Pioner drops you, with no memories, into a wasteland world, tasked with exploring the wastes to find out what happened in your past and help a town of wanderers against the many terrifying creatures that hunt them.
Pioner is self described as an MMO FPS which focuses on resource management and exploration with elements of both PVE and PVP, as well as raids and much much more available to players. You can play in groups of three, either roaming around the open world completing missions or trying your hand at some of the harder raid missions to try and score some loot.
There is heavy and clear inspiration from titles like STALKER and, honestly I can even see a lot of similarities to Fallout 76 with Pioner playing in a very similar way to its current version albeit with a much stronger Eastern European influence compared to 76.
The MMO elements are present with a lot of the world’s hubs with many players being visible completing quests and doing tasks but when it comes to matchmaking with your friends it can be a bit of a bother. There are still a number of things to be ironed out from the looks of things and one of them is the system to join and play co-operatively in any real format.
You can join a party of three but Pioner doesn’t currently match you and your friends together. Now, this gives you an abnormal amount of freedom for a co-operative game where you normally would have to wait for your friends to leave an area or do a task but you are only restricted by where you want to go giving it a very real sense of openness compared to something like Borderlands where you would have to wait for everyone to leave an area.
The caveat to such a large amount of freedom is that there seems to be a price, as trying to stay together through so many solo instances, different areas being loaded into, different servers being joined constantly leaves you needing to “sync” with your friends and make sure you’re still together making things much slower than it should be.
A lot of the stress of trying to matchmake could be avoided by removing the MMO elements and having a dedicated co-operative experience but with its current gameplay style it is rather confusing as a lot of the elements in play do not seem to require a lot of interaction between players that are not in some sort of group or clan and instead just has some very populated safe zones and rather empty open worlds.
Pioner’s gunplay is quite simple, but the weapons are very varied with lots of crafting and customisation options available to use. There are even combinations you wouldn’t imagine possible, they aren’t necessarily all practical but they are possible so if you’re looking to make a crazy mutant killing WWII gun that both shoots fast and has a sniper scope, you can do that.
Although you can find a number of weapons in the world you can also find a lot of blueprints to make meds, guns, ammo and much more, expanding your arsenal and ability to make and maintain new equipment. Some of the better equipment can be earned through quests and raids as well letting you gear up in all sorts of ways to take on the various monsters on your path.
Another enjoyable element of Pioner is just how many events and random interactions you have while out in the world, most of them are scripted events that play out more like mini quests or side objectives but they do have that Fallout charm to them. One such interaction was a man who tried to mug me by using his “powers” to convince me to hand over all of my money, in the end he gave me his money but it was bizarre and genuinely quite funny.
On the flipside to the wacky encounters there are a few combat encounters that have rehashed enemies but with a different colour such as the wormlike creatures found in the desert or the large green zombies that chase you, some soak up ammunition like it’s rain and others are the classic paint it a new colour and make it a bit stronger so I would hope that further in there is a bit more variety.
The story is a little confusing overall with a lot of dialogue at the opening of the game but once you’re past the tutorial and the initial set up there is a genuinely enjoyable experience behind an admittedly slow start and if you can get past the issues relating to trying to join one another or just play solo there’s tonnes to do and even more to discover.
If you would like to experience Pioner, you can find it on Steam.
