There’s a foreboding sense of unease when skulking through the titular grimy metro tunnels beneath Moscow in 4A’s survival series, or sneaking through the shrubs under the cover of night inStalker, listening as your Geiger counter ticks away to the drum of gargled screams.
These games, inspired by the legendary Strugatsky Brothers' novel Roadside Picnic, flawlessly capture the crushing loneliness of humanity and how inconsequential we are to the universe. We’re a pitstop on the intergalactic road, and alone we rifle through the anomalous litter left by celestial wanderers.
While many of the stories inspired by the seminal 1972 book seek to capture and oftentimes take that isolation further, Pioner walks a different path. It’s an MMO withextraction shooter elements, set to the backdrop of a Soviet island devastated by radiation. Strewn across the laboratories and bunkers are anomalies and artefacts, but rather than venturing into the zone yourself to scavenge what remains you can find, you do so with friends by your side. It’s a much more communal experience, yet the unease is still as persistent as ever.
Pioner’s Traditional MMO Dungeons Have A Distinct Metro Flare
Last week, I was given the chance to get hands-on with Pioner and rummage through a rundown manufacturing plant with a couple of teammates by my side, and it was interesting to see the mesh between traditional MMO and Stalker-inspired FPS gameplay. While the world feels slightly disjointed, with you loading into the dungeon through a typical MMO queue, once your feet are firmly planted, it feels oddly like home.
Familiar-sounding cultists rant in the distance, their chants reverberating down the halls, and makeshift barricades can be seen erected along the walls, ready to hold back any overzealous interlopers. There’s so much detail and history to every shred of environmental debris. This also extends to weapons, as we take hold of scratched and dishevelled Western European and Soviet guns, matched in their wear and tear by the scarcity of ammo on offer.
Despair is at the forefront of Pioner as much as it is Stalker and Metro, as we navigate contested, inhospitable zones with limited supplies. An MMO risked upending that feeling with timer-based abilities, classes, and the help of teammates, but it’s clear that Pioner is an MMO second, and a survival shooter first, feeling far closer to its inspirations than other entries in the genre.
You’ll still find that there’s an emphasis on taking each scenario slowly, positioning yourself tactically so that you can exploit openings to pick off enemies without risking it all in a Hail Mary of gunfire (wasting what precious little you have). Healing is equally restricted; rather than adopting the traditional roles of tank, DPS, and healer, you’re a rag-tag squad of soldiers, surviving by the skin of your teeth with the few medkits and tinned cans you scrounge between gunfights. Having friends doesn’t get rid of the stress, you just get to be stressedtogether.
But there are still elements to dungeons that feel distinctly MMO. They’re incredibly linear, with pit stops along the way for reviving teammates, split into several combat arenas that push you to work as a squad at the risk of enemies overwhelming you. There are also objectives that, if you attempt to go it alone, will inevitably leave you flailing around and riddled with bullet holes. One, for instance, tasks you with holding a point while waves of enemies swarm your team, and it’s vital you don’t let them get too close, or you’ll end up on the other side of a dozen cultist axes.
The balance struck is impressive: Pioner feels like a multiplayer Stalker game, but it doesn’t lose its edge or grit, even with someone by your side.
Pioner’s AI Is A Little Wonky
Granted, it’s not perfect. The cultists often rattled off the same voice lines, which made the carefully crafted atmosphere suddenly feel superficial and shallow. That wasn’t helped by their lacklustre AI, either. While they’re split into specific roles, like melee and sniper, that often just means standing in place and taking pot shots, leaving themselves fully exposed, or charging mindlessly at us.
They aren’t the smartest bunch, relying on their numbers to overwhelm rather than working as a group. Coming from Stalker and Metro, where enemiesfeelas real as the ground beneath your boots, it’s a little jarring. But that’s an MMO hallmark that often comes par for the course with spreadsheet combat, as enemies are corralled into one spot by a tank for you to wipe out with AoEs and other abilities.
But with Pioner feeling so much closer to Stalker than something likeWorld of Warcraft, the simplistic AI is distractingly out of place. The environments felt lived in, as though every scene told a story, but the inhabitants behave oddly like wind-up dolls.
I’ve yet to see what the world of Pioner feels like beyond its dungeons, or how PvPvE zones bottle theEscape from Tarkovexperience into an MMO, but so far, GFAGAMES has done a fantastic job of encapsulating what made Stalker and Metro so special. It’s grimy — you can almost smell the filth and sweat dripping off the grotty armour — and the ramshackle defences erected atop rundown Soviet structures are meticulous. It’s a treat to just stop and stare at this world, appreciating all the care put into it.
There are some minor niggles, and I’d like to see more from the story and just how much truth there is to it being playable solo, but for now, Pioner is shaping up to be something special.
