Review: Mother Russia Bleeds

Mother Russia Bleeds is a game with a message. It has things to say about politics, the oppression of the destitute and disenfranchised by those in power, about the ways in which the rich get richer and the poor are ground underfoot. It is also about punching drug addicted bikers so hard in the face that their heads cave in and the harvesting intravenous narcotics from their still twitching corpses. There is a lot going on there, is what I am getting at.

Coming to us from the new French developer Le Cartel and published by the excellent but somewhat off kilter minds at Devolver Digital, Mother Russia Bleeds is a 2D brawler in the vein of Streets of Rage. It also borrows heavily from Devolver’s most well know product, Hotline Miami. The comparisons are easy to make and very complimentary in nature, the developers even make this comparison themselves on their own website. And the influence of Dennaton Games’ psychotic serial killer simulator is plain to see. From the pixel art and ultraviolence combo that has become Devolver’s signature brand to the trippy dream sequences and hints at some unspeakable evil behind the curtain.

But plot wise they’re worlds apart. Hotline Miami’s story set out to challenge the player’s preconceived notions of sanity, morality and reality. Mother Russia Bleeds plot has none of these subtleties. And it’s all the stronger for it. Rather than aping the already stellar Hotline, it’s as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face with a narrative that might have come from a Marvel movie, if Marvel was run by Paul Verhoeven.

Set in the Soviet Union in 1986, our story follows four friends, Sergei, Ivan, Natasha and Boris. These charming sociopaths live in a Romany encampment outside of Moscow, enduring crushing poverty together and participating in violent bareknuckle fighting tournaments in order to make a living. One day however, their idyllic life is interrupted by the Bratva (Russian Mafia) and a team of riot police, who storm the camp, knock them out and kidnap them.

After an unknown amount of time being used as guinea pigs for a new drug called Nekro our heroes escape captivity and seek to wreak vengeance on their captors. Following the trail of money and bodies leads them from their humble camp to the heights of power amidst a violent revolution. Prolonged exposure to Nekro has also left them with a psychosis that connects them to a hellish other world where someone, or something, awaits them.

If you ignore the giant drug addict assaulting the police officer the scenery is lovely

As I said earlier, mechanically Mother Russia Bleeds is a 2d brawler. You move from left to right, punching and kicking your various enemies into submission before being allowed to work slightly further to the right and repeating he cycle. From these simple building blocks a world of complexity emerges in the potential moves, a wealth of melee and ranged weapons and the different types of enemies.

The four face buttons correspond to light attack, heavy attack, grab and jump and combining these four separate ingredients creates an intoxicating cocktail of violence. For example following two light attacks with a heavy kick will knockback and stun your foes and their attempts to jump kick you can be nullified by a well-timed grab. Even the lighter attacks come with a satisfying audio and vibration feedback, and the heavy attacks convey the bone breaking intensity perfectly. The enemy types vary from area to area, ranging from Nekro addicted citizens who throw used needles at you to the Special Forces officers that can deal massive amounts of damage with firearms that can be turned against them with stomach churning results.

Stomach churning is a phrase that can be used a lot when talking about Mother Russia Bleeds. Make no mistake, this game is gross. Not just violent or sleazy or uncomfortable but flat out gross. Enemies bleed and limp as they take damage, their heads can be literally pulverised like overripe melons by a special finishing move. The locations stretch everywhere from excrement caked sewers to a mafia run sex club and I’m honestly not sure which of those two I think would smell worse. Your character regenerate lost health not by picking up mysteriously fresh food dropped from broken objects in the world as in most games in this genre, but instead by injecting themselves with Nekro harvested from vanquished foes. Said Nekro can be used to enter a ‘Berserker’ state, where you move faster, hot harder and can perform fatalities on enemies in lieu of a grab attack.

Fun as a gameplay mechanic but really rather icky if you take any time at all to think about the notion of how very well and truly ‘used’ those needles are. Fans of the animal kingdom may also want to give this one a pass as you have to deal with trained attack dogs and in some cases carnivorous pigs in pretty much exactly the way you might expect. Mother Russia Bleeds is sometimes far too eager to communicate all this visceral feedback to the player, be it the way that the controller vibrates when your character vomits, or way that fluids pool in pixelated puddles around their feet. It might not match Hotline Miami for intrigue but it certainly outdoes it as far as pure nastiness is concerned.

Whether or not you can get past the carefully crafted atmosphere of unpleasantness is down to personal taste, but there are a couple of ways in which Mother Russia Bleeds falls down on its own. The combat is clearly designed for co-op play, to the extent that it gives you a bot to play with if you try and take it on solo. Rather than giving it to one of the surprisingly competent A.I controlled bots, instead making them act copycat your exact inputs. This is clearly designed to balance the combat somewhat, but giving single players an AI drone would have definitely made things simpler. There also the ways in which certain enemies can stun lock you with combos that will sap half your health in quick succession.

Granted the game is supposed to be challenging but there’s a fine line between satisfyingly difficult and aggravatingly frustrating. I ended up relying on jump kicks to plow through more difficult sections, and there are only so many times you can do that before it gets old.

Mother Russia Bleeds is most certainly not for everyone, and even those who’re fans of stylised violence will find themselves pushed away by a frankly alarming commitment to be as disgusting as possible. But if you’ve got a strong enough constitution and particular if you’ve got three friends with similarly warped sense of taste then you’ll have an absolute blast with this genuine Videogame Nasty.