Stalin vs. Martians
By Lewis Denby
You’re going to take what follows as a recommendation, aren’t you? Please don’t. You almost certainly don’t want to spend your time and money on Stalin vs. Martians (or, to use its full name, Stalin vs. Martians: The Unknown Pages of the Second World War - Game of the Year Edition). It is, quite plainly, not very good at all. Anything I say may not be held against me. Just trust me on this one. Forget it ever happened.
Good old Mother Russia and friends deliver some fascinating games, but it’s not exactly a joyous output. There’s a bleakness and sincerity to this school of development, one that excels in evoking an inescapable sense of doom. Pathologic’s a game about an unstoppable plague, hell-bent on wiping out civilisation. Cryostasis is the haunting tale of an ice-bound ship, and the tragic fate of those onboard. Hopping across to neighbouring Ukraine, STALKER and its sort-of-sequel paint a chilling picture of the Chernobyl disaster, and place us in a cold, unforgiving and isolating environment.
Stalin vs. Martians is a game about Stalin taking on Martians.
This is a thoroughly surreal experience. It’s as if someone grabbed the RTS genre, multiplied its speed by ten and then removed all the strategy. It’s as if you were to take Borat, remove all its clever socio-political commentary, and just laugh at the silly accents. It’s really not very good at all, but at the same time, it’s gleefully hilarious. But mainly stupid. Really, really stupid.
It seems unfair to lambaste it for this, though. Stupidity is clearly the core intention here. This is a game sporting a completely irrelevant checkbox in the options menu that asks you whether you like cats. It’s a game where clicking on your troops triggers phrases such as “My name is Ivan! I like you!” and attacking an enemy produces yells of “Speak Russian or die!” It’s a game where you get to fire cannons at giant, blue elephants, and where the loading screens feature Communist photography with cartoon aliens Photoshopped in. At the start of each mission, you receive a letter from Stalin himself, signed off with “XOXO”. And the end of each mission, you wonder what the hell just happened.
You really don’t want to buy it.
It’s really not worth it, even though it’s enormously good fun. Once you realise it’s basically just a game of ‘charge at the opponents until they croak’, the brainless pointing and clicking becomes somewhat cathartic, and the sheer lunacy of the proceedings is rather refreshing. It’s incredibly tasteless, but in such an infantile way that it’s impossible to be offended. It’s colourful, and quirky, and features the most hysterically, brilliantly awful soundtrack known to man. In an odd sort of way, it’s incredibly amusing.
Total fifteen-minute amusement, though. It drags its heels something rotten when playing for any longer. You run aliens over with tanks and collect the pick-ups they drop to build your “economy.” Which you spend on calling for reinforcements, with which you can run over more aliens. If the game doesn’t chug to a halt in the meantime, you can charge around the map in search of objectives that don’t always make sense or aren’t properly explained. You repeat this until the end of the game. Or, rather, you don’t, as there’s about as much chance of you seeing it through as there is of, well, Stalin having ever taken on hordes of rainbow-coloured Martians.
Which is why you shouldn’t buy it.
The score’s for the normal people. The people who require competent “gameplay”, an engaging story, or - you know - anything to make any sense at all. The people who quite rightly don’t enjoy paying seventeen pounds for what is essentially a pretty awful game. But it is to take nothing away from Stalin vs. Martians’ trio of developers. This is quite clearly the product of a collective of minds working towards a common, if absolutely ludicrous, goal. It totally succeeds. A weird part of my soul loves them for that.
You’re not me. Don’t buy it.
3/10
[...] jucat dacă ai umor, e chiar foarte funny. Primul review, care zice că it’s enormously good fun şi-i dă 35% It’s really not worth it, even though [...]
As a reviewer, you understandably cannot say that stories of almost all games are garbage, but a real person can sometimes admit that there are only trace differences between the quality of plot in Stalin vs Martians and almost any of the epic blockbusters released last year.
So… yeah… it is not a good game by any format measure, but I don’t regret buying it. :)
I am a real person! Honest!
You’re a lucky one. I guess you fall into the same bizarre category as myself. Though I do suspect, had I actually paid for the thing, I’d be far less inclined to have enjoyed myself.
You’re unfortunately right about a lot of the big blockbuster stories. Some of my favourite videogame narratives - hell, *most* of my favourite videogame narratives - are from weird little indie games no one has heard of.
I hope the developers release their sales numbers. I wonder how many people might actually belong to this category.
It does interest me, but I would only get it if its on sale for at the most £5.
It’s one of the few occasions where the price has been a significant factor in my recommendation. For a fiver, like Xercies says, it might be worth it for the fifteen minutes of giggles. For the best part of twenty quid, you can get something far superior that fulfils the same purpose.
I suspect this is going to sell a lot either way, just for the curiosity factor. My take is that it’s irrefutably bad, but you feel somewhat in on the joke. Which is fine - until you realise you could have bought a much better game instead.
It’s probably the most fun I’ll ever have with a 35% game.
The game is £5 on Steam now, in celebration of Victory Day. :)
@Don Reba - I’d say that probably does change things a bit, as well. A fiver’s less bank-breakingly awful to deal with when you realise the game is bloody terrible. But, depending on your leanings, it might be worth that price for the laughs.