Broken Roads – It's difficult to encapsulate a brand's influence Fallout on the role-playing game genre in general and popular culture in particular through just a few words. Post-apocalyptic America and a world forever stuck in the fifties of the twentieth century have created a solid “pincer” with the post-apocalyptic, post-nuclear war role-playing game genre throughout the 30s. last year.

It's easy to understand, the endless deserts hide Australia's wild and strange creatures and inhabitants, as well as the horrifying madness of Australia. Mad Max has greatly influenced the most impressive images of the brand Fallout in particular and the post-apocalyptic role-playing game genre in general.

However, Australia's wild landscape is still not really favored by game makers, as the post-nuclear war world has stretched from Eastern Europe, Japan to North America. Understand this, independent game studios Drop Bear Bytes created”Fallout Australia” with its own Broken Roads, a game with the dream setting of many fans of the post-apocalyptic role-playing game genre.

So the wild Australia of Broken Roads can be compared with these Wasteland good Fallout? Let's bring a boomerang and a Kangaroo lure with MarkGame to find out the truth through the following review!

YOU WILL LIKE

Step out from the painting!

Anyone who has ever set foot in Australia's wild nature must have admired the special beauty of this land. The savannas interspersed with unique green trees in Australia such as eucalyptus trees, Mimosa flowers or Australian Thien Mon trees decorate the landscape in a rich and diverse way, and the Drop Bear Bytes team has done a great job. Good at bringing unique images of Australia to the game.

Broken Roads With a 120-degree top-down perspective, it has many similarities with other games Fallout original and recent CRPG games like Pillars of Eternity good Tyrannybut the game also has a certain flexibility in the way the character models, as well as the context, are arranged to create a more prominent and vivid 3D feeling than the games mentioned above.

This combined with the beautiful and extremely detailed cel-shading graphics makes post-apocalyptic Australia stand out in a very unique way, each frame is like a detailed painting, which The closer the player looks and interacts with it, the more vivid and outstanding it becomes. From rusty corrugated iron roofs, dilapidated shipwrecks, and red soil deserts shaded by Eucalyptus trees, all the “trademark” beauty of Australia is recreated in a very unique and elaborate way.

The locations in the game also have a certain diversity and are not “stuck” forever in remote desert areas. Light spots around the game are rustic towns with old infrastructure, or countless large cities abandoned or destroyed by atomic bombs.

Perhaps, the strongest point of Broken Roads is the flexibility and diversity in the company's image design Drop Bear Bytes has brought the soul and spirit of Australia to the game by cleverly combining available methods to create a very unique feeling for his game.

the strongest point of Broken Roads is the flexibility and diversity in image design when Drop Bear Bytes has brought the soul and spirit of Australia to the game.

But the soul and spirit of Australia are clear Broken Roads not only stops at images, but also sounds!

From the sounds of the wind blowing and the sand rustling under their feet, there is nothing more “Australian” than a group of windy, dusty people… “swearing” in clear Australian English. Broken Roads contains so many Australian dialects that the game has to have an entire section explaining to players strange accents or jokes that only Australians understand like “Drop Bear” or “Ripper”.

All of these Australian conversations are also impressively dubbed, so much so that some conversations are even… inaudible because the characters' Australian accents are so strong.

This extremely thorough picture-sound-dialogue approach makes the post-apocalyptic Australia of Broken Roads becomes more impressive and lively than ever

YOU WILL HATE

“Half-hearted” combinations

However, the post-apocalyptic Australian setting is the only point that Drop Bear Bytes has really done well in its game. The remaining two important “pillars” of the game are storytelling and gameplay. Broken Roads again… fell over.

First of all, about the battle mechanics in Broken Roads. Although it doesn't take up much game time, the combat mechanisms will certainly leave a… very bad impression on the player.

The combat interfaces are very basic and lack many important features, making seemingly… elementary mechanisms like locking targets extremely difficult, when enemies are hidden by terrain, standing too close. each other or too close to the player's party, the equipment and skills screen is also applied very poorly, making actions such as quickly changing equipment or checking equipment before or during battle become useless. cumbersome strength.

Combat was difficult, the way enemies were designed Broken Roads makes the game's combat mechanism even more forgettable. Although there is a fairly diverse number of enemies, from monsters to bandits and… magicians (?), all of these enemies rush to attack the player in a unique way: chasing the player. extremely… brainless and predictable.

The “half-heartedness” of the game also extends to the game's story and storytelling.

Advertised as having a very interesting “morality” system, placing players into four very clear moral categories: Machiavellian (cunning), Utilitarian (utilitarian), Nihilist (nihilist). non) and Humanist (humanitarianism). At the beginning of the game, the player will be given a questionnaire to “place” the clock hands into one of the four categories mentioned above, and throughout the game, the player can “screw” the clock hands to their liking through choices. choose morality and dialogue, but at certain moments the game characters will directly evaluate the player's outlook on life at that time, thereby providing specific plot details or choices. for each separate ethical category.

This is a system that seems very interesting, but in reality is extremely restrictive and half-hearted. The game's sublime and moral and philosophical themes are applied in an extremely superficial way through moral choices that are almost… obvious.

It feels like the game really wants to “swing” along Disco Elysium through such abstract concepts, but when Disco Elysium succeed in visualizing extremely difficult cognitive concepts, leading to completely separate story lines, then Broken Roads only encapsulates human morality in four categories, differing only in simple interactions and somewhat obvious dialogues.

The main story line of the game is also extremely sketchy and lacks weight. At the beginning of the game, the player wanders into a small town named Brockton, then this town is attacked and burned to the ground, and now the player must seek aid, as well as uncover the evil plot behind the attack. brutal attack. This story line may seem familiar to fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, but Drop Bear Bytes failed at the first step: giving the main character a believable motivation to complete the story.

Our main character just wandered into this town, talked a little with the people, and was ready to travel across the Australian desert to avenge the town? The companions of the main character – the residents of the town of Brockton who have lost everything and now go with the player to restore their homeland – are also extremely pale when all of them… neither have any lines after leaving Brockton.

Of course, the game still has interesting environments and side missions scattered here and there, such as fighting bloodthirsty Kangaroos or infiltrating a society… full of philosophers, but they cannot compare to the real missions. excitement from brands like Fallout good Wastelandand the fact that they are so sparse and scattered makes the content of Broken Roads even more sketchy and forgettable.

The two remaining important “pillars” of the game are storytelling and gameplay Broken Roads again… fell over