Stalin vs Martians

Stalin vs Martians
Say "nyet" to this game.
Genre(s): Real-time strategy Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Release: April 29, 2009 Discontinuation: July 2009 Engine: Enigma Engine Developer(s): Black Wing Foundation Dreamlore N-Game Publisher(s): Mezmer Games Country: Ukraine

Stalin vs. Martians is a parody real-time strategy video game developed by Black Wing Foundation, Dreamlore, and N-Game, released on April 29, 2009. Described as "trashy and over-the-top" by its creators, the game mocks World War II strategy games and utilizes Pythonesque humor.

The game has a spinoff, a social browser game Stalin vs Martians Online. In 2013, the developers launched a Kickstarter campaign for a sequel, Stalin vs. Martians 3, but the campaign failed completely and the game was canceled. However, in 2019 the developer decided to celebrate the 10 years anniversary of the "franchise" and announced a new installment, Stalin vs Martians 4.

The game received overwhelmingly negative reviews overall and was named both the worst game of 2009, the worst strategy game of all time, and even one of the worst games of all time.

Plot

Strangers landed in Siberia who signed a pact with Adolf Hitler attacking the Soviet elites living there, from that moment it turns out that Stalin must defend not only the western part of the USSR but also Siberia in order not to fall.

Gameplay

The game consists of 12 levels and each of them (except the last one) consists in eliminating all opponents from the map. The player has 3 types of units at his disposal: infantry, tank, and the great Stalin who appears on the last level. The last level is about trampling enemies with the great Stalin and defeating the octopus with the head of Hitler.

Why It Intentionally Should Go To The Gulag

1. The concept itself is very stupid for all the wrong reasons, you play as Stalin and you have to kill aliens, that's something an edgy 10-year-old kid could've come up with.
2. The graphics look absolutely outdated. Noteworthy is the fact that the game uses the Enigma Engine, which was used by an earlier WWII game, Blitzkrieg 2 (complete with reusing some of its models)... but it looks way worse and looks like it came out in 2000 and looks like an late PlayStation 1 or Nintendo 64 game because the textures are low quality and the models are lazily made and they look rather rushed without much effort and are quite blurry which makes them look like a rushed PS1 or N64 game.
   • Adding to the damage, some textures of e.g. houses can look exactly the same without major changes and sometimes even the models are the same as if the creators didn't even want to make an effort and create something more creative.
3. The sound effects are really annoying because they are very repetitive, the sounds are repeated almost every few seconds and they are made so lazily that after the 20th time, they start to sound bland, although at first they sound funny.
4. The game is incredibly short because it has only 12 missions that last 5 minutes, so you can literally finish the game in just an hour, which is an unforgivably short time for a strategy game.
5. Despite calling itself a real-time strategy game, the game lacks any of the necessary elements, actually, apart from army management, this game has absolutely nothing but 3 functions, steering, shooting, and stopping. Even Dune 2, released 17 years earlier, has much more features than this game, which is unforgivable.
6. The game has really few types of units because only three, infantry, a tank, and a great Stalin who also appears only at the end of the game, which is an unimaginably small amount for a strategy game. In addition, the tank and infantry differ only in appearance because they do exactly the same thing and have the same statistics, which clearly shows the laziness of the developers.
7. The level design is poor as almost all the levels look similar if not the same, you can clearly see the copy and paste units that are placed quite lazily and often in quite the wrong places so they can go unnoticed, and many textures have been copied and can be referenced it feels like the action takes place in the same place. The player sometimes does not even know where to go because there are not many opponents on the map.
   • Generally speaking, it seems that the action of the game takes place all the time because the locations look very similar to each other.
8. The game is really poorly programmed because not only are there a lot of bugs and glitches, but in addition, the game likes to crash very often even on computers from the times when the game was created, the optimization also lies despite the terrible graphics.
9. The game has probably the worst AI in the history of strategy games, enemies very rarely or never hit the player's units and even sometimes do the exact same thing, the player's units are no better because very often they don't go or shoot where they should and even quite often they do not respond to the player at all.
10. The character designs look pretty lazy, going from average alien designs that aren't very original to horrible and bizarre designs that look like they were made by a drunk three-year-old, sometimes some designs are even ripoffs of other characters like DOOM's Caco Demon. In fact, none of the character designs are worth much attention.
    • It also doesn't help that it could be considered copyright infringement because the character that looks like a cacodemon from DOOM is nothing more than plagiarism.
11. The game has almost no cutscenes other than the ending where Stalin dances, instead, we have boring lists of quests that accompany each mission, even though the first strategy game to use cutscenes, Command & Conquer Red Alert, was released 13 years earlier which is unforgivable.
12. The last mission doesn't make sense, because it's literally a giant Stalin fighting an octopus with Hitler's head and stomping on enemies who can't do anything to him, which shows that the creators have really little creativity when in other strategy games the last missions are much more extensive.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Some of the music is actually good and catchy, especially the main theme, "Stalin Loves Disco".
2. The final cutscene, which is the only cutscene in the entire game, can be hilarious thanks to the terrible animation for 2009, although it still can't save the game and is best viewed on YouTube.
3. The game itself can be so bad it's good.

Reception

Stalin vs. Martians received scathing reviews from critics. It has an average score of 23.41% on GameRankings as well as 25% on Metacritic. GameSpot awarded the game 1.5/10, calling it "perhaps the worst RTS game ever created" and also the game is called the worst game of the year and one of the worst games of all time.

The site also named it 2009's Flat-Out Worst Game. IGN, which rated the game a 2/10, noted the game's total lack of any RTS-related elements and asked whether it was 'made in 1994 and sealed into a vault until 2009' given how dated the visuals looked. The game was ranked 100 of Tats Top 100 Shittiest Games.

BartekGM gave the game 1/10 for the graphics, 1/10 for the audio, and 0/10 for the playability, which in total translated into PIERDOLONE 0/10 and also stated that it is the most embarrassing game he has ever played.

Trivia

• This is the only game in which you can control a Stalin, in literally no other game, be it a strategy, a platformer, or a fighting game, this character is nowhere to be found.

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