TL;DR: If Total Annihilation and Metal Fatigue had a love child, they would have probably named it Riftbreaker.

there's a new rift in town

Well, here's a pleasant surprise. With virtually every real-time strategy robot slaying game dredging up the soggy hokum of some distant planet, I was more than happy to try out EXORS Studios' action-packed base building/survival game, Riftbreaker. Using their proprietary game engine, the Schmetterling 2.0, Riftbreaker's impressive graphics had me all giddy as a schoolboy sucking helium out of a balloon.

The gameplay, even at this early stage is solid and is shaping up to be a cross between Metal Fatigue and Total Annihilation but with much more impressive graphics. The story is standard sci-fi fare: you take on the role of an elite scientist piloting a fully loaded mechanized robot that's attempting to create a rift that allows you to travel from distant planets back to earth and vice versa.

The demo weighs in at just under 4 gigs and allows you to explore a vast extraterrestrial landscape all the while battling a contingent of lizard-like inhabitants that don't take too kindly to you moving in on their turf. The game offers a heavy dose of base building, research upgrades, and customizable weapons which you can craft and enhance.

Using their proprietary game engine, the Schmetterling 2.0, Riftbreaker's impressive graphics had me all giddy as a schoolboy sucking helium out of a balloon.

What i liked

Graphics - Nice-looking graphics. Cool explosions with lots of blood and carnage when you blow up a bunch of enemy monsters.?

Destructible (somewhat) Environment - Set a bomb off and it leaves a sweltering hot mess on the ground. Use your chainsaw to clear away the overgrown foliage. For the most part, much of the landscape is fully destructible and has that very specific alien look to it. everything really looks alien-like. From the soft glow of the exotic plants to the crystals growing skyward from the ground, the developers have done a nice job at recreating a strange new world to explore.

Weapons/Upgrades - You can equip each arm of your mech with different weapons which adds variety to the combat.

what needs improvements

The difficulty- The demo seemed to be a bit on the easy side. Once you've upgraded your headquarters/base/mech to level 3, you're pretty much unstoppable. I'm sure the final version will add more of a challenge.

Lack of Tooltips - Again, I'm sure the final version will include a more robust set of information.?

Optimization - Strangely enough, the demo ran flawlessly on our first test rig with a 1080 Ti. On another rig, Riftbreaker ran with noticeable slowdowns even with a 2080 GTX inside. Go figure?

Overall, this is a great little demo that showcases nicely what we can expect from the final product. If the developers continue to polish up the gameplay and add in some hefty multiplayer features, Riftbreaker will indeed be breaking new ground in this overused genre. We can't wait for the full release!

Joel

Healthcare Professional, Gamer, and Writer all rolled up in one. He once opened up an old Atari 2600 to see if it had a heart ... and it did. Hence, the lifelong love affair with gaming.

www.walawala.gg