«Vladik, you are a postmodernist» – a monograph by Vladik Brutal

Vladik Brutal product, if not interesting, then notable for a number of reasons. This is both an example of counter-culture, opposed to modern gaming trends, and nostalgic curtsy towards classic shooters, stupid, aggressive and straightforward, and an art object, representing a sense of life in the post-Soviet space, and, finally, an example of what one person can do-technically, Vladislav Meshcheryakov did not do one, and in everything, and in everything, from everything, from all over, fromSpecial effects to music, other artisans participated, but for brevity we will talk about the game as an author’s creation.

Belonging to these loud categories, as well as many features of the smaller value, make from Vladik Brutal the game of rightfully extravagant and outstanding. Moreover, to be objectively high -quality and “good” in the most general sense for this, which is interesting, is not required. However, a significant game will appear only in the context of a special vision, which, I, who brought this spino -button jumper to the final, is still capable and wish to share.

As you can understand, the conversation will go on very specific topics, which in places are more cultural than my blog may not rise at all. However, I will say key thoughts at once-Vladik Brutal game is controversial, not entirely belonging to the works of competent or hopeless trash, but existing somewhere at the junction of these states, while combining them in itself. How is it possible? In short, then the matter is in the gamemeradean ability to focus the player’s attention on the merits and hide the shortcomings. And if I love, then vladik Brutal is both imitation and deconstruction – a genuine child of postmodernism.

What is this of your postmodernism, definitions and views there are a lot – who does not write down in it. YouTuber conflicts with each other are postmodernism, installation of a banana glued to the wall – also. I understand this phenomenon is quite simple – if the tradition was a combination of behaviors and systems of views that have been unchanged for tens and even hundreds of years, and modernism is a radical change in these attitudes, offering new forms and methods of judgments, goal -setting, self -expression, then modernism, in essence, makes fun of both of these temporary epochs, along the way, mixing them along the time.achievements and as a result generating something new.

Post-modern not because it is written on the wall, but because it is written on the wall in a bad good video game made by a Russian-speaking developer and based on the common experience of life and the cultural paradigms of residents of the CIS space

Well, accordingly, Vladik Brutal, in fact, does nothing else, except as the existing one, perverts it (intentionally or by accident) and represents something new, chaotic, but amazing to the viewer’s court.

What is this your vladik-frankly, it is such a imbuier of Half-Life 2, to which the author himself is not hiding both in the form of a parody and full-fledged expulsion. Everything, from the appearance of the operatives, the design of the puzzles and the notorious mount to the method of interaction with the game and traveling along it, is inspired by the iconic movement of Mr. Freeman through the fields and the gateway to the victory of a simple human good.

We will talk about how to all this is played in the current iteration. So far, we will decide that no catharsis with the release of Vladik has happened in the industry, everything has long been stolen by Valve, and in a good way the Karmak and Wolfenstein 3d. It’s time to talk about what the new «Vladik» brings to this concept – about the same postmodernism.

First of all, it is worth noting how the game positions itself – how it could already be expected, rather dualistic. Vladik is certainly a parody, but there is no satire as such, there are no situational gags or verbal jokes – the game does not try to be a comedy, but it does not want to be solid either too. The world of the game is such a kind of distorted reflection of both game concepts and our notorious reality, thereby creating the world at the same time funny and terrible in view of its recognition and alienation.

Finally about the narrative

The scene of the game takes place in a certain dysfunctional country in Eastern Europe, the Osko country of the former USSR-the place where the economy is decadent, the culture is vascular, the power is authoritarian, and the life of the gloomy. Somewhere, policemen are covered by both brothers and non-investigated with tireless cruelty, and somewhere in the kitchen of the panel skyscraper, the eggs are cooked melancholy, while the next gray day in a dusty sleepy microdistrict is systematically close to its completion.

Of course, I specified part of these images, but in the charm of the decoration of the game that these associations are where to come from – the visible on the screen calls for them, so successfully the cultural imprint of the common homeland, which every resident of the post -Soviet space has been reproduced so well here. Everything shown in the game you, a native of similar places, as if I had already seen on my own life path, even from a different prospect. And the excellent copy of the Russian post-punk, unexpectedly joining the contemplation process, completes the overall installation of the timeless from the 90s.

