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Soldat

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Developer: Michal Marcinkowski
Publisher: Michal Marcinkowski
Genre: Action > General
Released: Mar 15, 2002
Players: 32

Website

- IGC 2005 Impressions

- Soldat Review

Have you ever found yourself lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering just how much better your life would be if someone decided to create a funky game fusion of Worms and Counter-strike, then pump it full of Red Bull and steroids?

Soldat is a real-time, multiplayer shoot 'em up combat game that has the soul of a vicious FPS packaged in the body of a system friendly side-scroller. Players move their soldiers around levels, strolling across hills and using their jet packs to navigate environments that bear no small similarity to ant farms, all the while trying their hardest to evade hurricanes of small arms fire.

Deaths and respawns come equally quickly in any of the many versions of gameplay ranging from CTF to King of the Hill to the �€œman with the golden gun�€? style John Rambo mode and more. Having the patience to deal with being fragged by another player who isn't even on the screen but is just spraying bullets wildly around the level, and still come back for more is even more of a challenge than it sounds, which means that the game, while simple to pick up and learn, is only going to be for a select group of gamers. But for those gamers who love their gameplay furious and chaotic, Soldat is a superb (and free!) choice.

Graphics: -
Graphics in Soldat are competent, but most importantly they are easy to handle. Any PC should be able to handle the simple pixel graphics of Soldat. This compatibility is a big plus for a game that's meant to have a robust on-line gaming community. Because characters are so small in the game and the environments can have so many obscuring plants and trees, it can be hard to find your little soldier at times, but that can be both a blessing and a curse. If you can't find him, chances are the bullets won't either.

Another effect of the small size of characters, and the relatively small size of levels, is that the almost constant spray of weapon-fire across the screen can be disorienting. The maximum of action is packed into a minimum of screen real estate. This can lead to some epic battles as well as some frustrating insta-deaths.

Sound: -

The sound in Soldat is in a similar vein to the graphics. It's there and it works, but it won't win any awards. Sound effects for each of the guns are loud and jarring and help add to the action-packed atmosphere of the game, but they also sound rough and unpolished. It's useful to have the effects on though, because then you'll know just what style of armament is about to be unloaded in your direction (the wind up of the chain gun is especially telling).

Gameplay: +
Soldat's gameplay is easy to pick up. Arrow keys move the soldiers around. The left mouse button fires whatever the main weapon is, the right mouse button engages the jet pack every soldier comes equipped with. There are alternate attacks and secondary weapons, but let's face it, you're probably not going to live long enough to worry about them.

There's very little to screw up with Soldat's control scheme. Players can go where they want when they want to and subtle movements are not the name of the game here. It would be very hard to botch control on this style of game.

However, in a point I will keep revisiting, Soldat is not for everyone. The average lifespan for a single go-round is about 45 seconds. Granted, the respawn is only a matter of seconds, and with each respawn players can choose from their pick of 10 gnarly weapons, but gamers who expect more consistent life functions from their characters will probably be frustrated. It's not like other players will be any better off though; skill only gets you so far in Soldat, the rest is the simple dumb luck of not getting hit by a stray bullet from some area of the map you've never even considered traveling to.

Value: +
Soldat is an exceptional value. Any gamer who loves fast and furious multiplayer combat has no excuse for not picking up Soldat for the staggeringly attractive price of free. With 7 games modes and 42 different maps, Soldat is not a chintzy freeware game. Soldat is a fully realized multiplayer experience that simply should be tried at least once by everyone. The $9 reg. fee opens up certain features like custom player profiles and a map editor as well as the option to use one's own MP3s for the soundtrack (a nifty little feature), but all the core gameplay is free as a bird.

Concept: +

Soldat's concept is not new. The gameplay style has Counter-strike written all over it and the levels and look pay homage to games like �€˜Worms�€™ and �€˜Lemmings�€™. However, to combine the simplicity of the latter with the intense action of the former is a refreshing change indeed. Granted, Soldat�€™s style of refreshing may be more like having your head jammed in a bucket of ice water than like basking in a soft summer's breeze, but Soldat is a welcome paradigm shift in the indie world, a market that sometimes seems to be inundated by puzzle clones and Arkanoid rips.

Fun: +
Despite my distaste for how quickly I tend to eat it in Soldat, I cannot resist the lure of handing out, fresh from my own personal cannery, whup-ass by the barrelful. Constant gunfire is the great equalizer in Soldat and it makes it so that anyone can be the top of the rankings. It's so easy to pick up at the outset and it's so easy to start back up after you've been turned into a pile of pixelated goo, that Soldat can't be un-fun.

Overall: +
Soldat was almost an 8 here. It was almost a game that should make people really think hard about what kind of gamer they are before they drop cash on this worthy title. But Soldat is free. Soldat costs you nothing. Zero. Nada. It's a small installation and it will work on pretty much any PC. Don't want to get fragged by random gamers on the net? Fine. Play the bots. Bots too hard... make them dumber. Don't like using the Desert Eagles, just pick the chain gun on your next respawn. Don't like King of the Hill? Play Capture the Flag instead. Seriously, people, it's free. Get it. Reach out and pwn somebody.

By: Michael Scarpelli
Posted: Friday October 21, 2005