be fighting against all manner of AI soldiers and escaped prisoners not to mention other players who are also out to salvage what they can and get back to their ships. Making it back to your ship alive and with salvage is a very hard proposition, especially if playing solo, but will see you reaping the rewards of having better equipment to take on future missions, or having items that you can sell to the various traders in the game in order to purchase equipment that you deem suitable for future missions. There are also daily contracts in the game that you can choose to undertake to reap even more rewards, that is if you can complete them, most of the contracts I saw whilst playing had very difficult requirements that would prove immensely hard to complete without a good team that has extensive experience with the game.

Aesthetically the game is a mix between WWII and steampunk, with most of the environments in the game resembling the inside of what a submarine from this era would look like. The weapons also feature a lot of guns that saw action during the second world war, though some more modern guns such as the M16 also make an appearance. The game won’t win any awards for its graphics but it does a competent job of rendering the kind of environments you would expect in a game like this, the environments are at times a bit sparse but the textures throughout the game are well rendered and keep the environment more interesting. Audio in the game is really sparse which does have the effect of making things more tense when you are ransacking installations in the game as it tends to make you focus on the environment around you such as other players footsteps, a little niggle is that sometimes player footsteps can appear to loud even when they are further away than you expect and this can throw you off when you are trying to ascertain where players are. Unfortunately, sound isn’t the only issue with the game and the game does have quite a few bugs, some which can be overlooked others which are decidedly more annoying. One of the most glaring bugs I encountered was the fact that other players and enemy AI can appear right in front of you almost out of thin air and when you fire at them your bullets seems to go straight through them allowing you them to mow you down unfairly, there were also problems where the AI gets broken and stares at walls while you fire at them rather than turning around to return fire, I am sure some of these issues can be fixed in future patches but it is still not a very good look that these types of bugs are rampant in the game, even if it is early access.

Marauders can be a brutally difficult game, especially when playing solo, but it can also be an extremely rewarding game when you have a great team and everything clicks. Marauders is rough around the edges, which is expected for an early access game but there is a solid foundation here to build upon, especially if they can get some of the more glaring bugs fixed in a timely manner. If you like games like Tarkov and have a group of friends to play with then Marauders is certainly worth a look, if you are planning to go in solo though it might pay to wait for a few months until some of the more game-breaking bugs have hopefully been ironed out.

The Score

7.0

Early Access code provided by Team17

The Pros

+The game is great fun with a group of friends

+Gameplay loop is interesting and unique, even though it does bother from other games in some areas.

+Space battles and ship hijacking add an interesting layer to gameplay

The Cons

-Lots of bugs some of them game-breaking and annoying

-Not much fun solo, you really need friends to play this with