And, in fact, the world of Vladik Brutal, the urban landscapes that he draws up, their reliable display is the most important component of its own identity of the game, and rightfully the best part. The developer did an amazing business and the world of piercing grayness showed us with small means-a world that is so familiar to all residents of the CIS space, the so-called VIZh*

From «in which country we live»*

The city location, which I, in the absence of the official name, hastened to call «Samara-17», is not a catchy picture, this is the essence-this is about us. Non -freedom, rudeness and indifference, the same expressive grayness – Vladik Brutal is the fantastic of everyday life, a hyperbolized picture of today’s days, embodied by the bearer of such cultural templates and attitudes in the form of video games – video games of infinitely far from reality, but also so authentic this reality of embodimenting.

And from whose person the narrative is to conduct in such a world, if not from a harsh prisoner – a laconic and even man named Vladyan. Gordon Freeman, a respected man, also sat in a sense, so our hero is worse? It is quite suitable in order to pull some levers for these big heads in the framework of prison. In the best traditions of the genre, scientists, in the shit of the urine, did not calculate something again, and now the threat of absolute death, emanating from the monstrous species of mutants, who flooded everything and the nature of their most reminiscent of the necromorphs from Dead Space, is overlooking something.

However, to think that the fact of what is happening https://mr-jones-casino.net/withdrawal/ is somehow worried about Vladiaan himself, or at least someone at all, will be mistaken-well, monsters and monsters, what to bake? Vlajan, for nothing that the character who knows how to say, will spend more than one hour in complete silence in the unnatural flesh of the catacombs. But to be worn out with a spine with which until recently it was shook in one camera, this is the right, useful thing. Well, what is supposed to do at the hour of the apocalypse? Of course, to release the punks and prisons, distribute her weapons and united front to storm the citadel of the local alliance, protected by the army of security forces. You haven’t dreamed of such domestic science fiction?

We walk melancholy in Samara-17

The plot in Vladik Brutal is truly how to see porn, but the main thing is that the hero is always in business, and his all-free muzzle has an angle of application-the hero is constantly moving somewhere, at least it is completely incomprehensible where and with what intention, because there is no long-term intent or, at least, a specific intention, the acting person simply does not have a character.

For several hours they got out of the laboratory teeming with necromomorphs – now we are going through the whole city to the apartment to the former cellmate, to listen to what he will tell you smart, and he, in turn, sends us to his grandfather out of town, monitoring the devices in his head, and how we dismantle it, so you can press the national leader to the nail – this is now, shaking the game, the whole game.

But these plots are not needed, in essence, nobody – there, Gordon Freeman also drove the gender of the Baggie, and the sheds were cleaned, but as a result, the collaborationist power overthrew, but Owan that is the one who was owned? And Vladan turned the same thing, in fact. Because why not, in principle.

This is even funny how bad the monsters fit into the story told by the game. In moments when the protagonist visits the next underground complex, the narrative seems to freeze, the hero loses speech, and the actions performed by him lose all relevance. Although, in reality, many episodes with mutants are made no less creatively and skillfully than scenes on the surface.

Even more than that, the moments of Vladik Brutal are quite capable of introducing into a nervous tension, competently hiding graphics flaws behind the wrong light and bottomless shadows. The sound, in the best traditions of the horror, is also not the last place here, and even realizing that the rattle and inhuman screams are elements of the background design of the location, I still involuntarily turned around and hesitated to move on.

True, all this tremor is immediately dispelled as soon as you remember that you play for an all -in criminal, that it is treated with beer with beer and generally indifferent to what is happening around. In addition, the same merciless postmodernism does not forget to prove itself in gameplay.

