Reviews

«San Andreas: Multiplayer» - a multiplayer mode that birthed and popularized the «Roleplay» genre.

It was a true breakthrough in the world of online gaming, providing players with the opportunity to interact in the virtual sandbox of «San Andreas».

I remember back in August 2007 when I first got internet access. A month later, I discovered there was a multiplayer mode for «San Andreas». It was something special.

You'd logging into a server and be greeted by a panorama with «Vinewood» Hill. As the connection to the server was established, the time of day would change, and you'd be thrown into the character selection window, all while «Ice Cube's - It Was A Good Day» track played in the background. Unforgettable.

I played on our local city server. The server was small, but there was already the opportunity to buy property and somehow develop your character. After a month of playing, I discovered there were servers with a wide range of possibilities and gaming styles.

Moreover, it was there that I met two people whom I've been friends with to this day. And we spent a lot of time together in our teenage years, as we were from the same city.

Now, after so many years, «SA:MP» has become a platform for various gaming formats and modifications. It has provided the opportunity to create custom servers with unique rules and customization, attracting even more players and diversifying the gaming process.

Despite the emergence of more modern multiplayer modes and games, «SA:MP» still remains popular among fans of the classic «GTA» and enthusiasts of role-playing interaction. Its influence on online gaming and the role-playing genre as a whole remains significant, and many players still return to it to experience nostalgia and immerse themselves in this world once again.

7/10
"𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦" 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘯 2 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘴 - 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘰𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘣𝘶𝘵 `𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘮` 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘯 `𝘯 𝘨𝘶𝘯, 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘢𝘥,

Despite the ultra “potato” graphics and AAA-duration of 12-16 hours, which rather harms the project, personally, I'm incredibly tired of the game after finishing it, i was almost speedrunning, but if you think whether your money will be converted into game hours, then yes,
Look, there is something to be said about the gameplay, despite the inherent simplicity of the genre, the game is divided into 3 parts:
First - an adventure game with humor and dialogues with robots, but so childish and flat that it’s just boring, and far from the level of the recent “High On Life” game, in HOL the humor tried to deliberately irritate the player, but here there are just banal jokes on every corner that would come to your mind at first, I’ll smile at only a couple of jokes out of a hundred, for example about a detective’s investigation, but I won’t spoil it (that’s why I also don’t see the point in talking about the story),
But here everything is also spiced up with mini-games, ranging from single-button to quite complex, such as a basketball match or an old-school rail shooting, in enough variety so that it doesn’t get boring,
The second part - is the corridor but large arenas themselves, with a bunch of enemies of different types, firing swarms of different beams consisting of laser balls (and not only), that is, it`s impossible not to receive damage in battle, and hanging packs of ammo and health spawns in the air all over the place, i.e. it’s like “Serious Sam”, but at the same time you not only run, but also jump quite dynamically, the arenas are semicircular, in a modern “Doom” style, enemies are also at different heights, but without a grappling hook. On almost every 10 meters of the map you can find a secret thing, a reference, or a secret passage, which is also mirroring Cool Sam games, but here it is a significant part of the game, you can probably complete the game 30 percent faster if you don’t get distracted no side activities at all, and in it, for example, there are a lot of mini-games, as I wrote about above,
Naturally, sometimes you need to jump a little between sections, it’s not stressful, the gravity is quite low, when you “fail” there are always platforms that tramplines you to the beginning of the route,
Moreover, in the settings there is even a platformer difficulty - easy or medium, the first will have additional platforms, maybe for real boomers who just want to shoot, because I haven't encountered any complexity to make this option necessary, although every “failure” will cost you have 300 vbucks, but at least there is no damage from falls on a flat surface,
Here is also related thing to the first section: a non-hiding mini-game collecting the letters “A T O M S” (as in old children's platformers), in almost every 30-minute segment of the game, this is optional and only gives money, alas, in general this is the only reward all additional tasks, which are very often found by jumping somewhere, there are also simple puzzles in terms of some buttons, more and more new ones require new tools, which we gradually find and which are needed only to open passages, that is, in this aspect everything is also good with variety and progression, And where there is no gut is in the leveling and economic system of the game, we will come across 2 types of merchants on the way, the first one sells only cartridges/lives/upgrades (which is simply an increase in the clip), the second one sells the same thing + new fun guns for a lot of money, but the second type is very rare, which makes you forget what you wanted to buy, and from the first one you will need cartridges every time you meet him no matter what difficulty level you play on, so why the game even gives such a choice whether to buy or not, if you still have to, is unclear,

