Mother Russia Bleeds

Played this game with two buddies and we played through the whole thing. took about 4 hours but we had such a kickass time. The gore, the violence, the creepiness and fun bashing little pixel people to death. Deep combat system, that we kept finding new things to do up until the very end. The ending is good, but the story up to it was confusing. Not a bad thing, because it had a somewhat story and we all kept up with what we could while drinking that night. Worth it on sale and if you have some buddies. Can be fun single player, but beat em ups are all about the couch co-op.

That game slapped me in the face hard ! It's overwhelmingly fun, violent, bad talking, with that creepy russian atmosphere. Great pixel art, good gameplay, multiplayer friendly, and top of the top, the incredible soundtrack by Fixions ! That guy made a legendary work with the music !! Any beat'em all fan should have played that game.

MRB appears (and likely wants to be seen as) inspired by two big stand-outs of their genre: Streets of Rage and Hotline Miami, which makes it hard to judge on its own merits and not to think of certain things as borrowed. I liked some of the design and aesthetics choices. The grotesque and extreme vice and violance reminded me of TROMA movies (like Toxic Avenger and Return to Nuke 'Em High). It's consistent in its style and appears to be something the developers really wanted to do right, and, in my opinion, they succeeded at that. I think that the game could've benefited more if it wasn't done in the pixel style. Something makes me think that it was done as a tribute to both Streets of Rage and Hotline Miami, and as a statement to current fashion of nostalgia in gaming. Pixels may be justified as a way to give the game a 'grittier' look, but I think that they steal from its potential uniqueness. Sound design is ok. Every punch and kick sounds right and satisfying, which, in my opinion, considering the genre, should be expected. The music is fitting, but not very memorable. It's synth-wave / retro-electro, that's in every game nowadays. The gameplay isn't quite 'there'. This is the hardest part to explain, because one really has to play it to get the feel of it. Most enemies and bosses have too much hp, and fighting them feels tedious. There are some issues with alligning the fighter with enemies so as not to miss them. This issue is especially apparent with Natasha because she has the shortest reach. Some of them have cheap attacks, but there aren't that many. On the positive side, there's enough variety in type of enemies and ways to deal with them (including shoot 'em up sections). The story. I didn't follow it for the most part. It didn't seem very complex or deep. I didn't find myself invested into it. It's an okay beat 'em up with a unique and stylish setting.

So here it is, the successor or Hotline Miami, that might actually suffer from the comparison. People hate it, people love it, I took the time to read quite a few reviews coming from one side or the other, and felt the need to add my own stone to this doddering edifice. Like many people who bought the game day one, I was very excited to see what our little french studio Le Cartel could do to revive a genre that died last century. I wasn't expecting anything revolutionary, just a great homage and a game that I would gladly go back to once in a while to get my shot of adrenaline and stupid pixelated violence. Well, the violence is here. The game has a good feedback, something essential in fighting games in general. I played it with some xbox 360 controller and it vibrates nicely when charging, beating, head crushing or getting your own ass kicked. The sound effects are simple but efficient : bam goes the punch, bim goes the kick, kaboom goes the loaded fist, BONG goes the metal bar on the head, JSHDFKJSDBGK go the brain cells on the ground. The controls are pretty simple. A punch that can be charged, a kick that can combo with normal punch, a grab that allows you to punch, charged punch or throw your target on other foes, and a jump that allows air kicks and anti-air-kicks. You can also dash or run, which mostly allows you to tackle your enemies back to the center of the screen or to aggressively put them on the ground to, once again, punch/charged punch their head until it explodes. The big mechanic of the game is that Nekro thing that you can drain randomly from convulsing enemies and can be loaded up to 3 doses. Each dose can be used either to heal yourself or to turn into a raging, bloodthirsty berserk gypsy. Regarding the graphics, they are as promoted in the trailers. It's a bit messy and you need some imagination to understand some animations sometimes, but overall I like it like that. Now, the big pros and cons. First, I personally really like the atmosphere of the game, and it's in my sense how the game really revived Beat them ups. The genre was really linked to the 80's/90's, with dem punks and dem prostitutes you had to show the ways of justice to. Nowadays, it seems a bit out of date of plainly ludicrous. I guess society evolves and what was supposed to be the big deviant thing back then doesn't feel so threatening now. So MRB turn the tables and puts you in the shoes (if any) of some dirty gypsy who ended up as guinea pig in some sort of secret governmental experiment. You will wander through depraved places, from the -oh so original- sewers to some pretty fucked up night clubs, and up to the classic tower of the bad guy. The story doesn't really tell what the experiment was for, but you don't like it and you want to kick some ass, plain and simple. Or that's how I'd like it to be. But the game wanted to have a scenario. Well, fine, fine, I don't mind going through some dialog boxes and more dialog boxes and... okay I give up, start to skip, thanks. Took me some time to actually skip the dialogues, but they felt a bit generic. Especially your revolutionary friends that explain you the detailed plan. I already know what the plan is, damnit! My goddamned AI allies are going to die and I'm going to kick asses or die trying, there is no sublimity

cool stuff to play with a buddy