Ravenfield fascinates me. The Battlefield-inspired large-scale FPS just launched on Steam and rocketed to the top of the sales charts. Its reviews are over 90 per cent positive. I’ve played it, however, and it’s barely functional in some places. Why is it getting a free pass from the Steam quality control mafia?
I can see what Ravenfield‘s developer — who’s apparently just one guy — is going for. The game is a cartoony single-player take on Battlefield, a kind of mad science lab for wide-open combat antics. You can spawn as many NPCs as you want and marvel as they enact a spectacle that’s less Saving Private Ryan and more Three Stooges, with ragdolls soaring and vehicles ploughing mindlessly into each other. It’s Battlefield by way of Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator by way of Lemmings.
It’s definitely amusing. Sometimes, it’s even hilarious. As you’ll see in the above video, I did have fun. Granted, I think I might have spent more time laughing at the game than with it, but I’m all for games that will let me test their limits until they break. And to Ravenfield‘s credit, it was still playable after I spawned 666 dudes as a digital sacrifice to digital Satan. That’s no small feat!
But it’s so early. While you have a handful of levels, modes and difficulties to work with, the underlying basics are so janky that I wasn’t sure what was a glitch and what was a feature. The majority of the time, my guns wouldn’t fire or zoom, even as I mashed the mouse in vain hope of retaliating against an enemy who, fortunately, was too distracted by the other 665 dudes flailing around on the battlefield to notice little old me.
I guess people love it because they see a lot of potential in it? Or maybe the game isn’t glitching as bad for them as it is for me? There’s also the fact that Ravenfield had a series of betas and built up a fanbase before its Steam release. I imagine that’s where some of the rainbow beams of pure positivity are coming from. Seems like a handful of those folks are disappointed with the state of the Steam release too, though.
Right now, Ravenfield is like a stick of bubble gum: Good for a brief burst of flavour, but insubstantial and prone to blowing up in your face. I hope it will live up to people’s hopes once it’s more polished and things like mod support are in the mix, but for now I can’t recommend it.
Comments
7 responses to “Steam Users Love Ravenfield, Even Though It’s Pretty Glitchy”
There’s this weird schizophrenia with Steam reviews.
Slap an ‘early access’ tag on a game and it gets a virtual free pass; everybody reads their ideal fantasy game into some mythical future where the game is complete and bug free; cause seriously man, it’s gunna be amazeballs.
Call a game complete, however, and all those unfulfilled fantasy expectations suddenly collapse into a crescendo of toddler tantrums.
Schizophrenia isn’t the term you want. Your post explains itself perfectly well without the need for comparisons to an often misunderstood syndrome.
Using schism, duality, or even something like “idiosyncratic dichotomy” would suffice, and would also halt the pesky perpetuation of mischaracterising psychiatric conditions.
Otherwise, yup, people are heaps shit with their expectations and determinations of games.
And then after months/years of it not turning into their ideal fantasy game, they turn on it.
There are reasons people love it: it’s adorable and I hear the dev is pretty great. Definitely worth a go.
Yup. Game is just good simple fun.
I’m new to the game, but I’ve never seen a community who seems to love the dev as much as this one.
So it’s a barely functional FPS in the style of Running With Rifles.
Wasn’t available for free on itch.io? I remember playing something like this but not what it was called.
Yup, Ravenfield started out on itch.io and was recently brought over to Steam.
Hi, I’m a moderator and a guy who plays Squad with the Developer. Please do send a bug report, as this is the first time *any* of us, including the dev, has heard of this bug. For ease of access, do join our discord.
Thanks!