It is such a crying shame when you stick your favourite old multiplayer game in the disc drive, check the server browser expecting a series of bustling, eager lobbies to go and wreak havoc in, but are instead greeted with a meagre ten servers with just as many players. What was once an online metropolis of soldiers/racers/elves has whittled away to a shell of its former self, like the videogame version of Detroit, Michigan. But, as upsetting as it is to see such former glory forgotten and cast aside, it is nowhere near as upsetting as buying a brand new game to find the same desolation and inactivity.

Ravaged is an indie multiplayer-only shooter of the kickstarter generation. 2 Dawn Games, the developer, is comprised of designers that have worked on titles such as Battlefield and Frontlines; experience that shows as you play the title. There is a conquest mode, reminiscent of Battlefield, and a ‘scavenger’ mode which is essentially a mix between conquest and capture the flag (but the flag is petrol in Ravaged). The emphasis here is on fun, vehicular combat with sprawling maps that accommodate 64 players alongside a few smaller, concentrated spaces, and it brings with it a very appealing post-apocalyptic flavour. You pick one of five classes, a loadout and a spawn point, and then you are off into the fray as your neo-western warrior. It’s all very Rage meets Mad Max meets Battlefield – a beautiful combination.

Visually, the game is very pleasing, and the AAA experience really shines through. 2 Dawn have achieved a lot considering their limited budget, with only a few niggling issues; the animation, for example, detaches the characters from the world a little bit and there are times when you get stuck on pieces of environment. The vehicles have a fantastic style to them, the two highlights being the Mad Max inspired cruiser and the absolutely insane little helicopter that will take you many failed attempts to master control of. The maps are varied enough to revoke stale familiarity with interesting features such as the fallen Statue of Liberty’s head in a dustbowl and a frozen Parisian wasteland with snowy Eiffel Tower. Although these events are never explained in any way, shape or form, it is interesting to play in a destroyed version of our own world as opposed to a fictitious one.

As exciting as the game is visually, outside of the vehicular madness, the shooting is pretty standard. Ravaged does well to avoid the annoyingly standard level grinding that COD and Battlefield players will be certainly be accustomed to, but there isn’t enough to set apart the first person shooting experience from everything else out there. The game wears the designers’ experience on its sleeve with the class choices, but the classes themselves lack the variety that made them interesting in the Battlefield series. Playing as a scout isn’t really all that different from playing as a soldier, except you have an SMG as opposed to an assault rifle. It is a shame, because the game has taken some good design features from Battlefield such as bullet drop physics and the ability to communicate via commo-rose, but leaves the shooting itself feeling rather lifeless. It isn’t bad by any means, and I got a warm, nostalgic feeling when playing that reminded me of Battlefield 2, but the fun definitely comes from large-scale vehicle shootouts and car chases whilst a mad-man in a helicopter rains hell down upon your little masked head.

But that is the biggest issue of all with Ravaged: It is a game that is hilariously enjoyable when you play with a large group of players, but these players seemingly do not exist. This is a brand new game and, out of the 1,221 people who donated their hard-earned cash to develop it, there is no end of difficulty in finding a server that has more than eight of them on it at once. You can, however, play on one of the ‘demo’ servers, which, as the title suggests, allows players who own the demo of the game to play as well. This is great, except you will eventually get bored of playing the Canyon map over and over again, and you feel a bit cheated that you can only get a decent game going on one map when you’ve forked out £15.99 for the full title.

The sad thing is, Ravaged is a good game. The style is great, the vehicles are great and, although the shooting itself is a bit dry, it is still good fun when you get a good group of people to play with. It is not as though the game is under-populated because it’s bad; the reason it is under-populated is because it had terrible marketing. The fact that everyone I have spoken to about the game had to google it before making a comment proves that point. It is a cruel twist of irony that Battlefield 2, a clear influence for the game, has more of an online community despite being 7 years old and 3 sequels on.

I have a feeling that Ravaged will take off in the near future. With Christmas coming up and the inevitable Steam sale imminent, I am more than hopeful that a whole new pack of players will join (or more appropriately, create) the ranks and show the potential of what Ravaged has to offer. The developers said they wanted to ‘bring back the fun’ and they have definitely succeeded in this first outing.

So please buy this game when it comes on offer… I’m very lonely without you.

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