Finally about the gameplay

VLADIK BRUTAL, as was said, follows Half-Life covenants, and often offers the same thing as the “father”-to squeeze through ventilation, close the wires in distribution boxes, bypass turrets with the help of agility and ingenuity. I especially remember a puzzle with huge turbines, throwing you into the air through which you need to get through yourself and somehow drag the battery to the other side. The decision came to mind quickly, but in order to fulfill it, I had to work hard, because the throw in the game suddenly found an inertia depending on the mouse movement vector. I just did not understand how it works – it works crookedly, let’s say honestly – but this skill will be needed only here. Well, however, however, a curious mystery for a jester.

But it was an example of a traditional puzzle. Puzzles by post -stained I am to the other. For example, the game has a kind of keys, which are the same batteries (as in Half-Life 2) and the chopped hands of scientists. These hands must be found, applied to the tolerance panel and then the desired door will open. And as soon as I asked the thought of what the hell I was forced to look for a new hand every time when I could take with me and use the old one everywhere, how the game falls on me of 20-30 of these hands lying in the same pit. It was an entertaining interactive joke, I recognize.

And here is another puzzle, which can not be called a puzzle. The disposition is simple: you need to climb to the second floor, and the staircase is broken – what to do? Well, in the best traditions of Half-Life 2, look for a box, or a barrel, or a raft-in a word, something that you can stand on and what will allow you to reach the next tier. But there is nothing of this in the room, but in the corner there is such a typical layering stepladder.

And if you are a long -standing guest in the world of video games, you stop reasoning from the point of view of the real world and focusing on game logic – you need a horizontal object, and a stepladder, relatively speaking, a pyramidal form, you can’t get into it. But here you are looking for ways to solve, you find nothing and look again at the stepladder, standing nearby nearby. And you decide to try to use it. And so that he, yes – you can climb this stepling. Who would have thought is just like in life. Funny.

But, for example, there are post -struck eggs of strangers. They literally look like eggs of strangers stolen from some game about strangers. And if you played these same games about strangers, you certainly freeze at this moment and take methodically to shoot these same eggs and the one who sits in them. Moreover, some are also sitting in the local eggs, albeit not a lyceum.

But the truth is that you do not need to do this for nothing. So that a freak from an egg smells your presence, you must be a moron-captain from that terrible film Ridley Scott and look straight inside. If this is not done, then no one will get out of your cozy abode for you. I even poked a barrel into this thing – no reaction.

And finally, it’s time to talk about the last and main ridicule Vladik Brutal – about its direct gameplay. The truth is that the “Vladik” in terms of shooting is a terrible Polish shooter from the zero, but the game is so carefully trying to hide it that the final understanding of this fact came to me literally 15 minutes before the final credits.

The illusions of high -quality shooting are facilitated by closed spaces in which most of the shootings, as well as soundly made weapons models, as well as the sound attached to them. In addition, Vladik is generous on raspberry jam, smearing it on all surfaces adjacent to the victim, including the screen of the player himself. In the category of a third -rate joke «Vladik» his own enemies.

After the first skirmish with a zombie, you can note that they look lousy, in the spirit of typical horror on Unity without a budget and the reasons for the existence. But the enemies not only look bad, they also move beyond quickly, which gives them the lowest quality of animation. But the main thing is that at such speeds it is corny difficult to get into the enemy. The same, by the way, applies to opponents-people, only if the necromorphs run straight at you, directly reducing the distance, then the operatives prefer to run sideways around you, all at the same disproportionate speed, which is why shooting often turns into torture.

This circumstance is also aggravated by the fact that automatic weapons in the game behave unstable – aimed shooting at the first of two rifles seems to be a little possible because the target approaches, as in other games of the genre, this very sight does not offer, so it also rumbles from side to side, like a ninth grader on the promise. I’m still not sure whether the game is needed in general, the aiming mode, or with the same success, can only be fired from the hip.

Another rifle does not behave much better, and I came to the conclusion, even if not final, that for a remote battle, a starting gun is best suited from the entire chest chest. And it would even be interesting – a weighty weapon with realistic dedication, realism in all fields – if the opponents themselves fit into such a texture of the battle, and were not twitched by free ases from the Unity store. The whole game you are forced to experience this dissonance between the character of the hero and not to the best nimble opponents, more appropriate for some kind of speed and reaction.

