By Kieron Gillen on August 14th, 2009 at 11:11 am.
I’ve been keeping this new Steam-downloadable third-person shooter on a browser tab for a while, in hope that a demo comes out for it. Except the developers are apparently off on holiday, so that seems to be unlikely. Let’s give it a plug anyway, if only because its feature list includes things like “Fill your buckets with blood by causing suicide bombers to explode prematurely or shoot gory head shots!”. Also, achievements for slaughtering chickens. Ah, chicken. The most persecuted of fowl. It’s just over a fiver right now, and you can get it from here. And see it in action below…
Foreign Legion – Buckets of blood – Teaser from Sakari Indie on Vimeo.
Oh – and Perseus from the comments thread has actually played it. His review’s here.
This video tells me…well nothing really. What kind oif game is this? Multiplayer? Is it a “defend the house” type thing where you are essentially a mounted turret?
really not clear…
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It’s a defend-the-point type game, which despite the steam description claiming to have “A broad range of difficulty and levels with action-packed fun for both casual and veteran players!”, only contains one actual level. It’s good, brief fun, but I wouldn’t recommend it to people that aren’t fanatical lovers of defense missions.
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Agree with Howard. Attracted and fascinated as I might be by chicken blood, I need more INFORMATION to make, well, an informed decision on whether or not I need this game.
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@ Daneil Klein – You won’t get it.
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The video made me think “Lego Serious Sam,” which is just bizarre.
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The only review I’ve read says the game is half hour lengt and only has one map. =(
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Ja, I’ve had a play, and it’s incredibly transitory (one actual map, generic defend-against-waves gameplay unto infinity-or-until-you-quit-in-disgust) as experiences go. Also, the animation, interface, visuals and gameplay are all, in a word, serviceable. Serviceable, and nothing more. You could spend those five pounds on many things of greater subsequent value, like a bag of eggplants.
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If you’ll forgive the shameless plug but I’m one of the few to have writen any kind of review so if you want to read my opinion of it click here.
The short version is it’s pretty good but as it stands vastly overpriced. Free DLC is promised and since sales look like they’ve been pretty good it might be worth a gamble but what you get as soon as you hand over your money just isn’t worth it unless your prepared to play the exact same level point defence level 40 times to try and increase your score. Yeah, I know it’s just a fiver but this really game is that short. It currently clocks in at 10 minutes long and you can 100% the achievements in half an hour. Oh and it’ll also be far too easy for more experienced players. Apart from all that it’s good dumb fun.
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Perseud: Added a link to your review.
KG
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This trailer shows a bit more of the action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnXRxKpJ0Og
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@ Persus – That’s the review I read. =)
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I like the Lego-esque look, but there’s no way I’m paying 5 bucks for one 10 minute level.
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And they haven’t been sued/hired by Lego yet?
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£5=€5=$5
Any questions?
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@ KG – That’s awesome, thanks.
@ Andresito – :)
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@Heliocentric,
Time to turn all three currencies into the Westo-buck and unite Europe and America?
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Thats what the developers of this game think, that or they are lazy when they fill in forms.
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Thats what the developers of this game think, that or they are lazy when they fill in forms.
Or far more likely, Valve have been leaning on the little guys again and “suggesting” a price point… Wouldn’t be the first time a game has been priced higher than the price point originally wanted by the developers due to Valve’s money grabbing greediness.
As it is, the game is very fun. And I don’t get the problem with the length of game, boiled down to basics it’s no different to the likes of TF2 or CSS in that you perform the same old thing on the same old maps…
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By hook or by crook (or by Persus-9) you did! ;)
I’d make a quip about the United States of Eurasia (great song, btw) but we’ll be there soon enough, I fear.
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Valve doesn’t push price points like that, bansama. Sakari guys chose this out of their own free will.
It’s also ridiculous to suggest this thing here offers the same variety as L4D and TF2.
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Valve doesn’t push price points like that, bansama. Sakari guys chose this out of their own free will.
Yes, they do. I have that on good authority from several indie developers who have all said as much.
