Riskers – Review
Published by Meridian4 and developed by ShotX Studio comes Riskers. A top view game which on first sight would make about anyone think about the early days of Grand Theft Auto or other indie games like Hotline Miami, but the big question is if Riskers is able to live up to expectations. Overall Meridian4 already has a decent amount of published games but many of those weren’t liked by the public. Not that all their games are bad but they’re just not great either. ShotX Studio for that matter is less known and has less games on its name.
Story
In Riskers you play as an ex-convict, who is trying to get his life back on the rails. Sadly, it seems fate has decided otherwise, as your brother is murdered. With the recent events you get launched into a world of crime making your way to get revenge on those responsible.
The game has a really short story mode with bad sort of comic book cut scenes. These scenes are just bland and boring. Luckily the story in itself is great as it’s the classic tale of a man going haywire after the murder on his brother, it’s a bit of a cliché but it works.
Graphics
Riskers is, too put it politely, not a gorgeous game, but it doesn’t have to because for an indie game it looks quite good actually. It sends of the immediate nostalgic Grand Theft Auto look, but still different in its own kind of way.
Framerate would be a completely other aspect though, for some reason the game is not able to run smoothly. Whilst running or driving the game just keeps faltering, which is a very annoying thing.
The game makes use of a top down view of your character and in many aspects makes you feel like you’re playing Hotline Miami, which would be the best game to compare Riskers with.
Sound
At the moment the first sound of the game comes through your speakers you’ll be blown away because the music provided by the starting menu is truly fitting and epic. It’s such a great tune it would even work perfectly as a ringtone for your phone.
The game’s sounds itself aren’t anything special. When in the open world there’s just a continuous supply of honking horns. The soundtrack is quite boring honestly, it starts working on your nerves after a few minutes. Although that’s mainly due to the time you spend in most missions since they could take up quite some time now and then. Missions that look like they could be completed in a minute or 2 usually take about 15 minutes due to the challenging difficulty making you start over and over again.
Gameplay
Riskers is an indie action game, with some minor race game elements. The latter being a bit overdone as cars go so slow it’s not even funny. The game provides a certain difficulty causing you to play the game longer then you should need, were there the option of lowering the difficulty. Though it’s a nice change of pace for once in a while.
The game makes use of basic WASD, shift and mouse controls which makes it very easy to get used to. One nasty side effect to the easy controls is that everything goes so very slow. Your character gets a decent amount of speed whilst holding shift to sprint but when driving a car you go insanely slow. It’s almost as if you would be faster running which in some way is indeed a fact. Whilst sprinting you go faster than an AI vehicle and whilst driving you go a fair bit faster than an AI vehicle but just a little bit faster than sprinting. Because of the massive load of cars on the roads from time to time you get slowed down way more than it should making sprinting a far better option as well as it provides the option of taking shortcuts. Shooting, reloading and swinging your fist or baseball bat also goes at a rate that makes you want to fall asleep.
For an open world game it’s a bit of a plain and boring world. There’s nothing to do and all you can do is take slow cars and run over pedestrians without even the cops hindering you. Although when they do start shooting your vehicle one would suggest to get away immediately because in Riskers vehicles only need five bullets to explode.
The missions inside buildings do require some finesse making you want to play smarter and smarter as the game continues. You have the possibility of just going on a rampage by swinging your baseball bat hoping you won’t get shot down or you can play it smart and seek out lone wanderers with guns so you can perform a surprise attack and finish them off with the baseball bat in utmost silence. The latter definitely being the only true way of playing Riskers, since the first one will even get you barely through the first mission.
To sum it all up, the missions in the open world are boring, mainly because of the fact that the cars are extremely slow. There are missions such as following someone or taking someone to a certain place in town without damaging the car. When doing the first of both just mentioned, it’s extremely difficult not to get noticed since your target’s vehicle goes even slower than yours. The missions in which you have to escort someone require the right amount of patience, just follow the insanely low speed of the other AI vehicles and you should be fine, although you are going to have to deal with your passenger constantly screaming to go faster. The missions inside buildings are fun, they could make up with the open world missions and be extremely amusing but for that there should’ve been more speed to the movement.
Conclusion
Besides its slow movement, boring soundtrack, irritating crows and low framerate Riskers is actually worth the shot. Although the game is quite expensive for a game with maximum three hours to complete and close to zero replayablity. Its story is cliché but works well along with amusing missions inside the buildings which makes up for a boring open world. It would be recommended to give Riskers a shot especially when it’s in sale, but we can’t recommend it at its current price.
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