Actually, in the last episode, Vladik reveals his vicious nature, throwing the player to an open location with endless respondent bots. Bots that either at speeds burst into a frontal collision with you, so much so that the cursor of the mouse does not keep up with them, or passenly seeds to the side until they are behind you. I went through the whole previous game of the second difficulty out of four, but having died for the 15th time I sent such shooting to the underworld of the Polish shooters and reoriented to the simplest regime.

The difficulty of the game, or rather even say, its dynamics is another moment of stumbling in Vladik Brutal. In the Revolution that I read, the game is called «hurricane action», «our doom» and other epithets about energetic gameplay – this has nothing to do with reality. «Vladik» generally the game is unhurried, measured, and requires you to be moderately careful, because even in average difficulty here the player shamelessly breaks his face.

Our shooter is classic here, health is not restored, and if the protagonist suffers normally with a wide distance, then the shotgun in the hands of the next chopped fighter, or a paw of the ordinary necromorph in the instant of the eye, lead our hero to the mortal line.

In general, enemies in the game, that people, that monsters are trying to go behind you, that at their speed they often succeed – this is guaranteed to lead you, if not to death, then to squeeze F9, because you do not have health to continue the adventure.

The first -aid kit in the game, of course, is excess, but it often happens that medicines are needed, but they simply do not. Strenches in the game design are also brought to cabinets with consumables found at the level – they give you an accidental amount of equipment, including first -aid kits, and you never know what exactly you will receive. And, in theory, after that the cabinet fails, as evidenced by the corresponding animation.

However, no, and after about a minute the storage is again ready to share its contents. It looks more like a bug, if something conceived by the developer. However, in the case of a boss-drawer, I did not find other ways to kill him, except to exploit this very cabinet until he spits out of his bowels to the RPG-7 projectile for RPG-7. Yes, there are bosses in the game, expectedly crookedly, and I, as a player with their absence, would not have lost anything, but the bosses do my role, and do not even annoy.

In addition to the boss-black-it is disgusting, because you not only find yourself on a narrow path surrounded by waves of enemies and sprayed with acid saliva, so you also have no shells to kill this creature.

Well, as for closed spaces, here the game feels relatively good, and even allows you to catch this so -called Flow when you rhythmically and brutally deal with a crowd of enemies, demonstrating complete dominance of them.

In addition, we must pay tribute to the developer-even though the models of enemies look deliberately graphone, but damage to the bodies, blood fountains-all this looks textured and spectacular, much better than, for example, in Robocop: Rogue City 2023. Even if in «Vladik» in these effects sometimes the spray from Photoshop is not illusory read.

Finally the results

What we have as a result-Vladik Brutal is by no means a trash-city from Steam, because here the work invested by the developer in his work is clearly visible here. Only locations deserve respect, because how carefully they are built, the player will pass them as quickly, and this is tens of hours of design work. The dealer brought the shooter to the proper form how much he managed, and for some time the illusion works until you celebrate the main pattern of enemies and while the battle remain within the corridors. Well, the narrative side of the game, the associative series and the general ironic performance created by it will allocate «Vladik» as an original and extraordinary performance for a long time.

The game passes in 8 hours, although all 11 have gone to me because of the complexity or non-obviousness of some points. During this period, I moved through the dark secret laboratories, crawled along the sewers, walked around Samara-17, rode a car to my grandfather to the village, bypassing military checkpoints, driving a train, breaking up on a train, laughing from rare, but piercing Moms-in general, I had a good time, I will say. Unless it was worthwhile to immediately switch to the simplest difficulty, because only the amount of damage received depends on it here.

In a word, the game is never a masterpiece, and clearly understands this to himself, but it can serve as some revelation. Revelation by semantic, not gameplay, because where do you see this. The genuine work of postmodern – it is worth familiarizing yourself with at least out of cultural considerations, the opportunity to see the creative rethinking of the disgusting reality, compare your associative series with the copyright, and also imbued with the good old irony, without shouting and ordinance laughter. At a discount, I desperately recommend.