It’s time to point out the main flaw in the gameplay for me, hence the above-described minus - a banal lack of ammunition, imagine "Serious Sam” game, who constantly runs out of clips and you click weapons just to have something to shoot at, and half of your weapons are purely humorous, that is, you don’t choose a weapon, but feverishly fire without at least minimal tactics, the game also forgets to say about the weapon wheel on the mouse wheel button, there is no scrolling HUD like in Half-life, which is also additionally inconvenient,
At the same time, I, naturally, collected all the packs of cartridges lying on the map, by the way, weapons don`t have reloading, that is, you have 1 clip for everything, probably this is the problem, it’s strange how the authors so overlooked something so fundamental for a shooter, give there 1500 rounds of ammunition for a machine gun and any automatic guns and the problem will be solved, the endless laser pistol doesn`t give any damage at all,
I understand that you can level up clips in the upgrade store, but firstly, the game doesn’t tell you that this is directly necessary, secondly, then there will be a great shortage of money for new weapons, but you want to try everything, and thirdly, you confuse this at first with this upgrading, because the usual weapon upgrade here is generally automatic; if you use the same gun for a very long time, then it changes directly into a new model, a new design, this can be praised, in general, the weapon designs are good, especially the grenade launcher.
Bosses can be classified as a neutral aspect, they also suffer from the problem of “lack of ammo”, and there is one more thing, because for some reason some bosses only give ammo for 1 type of weapon, but even without this they are quite banal, for example, there is an eye-laser.. but will remind you the "Atomic Heart" game due to the robot theme. I also have a neutral attitude towards game OSTs, but the title theme is a bit worth it.
But the only thing that’s really bad is the technical part of the game in terms of optimization.

What has been done well for the 3-developer/quality ratio?Although this, of course, is a little disingenuous, considering that the game has a publisher and about 100 people helped create it (check the credits), it still feels like a 9-year-old dream game, for a small indie team the effects are well done, inventive enough not to hurt your eyes, and even a little pleasant, the animation of the dismemberment of robots with oil flying out of them looks beautiful, although the flying part does not always correspond to where you shot,
The types of enemies are also nice, there are a lot of them, and shields, and a bouncer, and a robot boxer that attracts you to itself, and a saw enemy, a hockey stick enemy, a hoverboard enemy, among the weapons stuff there are micro anvils with elastic bands or propeller hats for enemies, a cube ball... although I couldn’t open everything, there are a lot of different ones, but most are just grenades,

So, I was talking about 3 parts of the gameplay.. I remember, the Third is turning us into a giant, a super-bear, it`s just mindless rush, smashing crowds of small, compared to us, opponents, which also suddenly has a progression, for each new section we will be given +1 new combination, at some point they will give us an energy scale for super-strikes, and at the end there will be the coolest boss in the game with a change in perspective, and you can also throw explosive barrels at enemies, this it’s also possible in a regular game, but there you won’t have enough strength to move them far,
As a result, a game with such a well-developed approach to some things is truly surprising, and, in general, can stand on an equal footing with other well-known shooters. Avoidable shortcomings include the resource system, and the incredibly long duration, there is not much variety in the locations, and those that exist are very simple in graphics, which is a disadvantage of the “budget”, almost an amateur project, the simplicity of humor is left to the player's discretion, in short, the project is definitely worthy of at least paying attention to it.