It’s also ridiculous to suggest this thing here offers the same variety as L4D and TF2.
Boil those games right down to their basics — ie, achieve set goals while killing things on the same map — and yes, this game is no different. There is no “variety” in the basics of L4D or TF2, the variety comes in the mutliplayer interaction.
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@bansama
I would have completely doubted that, Ive always thought that it was the games devs/publishers deciding that Europe and the UK were populated by complete fuckwits and pricing accordingly. I would be surprised to hear Valve coming over all heavy like microsoft do with their xbox live and forcing prices.
But, as it is I have no proof either way.
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Thing is, Valve are at the very least partially to blame, because they certainly allow regional gouging.
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It’s one thing to lack variety in the basics of a game (how many multiplayer games can we say are actually diverse?), but another entirely to lack variety in its scenery and map design. L4D’s four campaigns may not be a ton, but they’re nice in how different they feel, and TF2′s gameplay variates based on the map played — and this is coming from little old me, who doesn’t particularly care for TF2. Foreign Legion has one level — ten minutes of play. To “boil those games right down to their basics” is a weak argument to compare games that admittedly have a few basic mechanics but that are stretched with content so as to be replayable to a game that doesn’t even seem to try, future content notwithstanding.
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The game looks fun. With the promise of new content for free, looks well worth the fiver they are asking.
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Also, I love a game that uses a OSS 3d modeling tool (Blender)
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I reviewed this recently too – I didn’t think this was worth the money at all.
I’ve played far better (and far far longer) games for about the same cost (eg: pVz, MonkeyIsland remake)
I doubt you’ll see a demo unless they add tons more, because a game of this only lasts 10 minutes.
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Sounds like it isn’t really worth the price yet. If they do add free DLC, I’d rather just pick it up then, rather than pay full price now and hope it someday becomes worth the money.
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Yeah, maybe I’ll pick this up when it’s half off again (75% off?) and has an hour of gameplay instead of 10 minutes.
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Behold; Lego Call of Duty 4
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On the $1=1€ thing something I read once from the Witcher guys is that it goes kind of like this:
Valve: “So you want this game to be $X.XX, right?”
(American) Dev/Publisher: “Yep.”
Valve: “Good. We’ll also price it X,XX€ in Europe. So, hows the weather where you are?”
D/P: “Um, sounds good … oh yeah the weather’s fine here, how about you?”
Whereas the Witcher guys, being from Poland, instead said “Wait, wait a minute, that’s not the price of a normal game in Poland! It should be Y,YY€!” Valve: “Are you sure you want to do that?” etc.
Also, when its Ubisoft, they also notice the discrepancy, being French and all, but realize that this means more money! and go along with it.
I may be completely wrong about all of the above.
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So, if I buy this now to support it, looking forward to the DLC, and then they announce Foreign Legion 2: More buckets of blood, and then I get slightly perturbed and say “wait, you said you were going to add more, and fix some problems, I don’t think I shall be buying the sequel” will I be labeled an AIM and ridiculed by those that are eagerly awaiting FL2:MBOB saying “Don’t be daft, you got a patch that added nifty hats and fixed the ‘butter for helmets’ bug”?
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Looks like fun. That said, I would prefer to see longer, more involved gameplay coming out of indie developers. If people can make (pardon me) buckets of cash off of a half-hour’s gameplay I could see that starting a trend.
My understanding, from talking with indie and not-so-indie devs: Steam is not your magical friend, unless you happen to be a customer. It’s a business. When you sell a game through them, you enter into a partnership in which you, the dev, are decidedly junior. I would not be surprised at all if strategy and pricing for smaller games were dictated by Valve.
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The Steam forums indicate that the game can be finished in 7-10 minutes, so I’d say that the likelihood of a demo is low.
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It looks like it could be Lego COD.
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BUMP
I think we just made our promise.. if you are still not sure take a look at the new trailers we put out. more maps more weapons and we added some extra’s on top of that.
http://www.sakari-indie.com
Hope you like it!
Pepijn Rijnders
Creative Director
Sakari Indie
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