Takedown: Red Saber Review

Robert’s take: Save for Bohemia Interactive’s fastidiously detailed Arma series, the contemporary first-person shooter largely shuns simulation. While popular franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield provide painstakingly rendered weapons and drench their campaigns in military lingo, their gameplay is altogether unrealistic. Instead of attempting to replicate the edgy, methodical room-to-room sweep of a hostage situation, most entries in the genre would rather put players on a six-hour thrill ride filled with a barrage of Hollywood-inspired set pieces. When I first met with members of Serellan, the small Seattle-based team pledged to reinvigorate the tactical shooter with Takedown: Red Saber. With the studio’s inaugural effort backed by a $221,000 Kickstarter campaign and talent culled from powerhouses such as Red Storm, Monolith, Bungie, and Snowblind, I expected a prodigious product from the developers. Regretfully, their recently launched product demonstrates little of the studio’s ambitions.

I experienced many of the same multiplayer issues as Gonçalo. Jumping into the game’s co-operative and competitive modes and you’ll encounter a woefully antiquated matchmaking system. Not only was it nearly impossible to join the scant number of pre-existing games, but the ability to host your own match is seemingly broken, with players unable to join. Even if these connectivity issues are fixed, fundamentals are missing; it’s currently impossible to invite friends into your game. During those rare instances where I was able to join a game, the flow of play was broken by a persistent procession of disconnects.

Despite these quandaries, I persisted, unwilling to allow any mendable issues get in the way of a tense tango hunt. Unfortunately, those fleeting moments where my team of tacticians went into to administer a dose of disciplined justice were undermined by a lack of basic rudiments. Co-operative missions came undone by the game’s inconsistent artificial intelligence. Routinely, foes would stand still- impervious to players close encroaching players who shirked the safety of cover. Their sensory skills often seemed stilted, as terrorists rarely reacted to unsuppressed gunfire. Yet, just to spite us, an occasional tango would peek around one of the game’s persistently open doorways, and drop us from downrange.

Versus play fared little better, with basic Attack/Defend, Team Deathmatch, and Last Man Standing variants exhibiting few strategic elements. Although players can create custom loadouts with flash bangs, breaching charges and fragmentation grenades, Takedown’s competitive matches weren’t the nervous potboilers we expected. Instead, the game’s modular maps and ‘open door policy’ facilitated two types of play. Some combatants found success with slapdash running and strafing techniques while campers occasionally engaged them in firefights. Those who played the game like an elite unit typically demonstrated no advantage. While Serellan can’t be blamed for failed to predict play style, it’s vital that the developers patch the game to favor a tactical approach. As it stands, Takedown: Red Saber’s matches don’t feel radically different from the multitude of other multiplayer contests.

Sadly, the game’s single-player component is just as flawed. Mission preplanning is woefully truncated, with only two insertion points and a choice of loadouts serving as strategy. Ideally, the game would have at least shown a blueprint of the area of operations, if not an in-game map to guide players. Beyond the same erratic AI from the co-operative hunts, directing your team is broken. Although the game’s control menu lists the ‘H’ key as the method to order commands, my squad ignored every directive except ‘wait here’ and ‘come to me’. Without the ability to send your team to take positions which provide the opportunity for covering fire, the game’s playability is severely hurt. Currently, the only tactical element comes by learning to ‘slice the pie’- as players gradually clear each facility corner by corner. Yet, even that mechanic sporadically fails. I’ve had my muzzle clear and my reflex sites fixed on a tango- only to have rounds get lodged in the door frame.

Beyond mechanical issues, there’s also a glut of aesthetic ones. Expect executed enemies and their weapons to float in the air. Even when their last breath is on solid ground, the title’s ragdoll physics contorts their cadavers into comic poses. Texture wise, the game’s uneven; occasionally glass shatters convincingly, other times players can shoot through it without leaving a mark. To Takedown’s credit, the game runs smoothly even on modest rigs, with the Unreal Engine doing the rendering.