😊 Sub to my Steam`s Curator`s page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41977550

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"Медведи в Космосе" держатся на 2 столпах - супер простом юморе, и, средне современными пострелушками, многие аспекты выполнены грамотно и не позволяют назвать шутер плохим,
Несмотря на ультра "картошечную" графику и AAA-продолжительность в 12-16 часов, что, скорее вредит проекту, лично я очень задушился, пытаясь дойти до конца, прим это почти спидраня, но если вы думаете сконвертируются ли ваши деньги в игровые часы, то да,
Смотрите, тут есть что сказать про геймплей, несмотря на присущую жанру простоту, игра делится на 3 части: Первое - бродилка с юмором и диалогами с роботами, но настолько детским и плоским, что это просто скучно, и далеко не уровень недавней "High On Life", причём там игра пыталась тебя специально раздражать, а тут просто банальные смешнявки на каждом углу, котоыре первыми придут в голову, максимум улыбнёт только пару шуток из ста, например про расследование детектива, но не буду спойлерить (поэтому и о сюжете не вижу смысла говорить),
Но тут ещё всё приправлено мини-играми, начиная от 1-кнопочных, заканчивая достаточно проработанными, как, например, матч в баскетболл или, рельсовый тир старой школы, в достаточном разнообразии, чтобы не надоесть,
Вторая часть - это сами коридорные, но большие аренки, с кучей врагов разных видов, стреляющие тучами разных лучей из лазерных шариков (и не только), то есть не получать урона в бою невозможно, а летающие пачки патрон и здоровья спаунятся в воздухе по всей локации, т. е. это как "Serious Sam", но при этом вы достаточно динамично не только бегаете, но и прыгаете, арены кругопободные, под современный "Doom" стайл, враги тоже бывают на разных высотах, но без крюка-кошки. Почти на каждых 10 метрах карты можно найти секретную вещь, отсылку, или тайный проход, что также зеркально играм про "Крутого Сэма", но составляет тут значительную часть игры, то есть её пройти можно, наверное, процентов на 30 быстрее, если не отвлекаться вообще ни на какие сайд-активности, а там, например, полно мини-игр, о чём я написал выше, естественно, между секциями иногда надо немного попрыгать, это не напряжно, гравитация достаточно низкая, при "фейле" всегда есть платформы, трамплинящие на начало маршрута, причём в настройках есть даже сложность платформинга - лёгкий или средний, на первом появятся дополнительные платформы, видимо для совсем уж бумеров, кому ток пострелять, потому что я не встретил никакой сложности, чтобы была в данной опции необходимость, хотя каждый "провал" будет стоить вам 300 вбаксов, но зато нет урона от падений на ровную поверхность,
тут ещё смежное с первым разделом: не прячущейся мини-игрой можно назвать собирательство букв "A T O M S" (как в старых детских платформерах) почти на каждом 30-минутном отрезке игры, это опционально и даёт только деньги, увы, вообще это единственная награда за всю необязательные задания, которые очень часто находятся тоже допрыгиванием куда-то, есть ещё простенькие головоломки в плане каких-то кнопок, всё новые и новые требуют новых инструментов, которые мы постепенно находим и которые нужны только для открытия проходов, то бишь у этого аспекта тоже всё неплохо с разнообразием и прогрессией,
А вот где его нет, так это в прокачке и экономической системе игры, нам на пути будут попадаться 2 вида торговца, первый продаёт только патроны/жизни/апгрейды (что просто увеличение обоймы), второй продаёт тоже самое+новые пушки-приколюшки за огромные деньги, но второй тип встречается очень редко, от чего уже забываешь, что хотел купить, а у первого ты будешь вынужден закупать патроны каждый раз на любом уровне сложности игры, поэтому зачем игра вообще даёт такой выбор, покупать или нет, если всё равно придётся - непонятно,

