I love it when I do the “Back in my day!” jokes, because back in my day was just under twenty years ago. Back then we didn’t have useless multiplayer shoveled into everything from Fallout, Metal Gear Solid, and the rumored The Sims 5. Multiplayer has become so ingrained in modern gaming, it is almost unacceptable to ship a game without online functions to nickel-and-dime players. However, we’re not talking about The Culling Origins, mostly because I have another C-word for that game and its developer.

Nevertheless, I’ve lamented for long enough about Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (the good one) and how no one aims for that anymore. 120 bots taking on 119 bots and me? Count me right in on that and I’ll call it one of the greatest games ever made. Why? Because that is the definition of fun; Huge battles, explosions everywhere, bodies flying across the screen, and wondering why you can small charred Wookie. Instead, we’ve had these “levelutions” (stupid bloody name) that were so revolutionary to gameplay in 2011. We also had them back in 2000 with the Tony Hawk’s series of games.

Give me hundreds of bots, some stupid weapons, and a map the size of my behind following lockdown and all these cookies I’ve been eating. Ravenfield is currently in early access and is a game that does just that. It is filled with bots that look like those plastic green army men that would be spat at by teenagers pretending they care about the environment, all while they type away on their new iPhones made of precious metals made by children for a slave wage. I might have gotten sidetracked, but these little green men are now blue and red and want to stab each other. More accurately, their AI wants to kill you and your side, and vice versa, but we’ll not get bogged down in semantics.

Much like that Rooster Teeth thing I’ve heard so much about, it is Red vs Blue, and you are in the middle like that kid from The Incredibles shouting: “That was totally wicked!” Though without the green witch from Frozen and Kristin Chenoweth. The archipelago level alone is complete madness, as you have an aircraft carrier on one side firing out helicopters and spitfires, while the islands off in the distance are firing at your boat. As everyone barrels out the bottom of the ship to dinghies and helicopters alike, it is a chaotic bundle of blue men who hardly understand what their limbs are doing, running to do the only thing they know-how. Kill those filthy reds.

However, as much praise as I’ll shower on Ravenfield for its madness and the wonder that military shooters miss; flying the helicopters and planes is just awful. It is like trying to pleasure a woman with your analog sticks on the Xbox controller instead of her genitals, it is not going to work. Yes, I’m already using the mouse to control the game, however, when I want to look left I end up talking to Sebastian about all the things that are neat and how my collection is complete. After a tiny jolt I’ve lost which way is up. Now I don’t know about you, but when flying it is best to know which way to look to find the hard stuff that is going to kill you.

Other than that, it is all plain sailing. Everything else uses common sense, i.e WSAD, R, F, G, Z, Space, Caps Lock (a good button), Shift, Ctrl, Alt, and Return. Firing is as simple as you can make it and aiming couldn’t be easier. There are only two things that i’ll mention are bugs I’ve encountered: Automatic reloading does not reload sometimes, and the respawn clock sometimes pulls a Microsoft and resets. In early access, developed by a single person (to my understanding), I can forgive those being the only bugs. Code is messy after all.

Other than the archipelago, the maps are a bit simple. They either have combat that is too close, or I just can’t get a feel for them with my style of play. Being sensible now, I often use the sniper rifle to pop the reds heads off. I also use AA-AA handguns which are duel-wielding automatic handguns with explosive ammo (don’t fire at your feet), and the Hydra. Of course, there is a whole swathe of other trinkets to play with, an airhorn so powerful you knock some men over, and so on. However, the biggest takeaway is the chaos that ensues from the number of bots.

Yes, you could have a small number fighting up the beaches of islands in a battle of blue and red paint flying everywhere, but we know larger is better. If you can handle it with a monster of a PC, you could rightly have 500 bots flying, sailing, and shooting across archipelago having what can only be described as a battle of madness. If you go for close-quarters combat, Coastline with 500 bots would just be stupid and fun. Clearly, I’ve not done that because my PC wants to cry half the time at just 120, and I dare not push it.

The last thing I’ll talk about is something stupid, and you may have noticed, I love stupid. There is a mode in the match options, it is titled “paint explosions” and it does what it says on the tin. The blood of these little army men is paint, and if you go for a really long match they begin spilling these paint splodges everywhere. Though with the explosion mode, every drop is an explosion, so if you’re shot you’ll explode. Sometimes it is fun to kill one guy on the opposing team, because then it kills a squad. Then when you’re spawn-camped there is a concertina effect where they are low on points and this puts them ahead. It’s stupid and annoying, but I love it nonetheless.

That is Ravenfield in a nutshell, stupid and fun, but loveable nonetheless. Yes, flying is about as easy as getting through an airport without feeling violated by the TSA, but shooting planes down is just as fun as anything else. The slow-mo button makes explosions as stupid and 80s-reminiscent as possible, and you feel like nothing can or will stop you. The best part of it all is that you don’t have to listen to a 12-year-old shout racial slurs because they heard a YouTuber shout them. It is chaotic fun exclusively built for me.

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