Poki Game Preview: Rustler

Comedy is one of the oldest genres of art. Both in the literature and in the cinema there are enough worthy works that allow you to laugh while watching the adventures of the main characters. With video Poki games, as usual, everything is a little more complicated - here the boundaries of the genre are often blurred, sometimes humor is found not at all where it was intended, and there are often cases when funny situations are created by the forces of the players themselves.

Rustler, which recently appeared on Steam Early Access, was positioned precisely as a humorous project. The very concept of " GTA in the Middle Ages" is fun, but was Friv5Online Games Studio able to skillfully dispose of this promising idea?

The most ordinary medieval guy named Guy lives in the most ordinary medieval suburb. Do not look that the streets are patrolled by horse guards with flashing lights, horses are left in parking lots marked with a special road sign, and there are bards performing beat-boxing at every corner - otherwise everything here obeys the usual laws of human society. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and not everyone succeeds in breaking out of this vicious circle. But Guy is lucky - he gets a chance to climb to the top of the social ladder with the help of the Grand Tournament, a victory in which guarantees not only fame and honor, but also a solid reward. Only bad luck - in order to get to the competition, one desire is not enough. You have to work hard to get a fake noble certificate.

The dangerous work of a horse thief (the Poki game is subtitled Grand Theft Horse for a reason ), kidnappings and contract killings, robbery, debt collection, even prison - nothing will stop Guy on his way to his dream.

The plot is not far from the source of inspiration for the developers. We are shown the formation of a small fry from a street gang. Only if Rockstar preferred a more subtle approach to the plot, then here the narration is flavored with absurdity in the spirit of "Monty Python" and more straightforward (most often - outhouse) humor.

Hitting the bard so that he changes the melody, launching a cow from a catapult, throwing excrement at enemies and passers-by - this is approximately how the Poki game justifies belonging to the comedy genre. And there is also a dedicated button for, sorry, farting. There are very few really funny situations - the developers prefer either to quote the same "Monty Python" (and these references are unfounded - if you are unfamiliar with the original source, you will not understand, for example, what kind of knight lost his arms during a meeting with the main character) , or humor head-on. Sometimes it turns out funny, but for a long time this kind of humor is not enough, so the title of a comedy can be given to the Poki game with a stretch.

The gameplay of the Poki game really resembles GTA, its first, still two-dimensional parts: top view, simple controls, the ability to steal any vehicle (horse or cart) and almost unlimited freedom of action. If you want - beat passers-by and run away from the guards, if you want - complete side and main quests, progressing through the plot.

These quests are quite diverse: campaign tasks are not always limited to killing more enemies or running around the map as a courier, delivering cargo from one point to another. There are twists and turns that radically change history, like getting to hard labor and subsequent flight.

Nevertheless, the impressions from the missions are rather negative. Any illegal activity noticed by the guards leads to a chase, which is very difficult to break away from. Mounted "police" are always faster, there are more guards, and it will not work to kill everyone on the spot and hide - reinforcements are constantly coming. There are few options to avoid arrest - either look for the nearest wanted notice, the destruction of which removes the "stars" of the chase, or jump into a special stable, which acts similarly to the paint shop from GTA. There is an option to complete the mission, even with a chase on the tail, but immediately after its completion, the guards will attack you in the same way - it is unclear whether this is a bug or is it intended.

Fighting or running away is not easy anyway - thanks to the management. The camera, now and then changing the angle because of the houses nearby, trees and other objects, into which the horse of the protagonist strives to bury himself (and the enemy riders act unmistakably), a narrow angle of view, which especially greatly interferes when moving on horseback at high speed - almost any mission requires strong concentration and attention. Lost? Start from the very beginning of the quest! Considering that many of the missions take quite a long time and are often forced to jump from one part of the map to another, it is difficult to call what is happening entertainment.

Do we have a kind of comedy here, according to the developers? Why then you have to sweat almost more than in Dark Souls, for the tenth time going through a quest that won't give in due to the fact that the horse drops the protagonist, barely hitting an obstacle? There are also enough bugs, which, however, can be attributed to "beta". Although the bug that arises at the end of a long and tedious quest with a frozen character who needs to be accompanied by the plot, I can hardly forgive the developers, despite the early access.

Efforts to avoid being chased usually end up like this: the horse hits the obstacle, after which Guy is pulled to the ground.

It was technical flaws, ill-conceived management and a strange save system that led to the fact that the campaign went through frankly through force. For the same reason, it is not easy to create chaos and disorder, breaking everything and gaining the maximum number of wanted stars. Inconvenient, and the battles are too difficult to allow the player to relax.

If the quality of jokes in Rustler is a debatable issue (and I didn't say that there are absolutely no other funny moments here), then a comparison with GTA will not be in favor of a beginner. Anyway, at the moment - it is possible that the developers will still be able to fix it.