Пора уже обозначить главную недоработку геймплея для меня, откуда и вытекает вышеописанный минус - банальный недостаток патрон, представьте "Крутого Сэма", у которого постоянно кончаются обоймы и вы щёлкаете оружия, лишь бы было в чём стрельнуть, причём половина оружий у вас чисто юморные, то есть вы не выбираете оружия, а лихорадочно палите без хотя-бы минимальной тактики, про колесо оружия на кнопку колёсика мыши игра забывает сказать, а при простом перелистывании Хада, как в Халф-Лайфе нету, что тоже дополнительно неудобно,
При этом я, естественно, собирал все пачки патрон, лежашие на карте, у оружий кстати нет перезарядки, то есть у вас 1 обойма на всё, наверное, в этом и проблема, но всё равно странно, как авторы так недоглядели такой фундаментальный для шутера аспект, дайте там 1500 патрон на пулемёт и любые автоматические пушки, лазерный бесконечный пекаль совсем уж не даёт урона,
Я понимаю, что в магазине апгрейдов можно прокачивать обоймы, но во-первых то, что это прям необходимо игра не подсказывает, во-вторых тогда критино не будет хватать денег на новое оружие, а хочется попробовать всё, а в третьих ты поначалу путаешь это с обычной прокачкой, которая тут, кстати, автоматическая, если много используешь оружие - оно видоизменяется прям в новую модельку, новый дизайн, вот это можно и похвалить, в целом, вообще дизайны оружий хорошие, особенно гранатомёта.
Максимально прохладно я воспринял боссов, они тоже страдают от проблемы "нехватки патрон", причём есть ещё одно но, ибо некоторые боссы почему-то дают патрики только на 1 вид, но они и без этого достаточно банальные, например, там глаз-лазер.. но напомнят вам "Atomic Heart" из-за робот-тематики. Также прохладен я к музыке, ну ток заглавная тема выделяется. Именно плоховата ещё техническая часть игры в плане оптимизации (самая критично влияющая настройка для графики - масштабирование),

Что сделано прям грамотно для соотношения 3 разраба/качество? Хотя это, конечно, немного лукавство, учитывая то, что у игры есть издатель и в титрах помогали там человек 100, но всё же 9-летняя игра мечты чувствуется, для небольшой инди-команды неплохо сделаны эффекты, достаточно изобретательно, чтобы не быть вырвиглазными, и даже чутка приятными, красиво выглядит анимация расчленёнки роботов с вылетающей из них нефтью, хотя и не всегда отлетающая часть соответсвует тому, куда ты попал,
С видами врагов тоже всё круто, их много, и щиты, и вышибала, и робот-боксёр, притягивающий вас к себе, и враг-пила, враг-хоккейная клюшка, враг-ховербоард, из прикольных оружек там мини-наковальни на резинках или шапки-пропеллеры для врагов, кубический мяч.. хоть я и не смог открыть всё, но там много разных по сути просто гранат осталось,
Так вот, я же говорил про 3 части геймплея, я помню, Третье - это превращение нас в гиганта, супер-медведя, и просто бездумный раш, закликивание толп мелких, по сравнению с нами, противников, у чего тоже внезапно есть прогрессия, в каждой новой такой секции нам будут давать +1 новую комбинацию, в какой-то момент дадут шкалу энергии для супер-ударов, а под финал будет самый прикольный босс в игре со сменой перспективы, а ещё можно взрывные бочки по физону швырять во врагов, это можно и в обычной игре, но там вам не хватит силы сдвинуть их далеко,
В итоге, игра вот подобным проработанным подходом к некоторым вещам прям удивляет, и, в целом, может стоять на равных с другими известными шутерами. Минусами, которых можно было бы избежать является система ресурсов, и, невероятно растянутая продолжительность, не очень много разнообразия именно в локациях, а те, что есть, очень простые по графике, что является минусом "бюджетности", практически любительского проекта, а простота юмора уже отправляется на ваш суд, в общем, хотя-бы того, чтобы его заметили, проект точно достоин.

