Playable up to four locally, with or without partners managed by artificial intelligence to fill any loneliness, Mother Russia Bleeds allows us to embody four brave Soviet comrades, from the 80s and an alternative USSR. If Sergei, Boris, Ivan and Natasha all wake up in the same cell of a strange and disturbing laboratory following the same kidnapping, they nevertheless each have different statistics in terms of strength, speed, range and jump. The first two are balanced characters (2 or 3 points in each discipline), while the last two do the splits with certain values pushed to the maximum (strength and range for the big brute Ivan, speed and jump for the agile Natasha ), the others being left to a minimum. Enough to find a shoe that fits before starting the adventure which, you will have understood, essentially consists of advancing through the decorations in horizontal scrolling and viciously beating up any opponent present on the road. Mother Russia Bleeds is openly inspired by Streets of Rage and therefore brings its stone to the beat'em up genre. Kick, punch, jump, slide and mug must be alternated and combined in order to overcome the enemy hordes. On occasion, we will not hesitate to pick up weapons that have fallen on the ground (knife, baseball bat, police baton, pistol, etc.) or even improvise with everyday objects, blunt if possible (chairs, fire extinguishers, electric poles, toilet bowls, etc.).
FINAL Slap
Raging and violent, the deliberately unhealthy nature of the game is even expressed in the healthcare system, which takes the form of a drug to be injected into the veins. It can, at your option, restore our life or trigger a berserk mode, which multiplies the force of the strikes and even allows you to achieve head-pulling type fatalities using the mug. It is also possible to treat fallen comrades, even if it means finding yourself in trouble a little later. Fortunately, it is possible to replenish your drug supply by taking samples from certain fresh corpses. However, do not expect to abuse this system too much, because it turns out to be quite limited in the end. Most of the bodies cannot be removed, those that are only remain so for a few moments and, in any case, the extraction operation taking long seconds, it has every chance of being interrupted by enemy attacks. Good point on the other hand for the possibility of activating the friendly blows, which prove to be very sympathetic in “human” coop (a little less when it is the allied AI which balances you by mistake but without sparing the trumpets). Moreover, it is not uncommon to see enemies also fight each other. We appreciate these moments of confusion all the more as the general difficulty of the game turns out to be quite poorly dosed, alternating too steep difficulty peaks, easy combos that bring down entire groups of opponents and enemies with bags of life points . A slightly smoother difficulty curve would have been preferable.
Admittedly, you have to like the atmosphere of guts, vomit, poo and filthy language aimed at teenagers in search of pseudo-transgression, but the richness of the sets, the animations of the backgrounds, the caricaturally Soviet atmosphere, and the mouth different characters, enemies, bosses or even animals hit the mark irremediably.
In addition, the game suffers from a few technical bugs, starting with recurring key conflicts when trying to play the keyboard (one more reason to favor the controller on this one), a soundtrack that is completely interrupted at times, or even partners managed by the IA who stupidly block themselves (a blow in the gums allowing fortunately to bring them out of their torpor). In general, the artificial intelligence is clearly not up to the challenge, so much so that we end up favoring a 100% solo game when we don't have a real friend on hand. Better to be alone than badly accompanied by artificial partners who drag their feet too much when it comes to raising the fallen player. Another major problem of the game: the lack of readability of the action, which suffers in addition to a difficult evaluation of the depth leading to a good number of blows which leave in the void. 
Any pixel art that it is, the retro graphic treatment harms the understanding of what is happening on the screen, especially in the phases most loaded with enemies. With four players (and therefore an increased number of opponents), with friendly blows activated, expect to understand nothing more of what is happening. Thinner graphics would have alleviated this problem, and it would be good if indie developers in general gave up the big pixel fad a bit. Here, this defect is all the more regrettable as the artistic direction is a total success. Admittedly, you have to like the atmosphere of guts, vomit, poo and filthy language aimed at teenagers in search of pseudo-transgression, but the richness of the sets, the animations of the backgrounds, the caricaturally Soviet atmosphere, and the mouth different characters, enemies, bosses or even animals hit the mark irremediably. In addition, the adventure is carried by a soundtrack in perfect harmony with the action, while the Story mode is completed by an Arena mode, which allows you to unlock new drugs as long as you manage to survive ten waves of enemies. And the whole thing therefore forms Mother Russia Bleeds, a game that may be imperfect, but which will certainly find its audience!
