VG Highlight #4 - Ravenfield
ravenfield is an interesting game that caught my attention during a steam sale, advertising itself as a sandbox FPS game. basically, it's a single player FPS game with two teams of bots, and you, fighting it out over a variety of different maps. upfront, the game seems kind of simple and mildly underwhelming, and if the only content avaliable was that which came with the game, i would've gotten bored really quickly.
however, the game is well served by an extensive modding community, creating new maps, vehicles, and weapons. personally, i like to play with a WW2 weapons pack, playing around with different maps and different settings.
overall, the gunplay is very satisfying, and thanks to the modding community you can recreate a variety of historical battles like operation overlord, stalingrad, iwo jima, etc. the majority of map mods are WW2 or vietnam based, but i've seen all sorts.
of course, there's no shortage of original content also - some of the funnest maps i've played are actually just original urban warfare or trench warfare maps. there's also some recreations of video game maps from games like Halo and Battlefield.
the game's aesthetic is usually cartoony, with red and blue teams fighting with giant paintball blood splats going everywhere, but some mods give things more realistic skins. there are mods to replace the original vehicles, also, naturally with a stunning variety of historic tanks, planes, etc avaliable. basically, the game is a "sandbox" by virtue of its dedicated community.
it is also helped by a pretty robust map editor being avaliable directly in game, from playing around with it a bit, it seems decently easy to learn, making the entry level pretty low as far as getting started with making your own content. the game is also still in development, with a "conquest" mode being implemented with some sort of strategy aspect involved where you can move around units and upgrade your weapons and vehicles.
all in all, this is a game that's either up your alley, or it isn't. some people would definitely find this game both pointless and repetitive, but for some reason games like this grab my attention really easily, i have a lot of fun playing on different maps, trying different settings, and using different tanks/guns/whatever. unfortunately, the game is single player only, and the bots can kinda be dumb sometimes, but all up enough content is avaliable to make it worth it, at least to me. i've been having fun with it, and i'm probably not putting it down for a while!
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