😊 Поддержка подпиской: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/37365104

Concise Review:
Amazing and unique combat that’s hampered by a lack of enemy variety, boring quests, and a slew of QOL issues that hurt the overall experience rather than added to it. I’d describe this game as a fun time that doesn’t reach its potential. I think the 88 on open critic is too high.


Journal:

Early first impressions, which for a game like this mean very little as RPGs take a bit of time to get into. But, first impressions are the graphics overall are meh but not bad enough to distract, the story feels meh but I barely know anything so this is way to early to tell, the combat seems like it might be pretty great. The early highlight was a big ogre fight where I was jumping and climbing in the ogres back stabbing it along the way. It was pretty awesome.

The cooking meat graphics are weirdly incredible for an otherwise mostly meh looking game.

I have some complaints which I will get to at some point, but the fights against large enemies are so awesome in this game. Climbing giant enemies is executed very well. It’s super fun and epic.

The combat in general is awesome. I love it. The takeaway that developers should learn from this game’s success is that there are still plenty of new creative combat systems and general game mechanics to be played around with. Not every excellent combat system needs to follow the soulslike formula. 

I’ve been liking the warrior vocation a lot. It’s slow but heavy hitting and I love jumping on top of enemies with the heavy downward stab attack. It’s so epic. I am interested in the other vocations as well though. I’m having a similar ish feeling as I had playing Diablo where I want to test out all of the different classes.

I really liked the Warrior but now that I have fully levelled up I’m switching to thief. I do like how the game encourages you to test out multiple vocations. Warrior was pretty awesome though. Might be tough to top.

Going in to this game I expected it to be more like the Witcher 3, or Baldur’s gate 3, or Skyrim. What I’ve found is it’s actually closer to Elden ring. The fun part of the game (so far) has been exploring the map, discovering new enemies, levelling up my vocation, and just in general killing all the enemies in sight because the combat is awesome. What hasn’t been great has been the actual quests and the stuff that happens in the cities. 

I think that CEO saying “we don’t have fast travel because it’s fun to explore in our game, other games make traveling boring” is an idiot. He should not have said that, first because then they added micro transactions to buy fast travel packs (what the actual fuck?), that makes you seem like a slimy company, and then two, your game isn’t doing something different than other open world games. I had high expectations for this open world. I expected lots of random encounters or other rewarding things to happen and from what I’ve seen so far there really isn’t anything special or unique that justifies not having fast travel. In fact, I’d explore the map more if there was fast travel. There are sections of the map I havnt seen that I’d like to go check out but I’m not walking halfway across the map fighting the same 4 types of enemies to see what’s in the areas I missed. Especially when my guy is constantly running out of stamina. There really are a number of QOL issues in this game. I respect some of the attempts to be different but I think they clash with what type of game this actually is.

The enemy variety is feeling worse and worse the longer I’ve played. Both for bosses and normal unit. There’s a lot of repetition. I still love the combat but at this point I wish there was more out there. 

The thief is definitely better than the warrior but I don’t like him quite as much. He’s almost made the game trivial at this point, although that’s probably partly just because Im a high level now. But the combat has been pretty easy recently. Defeating dragons is still a bit challenging but the rest of the enemies have been quite easy.

So I beat the game not realizing it was going to be the last fight, and then the game saves immediately after, so I can’t go back and my last save at the inn was a long time ago. So my options are start NG+ which has no level scaling and I’d have to redo a bunch of stuff that will be trivial and I don’t want to do. Or I could return to my last save at the inn and redo the last story stretch, again losing many hours. Neither options is great. I kind of wanted to fight a few more bosses before finishing the game and I wanted to go back to warrior for a bit because I liked him more but after finishing the game and having these setbacks I think I’m just done. Which is a rather disappointing ending.

I had an itch that I wanted to play the warrior just a little bit more and I’m am happy I did. The warrior is my favourite class. The thief is too easy and repetitive. The warrior is epic. I bit the bullet, replayed the boring stretch from my last imm save so I could switch back to Warrior and explore the last few areas before calling it quits. There were major areas I hadn’t seen at all. Don’t get me wrong, same enemies, pointless loot, and the environment itself is still pretty much the same biome but there are still some cool areas to check out. I am back on board with playing this game a bit more. This rarely happens.

