An Arcadey Auto-Battler That Can’t Quite Overcome Its Grind
Much like Raptor Evolution, Rage Swarm is an auto-battler that has been ported from mobile to the Xbox Store by QubicGames. Unlike Raptor Evolution, Rage Swarm has some merit. There isn’t a whole lot of strategy, but there is still some.
An auto-battler, in case you’ve not encountered one, is a game that shoots/attacks/raptor-claws enemies without you having to do much at all. You position yourself near the target and the game does the rest. Most of the time, the player input comes from how you outfit and level up your character. If you’re progressed enough, the battle will work out in your favour.
A One-Stick Non-Shooter
Rage Swarm looks, from screenshots, like a twin-stick shooter. Goons appear from the top of your screen while you have control over your red-haired character’s movement. That means you can hide, nipping behind shipping containers so that bullets don’t nick you. You can also run away, searching for a more convenient killing field. But, unlike a twin-stick shooter, you position yourself to auto-fire at a critical, incoming threat.
There are a few level types to mix this up. The best are long levels broken up into discrete sections. You might arrive by dinghy, jump onto an oil rig, kill some baddies and then zipline to the next area. There you fight some more bad guys, and so on.
There’s a joyful, arcadey feel to these levels. They remind me of Die Hard Trilogy on the ol’ PS1, albeit with a very different viewpoint, as the enemies die and the level tells me to go, go, go! After four or five hours, you recognise the modular pieces that make up these levels, but for a large proportion of time they are the standouts.
A Very Fashionable Dash Of Roguelike
There’s some neat borrowing from roguelikes, too. Enemies drop red briefcases, and these contain a choice of perks: things like larger ammo clips, faster bullets and a second-chance after death. The perks are persistent for the next few levels, and then they reset, making them a semi-permanent benefit. They’re clever because they are rubber-banding for poorer players. If you keep failing, you can keep stockpiling upgrades. Eventually you’ll be able to brute-force the blocker.
Other levels include survival sequences – where you fight against the clock to protect a witness – and boss levels, which super-sizes one of the game’s enemies and turns them into a boss. Don’t expect tanks or helicopters in these encounters: they’re mostly recycled assets used in a half-clever way. In our experience, the boss levels are the easy ones. Rage Swarm is at its hardest when the enemies swarm you, cornering you in the process. A singular boss is never at risk of doing that.
These levels play in rotation. At level 1 you play a long encounter, then a survival, then a short encounter and finally a boss. From there, you move onto level 2, ad infinitum.
Completion of each sub-level hands you XP, gold and a loot chest. XP eventually levels you up, unlocking new upgrades to buy and better stats. Gold is used to purchase those newly unlocked upgrades, as well as upgrades to your gear. The loot chest nets you loot which the gold upgrades. But you will also need blueprints to complete those loot upgrades, and they’re periodically handed out from level up and purchasable loot chests.
The MTX Is No More! It Is Ex-MTX!
While Rage Swarm may look like it’s got microtransactions, it doesn’t – not really. The mobile version of Rage Swarm has been gutted so that all the MTX has been removed. Soft currency for the loot chests is instead handed out from a few places: a Challenge mode that says it refreshes daily but absolutely does not; a Dailies/Weeklies/Achievements system that, again, doesn’t actually reset daily or weekly; and from level up.
We say that there is ‘not really’ any microtransactions because Rage Swarm comes with DLC. You can buy some one-time loot and resource packs for your avatar for a few quid each.
I’m on the fence about these. They don’t offer all that much, but they DO offer epic and mythical gear. These tiers are available in-game, but the drop-rates are bizarrely low. I think QubicGames wants players to use the Merge function to turn rare items into epic, and epic into mythical. But the sheer amount of grind and time to find mergeable items boggles our tiny little minds. Considering there are achievements to earn epic and mythical gear, it feels like you’re very much being pushed to pay money.
Ground Down By The Grind
The balance between enjoyment versus grind is at the core of Rage Swarm. It’s actually a rather mindless but pleasant game to play. If you’re anything like us, you will have immediate reactions to certain kinds of enemies. Flamethrower enemies must be kept at arm’s length: you have a longer reach than them, but their hits are devastating. Grenade-throwers are best at close range. They only throw grenades away from themselves. Snipers need to be killed asap.
This creates a neat heartbeat to the game, as you step into an area and react to what’s in it. That heartbeat might change as you get new weapons. We found a laser weapon and suddenly we could be more aggressive. Offence was the best defence, as we would preserve our hitpoints if we got in their faces.
But there’s a limit to enemy variety. As the levels progress, new enemy types are added, and they’re not all that different from what came before. I also hankered for something other than a white male soldier in a coloured vest. We half-wanted Rage Swarm to ditch the soldiers and go full Left 4 Dead with bloated enemies, leaping enemies, and more.
Still Enraging
A lack of enemy variety is damaging when there is so much grind on offer. Not only do the levels blur into one, but you have to play some levels repeatedly. To purchase certain upgrades, you need to play Challenge level after Challenge level, and that becomes monotonous. It feels like accommodations have been made for the move from mobile to console, but the balancing – and resulting grind – is not one of them. More soft-currency as default, like Raptor Evolution managed, would have been welcome.
Rage Swarm feels like it got half-way through a successful port from mobile to console. While there are no microtransactions, the grindy free-to-play identity is still there. With some more surgery, extracting the tedium, this sporadically fun auto-battler would have been less, um, enraging.
Important Links
Download from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/rage-swarm/9p84j37bk6kg
Grab the Complete Edition – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/rage-swarm-complete-edition/9n1s2zd2qvwc