In its current form, Takedown: Red Saber is near unplayable. Malfunctioning matchmaking hinders access to the title’s multiplayer areas, while the game’s campaign is tainted by a host of broken mechanics. Even if patient players are able to overlook these blemishes, the title does little to recreate the sense of simulation which catapulted titles like Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon to critical and commercial success. While it’s possible that Serellan can patch Red Saber into a game that matches the magnitude of Red Storm Entertainment’s best works, such a feat seems like a bit of a longshot.

Gonçalo’s take: It may be hard to believe, but there was once a time when slow-paced tactical first person shooters were both common and relatively popular. These were your Rainbow Sixes, Delta Forces and S.W.A.T.s, games that placed an emphasis on realism, with no indulgences like regenerating health or medpacks. Here, all it took was a single, well-aimed shot to end your character’s life. Hoping to honor this now deluded sub-genre, indie developer Serellan launched Takedown: Red Sabre, a Kickstarter-funded title that looks and sounds the part, but alas, fails to deliver on its lofty promises.

The game offers you no story or real single-player campaign to speak of, a design choice that although not uncommon among its peers would’ve been wise if there were a common thread connecting them. Instead you’re only given seven maps to choose from, two of which are listed as tutorials. When choosing an assignment you can create a custom load out for your character these range from weapons and explosives to the armor type you’ll be using. Unfortunately, the player is only given a very limited selection to choose from, which is not helped by the clunky user interface.

Missions always carry three objectives though in essence they play the same as you hack/disarm/destroy an important item and getting to the extraction zone. In order to achieve them the game recommends stealth and deliberately slow paced movement, exploring the fairly large installations while either avoiding or silently taking down enemy patrols. I quite liked the option to leer through the corner of a wall and the fact that running can create enough noise to alert the guards, each weapon handled differently and would often require to be reloaded, in this regard Takedown feels like a breath of fresh air.

Every map requires a fair bit of memorization as they’re big enough to get lost in and the objectives never change place, the guards however do and their patrols don’t always follow the same path either, kudos to the developers for adding the element of randomness to their game. Unfortunately the randomness doesn’t end there as the title is plagued by bugs, glitches and just general head-scratching issues. For the most part your A.I. teammates are useless, they will follow you around a map but often fail to shoot at enemies standing in front of them, there were several times when they were under fire but never bothered to take cover, run or even shoot back and although the player can issue them “move” or “stay” orders they never seem to follow them.

A.I. issues aren’t exclusive to friendlies as foes also suffer from them. I wish I could say this was the only issue with game, but the myriad of oddities doesn’t stop there. Every door in every map starts out opened and those that aren’t will open automatically once you approach them, this odd design choice renders all demolition kits useless as there’s nothing to unlock or blow up, moreover it makes stealth unnecessarily difficult. Frustrated, with it all, I switched my gameplay style to run-and-gun, playing it like I would a Halo or Call of Duty game and what I found shocked me. Enemies cannot hit the player as long as they player keep running and strafing! It was at this point I simply stopped viewing Takedown as the indie-developed Rainbow Six game I hoped it to be.

You might notice I haven’t addressed the multiplayer portion yet, well the reason for that is quite simple: it’s broken! I could not join most of the online matches and when I jumped over that hurdle it inevitably lead to me being disconnected. I’ve read reports that those who can join matches are presented with “server disconnected” issues, including the hosts themselves, there are even users who were playing it in single player and still received this error message.

The lighting and the general texture quality are impressive considering the title’s indie status, it grants a clean, shiny look which is aesthetically pleasing if unrealistic. The same can’t be said for the character models or the animations. Each mission has exactly one enemy character model resulting in a jarring scenario when two or more are standing close to each other and dispatching them results in a ragdoll animation which sometimes lead to them falling in odd positions. Featuring no music save for the intro and ‘gameover’ screens, Takedown encourages the player to pay close attention to any noise that might alert them to an enemy’s location, though it is rather odd how the patrol guards never seem to speak to each other.

In the end, Takedown is simply unfinished, it plays and feels like a Beta and in its current state it’s a game that appeals to neither twitch nor tactical shooter fan. Perhaps when or if the bouquet of issues is patched it may indeed become the spiritual successor to Rainbow Six, but until then this one is best if avoided.