THE GOOD:
- Climbing on giant enemies is awesome. Other game will (and should) copy some aspects of this game mechanic. Normally in games when you fight large monsters you just hack at their feet but this game nails what it should feel like to actually take down a big beast.
- The combat in general is really solid. It actually feels unique which is rare these days.
- I respect how this game is actually pretty different in a number of ways. There’s no skill tree. That surprised me at first.
- The pawns system is unique and pretty solid. I like the balance of having one pawn who levels up with you and you are responsible for upgrading her gear etc. but then the other two pawns are all short term loans. Plus I like that they are other peoples pawns. Some peoples creations are interesting we will say.

THE BAD:
- I wish there was fast travel. I get what they are going for, and the exploration is fun but there are still times I’d rather fast travel back to town. Elden ring is the greatest exploration game ever and it has fast travel. DD2 should have a more usable fast travel system.
- They don’t include fast travel because they want you to explore the world, and they are correct that the map exploration is the highlight of the game, but what I don’t think they realized is the lack of fast travel limits how much I explore the map. There are some areas that I would go explore more if I could fast travel. I just don’t want to have to walk past the same area for the fifth time to get to the new area. I also expected more random encounters to occur based on the CEO dude saying it’s so fun to travel in his game. It’s just like any other open world game. I don’t get what he thinks is special.
- The stamina drain for sprinting is too fast for a game that wants you to runaround everywhere.
- There are stealth missions when the game has no stealth mechanics. Like I walk right past guards who say hey you can’t go in there but then nothing happens. It’s funny. I think they should have removed those style of quests. 
- I don’t really like the missions that happen in cities so far. I really just like the exploration wilderness or enemy camp missions because the combat is really fun. It’s carrying the game.
- Why don’t they just have a normal save system? Let me have back up saves? The one save system discourages creativity because I’m worried I’ll fuck up a save and then have no way to go back.

THE MEH:
- I’ve found the story to be very meh so far, I’m not super deep into it yet but it hasn’t grabbed me at all yet.
- The world aesthetic is alright but not that great. I’m still relatively early but I bet I’ve seen roughly 30-40% of the map so far and again, based on CEO dude bragging about fun it is to explore in his game I thought it’d be better. It’s not bad, but it’s not that good either. 
- Graphics and performance I’m saying is meh but it’s borderline bad for a AAA 2024 game that in Canada after tax costs $106 fucking dollars. It unfair to compare game’s graphics but AA Helldivers 2 which was a reduced cost game looks way better.

Final Score: B+

i almost can't believe i finished this game! also can't believe how much my views on it have changed since i started playing. first of all, production value is insanely high, i am so so happy it got the recognition it deserves for direction and art direction in general. it is truly a piece of art. the live-action parts work incredibly well and it's just such a joy to experience it all.

but why so long, really ??? i can't tell if i just took too long to finish it or i just didn't vibe with the story. just like the first one, it has it's self-aware moments? like in the end where people in Deer Fest make comments about the meaning behind Alan's "story" or the subtle race-related commentary Saga makes in the end. but still, i can't help but feel like the writing was lacking something. at one point i felt like there was TOO MUCH EXPLAINING. let the story speak for itself, the characters don't need to always explicitly recap what's going on. since it's such a story-focused game it's hard to see past these things.

 i had a lot of other small issues: level design kinda sucked sometimes, i got lost and frustrated ? combat was a bit boring and i could not find Alan's shotgun, so i played pistol-ONLY for the whole game!, mind-place was sososo bad like really i am wondering if they only kept it in so they could tie it to the ending ??? i also set the game on easy mode in the end and i'm so glad i did that.

anyways, despite all the flaws i'm glad this game exists and i got to experience it