Projects "Apeirone" – this is already a whole genre. Niche, not particularly in demand and very difficult to climb. Exactly a year ago we got acquainted with “Marauder” – a role-playing game with turn-based battles. Then it seemed that the developers simply did not have the proper budget to take their ideas to a new level of implementation. This has happened to them before. An ugly picture, a bunch of software errors and pronounced roughness are the distinctive features of almost any product from "Apeirone". But in the case of Marauder, we were most concerned with the question of how a domestic game developer could get hold of large budgets and squeeze into the not-so-strict time frame for creating a game imposed by the publisher. We secretly hoped in our hearts that someday the authors would have the opportunity to express themselves fully. The current absurdity about Afghanistan is, alas, far from such a case.
Greetings from the past
Making games about Afghanistan today is no longer a trend. Right here E.A wants to perform with his new Medal of Honor. But something tells us that the effect of even the first Modern Warfare will not happen. After that, what can we say about domestic strategies about the ninth company and all that stuff?. Why the creators of “Marauder” suddenly rushed to cultivate something in a field that had long been plowed, depleted, and oversaturated with malignant pesticides is not clear to us.
"Front line. Afghanistan" – a typical wargame that is not able to bring anything new to the genre, but instead cultivates everything old, for which games of this kind are not particularly respected by ordinary users. And the first on the list of “old sores” is, of course, archaic graphics. Of course, fans of particularly lousy wargames (we’re sure there are only a few of these crazies left) will now boldly object that graphics don’t make a difference in such cases, the most important element was, is and will be gameplay, just like in chess. May be. But not everyone will be able to observe, even with restrained skepticism, how a frightening emptiness stretches around a quadrangular map, and a static sun shines above the horizon line in bmp format. Personally, we could barely contain ourselves.
Picture in "Front Lines" terrible. The developers even lost their last proprietary ability to give a gray environment with mediocre textures a certain special magical charm. In "Marauder" there were at least interestingly furnished locations, houses with children’s yards, fortifications, parked "nines". Here there are only snow-capped and not very snowy mountains, a penny forest, a static sky and clumsy buildings. The latter are a special topic.
Apparently, when constructing buildings, modelers from "Apeirone" We decided to really fool around like little children with blocks: “This is going to be our house in the village, and now we’ll saw some stuff here, and it’s already a mosque, and if we now remove these three blocks and polish them here, then, look, we’ve got a little fence.”!» How elements of the external environment all these houses, fences and outhouses affect the atmosphere in the most negative way. To believe, even for a short while, that the action is taking place in that same Afghanistan, the camera needs to be lowered as far as possible and placed somewhere at the eye level of the average fighter on the map. But from this moment on, miscalculations of a different kind make themselves felt.
It’s been a long time since winzter-casino.uk you saw how armored vehicles pass through each other? How infantrymen with jerky animation fall onto a creepy green substrate with ridges sticking out everywhere, which for some reason is called the ground here? And this painting by a crazy militarist artist calmly slows down on any computer. There are four processor cores, a lot of memory and a top-end video card? so what? "Front Lines" this will probably not be enough, she will ask for more.
Outrage over the technical performance can completely discourage a normal person from getting to know the game. But everything else here will be perceived much better, almost without disgust and a wrinkled, dissatisfied grimace on the face. Another thing is that the most persistent and devoted to the genre will live to reach a state where it is no longer scary to get acquainted with the plot and missions. It is for them that the following paragraphs are written.
Obscure realism
In their work, the Apeironians wanted to cover the entire period of participation of the CCCP in peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan – that is, from the late seventies until the nineties. Moreover, the developers encroached on historical accuracy. But with one important caveat – no 100% adherence to the original source, there was room for numerous conventions.
Only details of key military operations of those years have been recreated – battle sites, tasks, and so on. The authors are not shy about even boasting about their preliminary research. They claim that aerial photography data was used to compile the maps, and for the sake of the missions, many historical documents, tactical manuals and memoirs were sifted through.
With the tasks, we will still believe that the developers there looked into the archives. But here’s the bluff with aerial photography… You’ll understand everything yourself when you load the first map you come across. A set of primitive objects, cannon fodder supplied for their defense, optional fog. If we were really talking about historical accuracy, then all the locations are sorely lacking in additional small details. In order for the player not to be constantly bored and at least try to imagine that he is participating in the staging of a specific military operation. There is nothing of this here – everything is conventional and superficial, like on the table with a map and models of the army commander in chief.
If you want something more than one selective task, run a campaign. You can play as both Soviet soldiers and Mujahideen. At the same time, if we come across some kind of turning point mission for our troops, the game insistently asks you to go for the “reds”. And then, you know, I’m not a patriot.
The main difference between playing out an entire campaign and launching individual missions one by one is the dependence of the conditions of each subsequent battle on your skill, initiative and prudence demonstrated in the past. They exposed their soldiers to bullets for no reason, squandered half of the available equipment and did not take advantage of the landscape to wage a proper war – accept that next time it will be more difficult. Well, for example, armored personnel carriers will not be allowed to be repaired, fewer new recruits will be issued, and ammunition will be tight.
Campaign – for the strong-willed hardcore. They can also offer you a classic deathmatch here. If you suddenly decide to choose a flat terrain for battle, then the whole action begins to resemble a large-caliber “wall to wall” brawl involving tanks and other combat vehicles. There will then be very little tactics and strategy coupled with realism, and yet some of their elements are present in the game.
The main focus here is, of course, on the behavior of the soldiers. They get tired quickly, are always afraid of everything and require maximum attention to themselves. If a friendly platoon of fighters comes under fire somewhere nearby, other soldiers will become more careful. And if suddenly numerical superiority is not on your side, then get ready for mass panic.
IN "Afghanistan" there is also a gradation of difficulty levels – and here again a pleasant surprise is in store for the hardcore ones. If someone really decides to throw himself into all seriousness, then for them "Apeiron" two particularly tough modes in stock. Let’s talk about the most nerve-wracking. “Superman” – everything here is like in war: friendly units need to be looked for, enemies need to be recognized before an attack, treatment takes almost the same time as in life, orders cannot be given during a pause.
Playing all this is incredibly boring. In a world where there are already a huge number of beautiful strategies, where the show rules The Creative Assembly, Where Wargaming.net makes us happy every time more and more, the creativity of the Apeironians looks like a real atavism. This is something we would have “eaten” ten years ago. But not now. Creative experiments are, of course, good. But we must not forget about the quality of execution.
Pros: it’s hard to find these advantages – let there be hardcore elements.
Cons: terrible graphics; hackneyed topic; everything is boring and bland.