With the influx of looter shooters in recent times such as the hardcore games Day-Z and Escape From Tarkov, there has been a distinct lack of space pirate looter shooters. Fortunately a British developer Small Impact Games has partnered with Team17 to launch Marauders into early access on Steam. Bringing the looter shooter genre into an alternate universe where the Great War never ended, just relocated to the next frontier. Marauders has players going on raids in groups of up to 4, where anything they extract is going into their inventory. The danger being anything you bring in with you will be lost if you die on the raid, and there are plenty of other players and AI threats to deal with.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on Marauders and enjoyed the first tech test so much that I actually purchased it for a few friends to grow my squad and my chances of winning. Once I had a pirate crew together for the early access release, I realized that a lot of the piratical shenanigans get more enjoyable with a group but are just as playable solo. Read on for my first thoughts about Marauders in early access.

Gameplay

I’m holding my breath as I hear the metal creaking as the person outside the room walks closer. I stay sighted on the door that is the only entrance to the room I’m hiding in, with my inventory full of loot and the escape pods nearby. The steps stop, and we sit in silence. This remains for almost 2 minutes, neither of us breathing until there are gunshots on their side of the wall. I quickly run out of hiding, peek out the door, and fire down the hallway almost blindly. A muffled grunt and a ragdoll fall in the hallway, and I quickly dispatch the AI enemy that distracted the other player. I sit still for another moment, waiting for another enemy to attack me. None come so I swap some of my gear for the players, take some items, and take the escape pod out to safety. I survived another raid, and make some good money and crafting materials before I prep for another.

This sort of high-intensity moment-to-moment gameplay is the bread and butter of Marauders. Being able to successfully raid one of the maps and get out alive always involves an exhale of relief, and the moment those airlocks open your heart rate picks up. However, before that, you must fly your spaceship up to a docking zone for the raid area as other player ships do the same. There are alternate raid zones where you board AI ships, or you can board player ships to kill the crew and steal their ship. While this sounded like a blast, the reality is a little less fun. The boarding mechanics feel very cool when they work, and pretty lame when it teleports your breaching pod around the ship to enter the same spot another player just breached and they then gun you down while your screen is still blacked out. Definitely not fun when your gear is now gone.

Despite that, the boarding mechanics are still fun and do have potential, I just hope they work on it and the other aspects of space combat through Marauders’ stint in early access. With that out of the way, the gameplay is a blast when you have a chance to actually do it. Peeking corners and communicating with your teammates as you wander through these different raid environments make for a tense time, and failure to communicate could easily lead to you killing your teammates (as my friends and myself found out a few times before we figured it out). With a level of progression and a time limit much smaller than Escape From Tarkov, a looter shooter with much higher levels of intensity and frustration, I felt like it was almost arcadey for a tactical shooter. This isn’t a complaint, as my time with Marauders so far has been primarily fun with much less frustration than the aforementioned Tarkov.

Expectations

With the game only a few weeks into early access, it is already in a very playable place. Unexpected high volume has led to plenty of bugs and server instability, which can be very frustrating when you lose your gear because the game crashed. However, this is to be expected and hotfixes are being rushed out by the dev team. With a roadmap in place, there will be plenty more added to Marauders as it moves through early access but there are some glaring issues I had that I hope will be touched upon that weren’t mentioned in the roadmap.

My biggest complaint is the futility of getting better ships, the weird pacing of the space stage of the raid, and the boarding not feeling as fun as it should. Overall, it’s all space crap. There are multiple different ships that you can craft or steal, but as of getting my character to level 30, I haven’t kept a ship for longer than 3 raids before selling it or losing it. Now I just use the free Rustbucket ship to enter raids or harass other players, because I know if I bring a better ship I will get rushed by players in free ships and boarded. So it becomes I just speed to the airlock, and then on my way back from raiding I get picked off by players that waited in my airlock for me to steal my ship and loot. I rarely notice players using the upgraded ships, so I would like to see some changes that make them much more exciting to use. This could be something like raids that require certain ships or ships that can return if lost but not stolen.

Along with the previous point, the ship combat is frankly boring. Firing different types of ordinance at player ships should be interesting, but if you completely drop the other ships’ health they just stop moving and do damage over time to the players inside. This gives them time to get to escape pods or repair and then head to your ship, kill you, and use your ship to raid. This works both ways and boarding a ship because he broke mine was karmic retribution I put upon my enemies. This crosses over to boarding, where there are set boarding spots on all ships. Realistically these areas can be quickly covered by a competent crew, and I have been killed as soon as I boarded due to smoke and getting my gun out. Being able to board at other angles, encouraging space combat through space loot, or some way of making the space experience more rewarding are all needed.

Currently, the space stage of the raid feels like buffers on either end, where on the way in it is a calm before the storm, and the way out is just coming down from the raid. Realistically the first move for the breach or raid should be just as intense as the raid itself, even if the escape is calm due to grabbing an escape pod or knowing most players are dead.

Verdict

Marauders is definitely an early access title with some issues to work out and more content needed, but it is already great fun. As I have said, playing this by myself is fun for sure, but grabbing a crew of buddies to experience the highs and lows is way better. While the gunplay and weapon modifications can leave a little more to be desired, the overall experience is a blast and the simplicity allows the great sound design and atmosphere to shine through. Seeing the game through a mask adds to that, and the raid areas are all unique and fun to explore. The ai can be quite dumb at times, but I would be lying if I said they haven’t killed me a few times.

If you are a hardcore Day-Z or Tarkov player, this might be a little too gamey for you. However, compared to other shooters like Battlefield, Destiny, or Call of Duty, Marauders has a level of intensity that is much higher due to quicker deaths and loss of gear. Personally, Marauders has actually led to me playing Escape From Tarkov more because of how much I enjoyed the game and how it got rid of my “gear fear” (the fear of using gear in a raid because it could be lost). If you enjoy shooters and have a few buddies to play with, I would definitely pick up Marauders and at least give it an hour or so.

Marauders is available now on PC via Steam Early Access. Check out the launch trailer below and let us know your thoughts below! Have you been playing Marauders? Tell us what you think!