Early Access Preview: Smash + Grab

Sleeping Dogs developer United Front Games has finally revealed it’s new take on the MOBA genre with action brawler Smash + Grab. Instead of either having lane minions or none at all; S+G allows you to fully customize four extra characters that join you in game, each with varied play styles and personalities allowing you to define a play-style that works for you.

The story is rather simple: Due to extensive abuse of trickle down economics America has turned into a series of dystopian megacities fueled by corporate interests. The resulting economic crash has given way to an underground blood-sport blandly called “The Competition” where competing groups of gang members fight to the death while hitting local stores for cash. First to Fifty grand wins!

What I like the most is the insane cell shaded realism mixed with hardcore dystopian imagery and subtle references to everything vaguely related to the concept. Characters wear masks similar to Payday and The Purge, soldier around like The Warriors, plays like a grown up State of Emergency, and unites it all with modern multiplayer principles. The result is the game is not only fun to play but it’s insanely fun to watch players maneuver around trying to balance murder and personal gain.

Unlike your typical MOBA the game is designed to inspire teamwork instead of just asserting teamwork is involved. Replacing gold and levels in-game each character has access to a basic weapon and as new stores open better weapon options, each with two craft-able modifiers from the materials you’ve stolen. As later levels of stores become available you gain access to better and more interesting weapons and modifications to apply to them. You want to hit every weapon store you can though, as your gang has at-least one guy for each weapon type. 

The clock is constantly counting down to zero, each time it does another series of stores opens including another tier of each weapon; and the final tier includes two gigantic stores filled with cash intended to finish out the game. The downside to this is with more experience players the stores vanish off the map quickly, which can leave two to three minutes where there is nothing to do but fight the enemy for no reason but to hope you will win the fight (Therefore risking the ability to get the stores when they come up!) and it just seems like almost anything could be thrown in to make this downtime enjoyable.

There are currently seven different characters (with two more coming soon)  as well as a cavalcade of secondary lieutenant characters for each in game faction. Every character also has an unlock-able soldier type that opens up more specialized play-styles. Besides the normal play styles there are Raiders that specialize in breaking open stores and getting extra or faster loot; serving a crucial role in the games strategy as players weigh their targets. 

And man is it a blast to play! The basic Ransack game mode map is a tried and true three zone map coated in power-up dispensers, urging players to experiment surging forward to ignore closer storefronts in favor of ones closer to your enemy. It’s fast paced, blood pumping action at it’s finest dotted with strategy. 

The biggest problems that Smash + Grab is facing in it’s Early Access is a series of optimization issues; tons of players including myself are experiencing horrible frame rate losses when combat starts, black screens, outright freezes, and other problems that seem to plague CPU’s not made this week. Because players can buy the game, boot it up, experience a glitch, and immediately refund it now on Steam it’s been hitting the active user base hard. I’m usually waiting three to five minutes for a match. Thankfully the developers have been on top of it and the game plays a little better every patch. 

You can get it now on Steam Early Access; and for a limited time a giveaway contest is in place showering players with alienware and S+G gear ending October 8th!