Vivat Slovakia is a game from the young studio Vivat Team, who embarked on the creation of an open-world GTA clone. It is available in Early Access on Steam from April 18, 2024 at a price of 27.99 euros. Thanks to a recent new update, the game is finally available in English. On this occasion, we decided to try it.
The gameplay itself looks like an old Grand Theft Auto game with a bit of Max Payne and some other older games in the mix, but the game itself has its own qualities. For example, a driving model that is not the best in the world, but it is not the worst either. The feeling of speed, the feeling of drift in the corner is very good and satisfying. . As an additional retro touch, the energy is shown in the form of a heart muscle, and to replenish health we drink pills that we have from the very beginning in unlimited quantities with a small break between uses.
What else really impresses about the Vivat Slovakia game is the way the vehicle models are destroyed. From the dents on the bumpers, to the falling off of the doors, hood, trunk door, broken windows from all sides and also the complete destruction of the vehicle. You might expect “get out of the vehicle before it explodes”, think again, because in this game when you finish off the car, it just explodes with you inside and you get nowhere.
The story in the Early access phase is short, only 3 hours, but interesting enough to give Vivat a chance. Positives include a driving model and a destruction model. The negative thing we noticed was the way the development team decided to make the shooting work, where you have to be VERY precise and only a headshot kills from one shot. The missions themselves are inspired by real events from the Slovak Black Chronicle in the mid-1990s. As for them, we have no complaints. We have also seen worse open world games inspired by the GTA series.
Of course, there is always room for improvement. A few suggestions that we would like to see in the full version of the game are a speedometer when driving, an indicator of the distance from the point of interest, a better system of shooting with opponents, etc. The development studio plans to release the second side of the "cassette" in the first quarter of 2025. When we say the second side of the cassette, we say it figuratively because the game logo itself is a cassette as familiar to us older people, born in the 1990s and 1980s.
We feel that this game truly has the potential to be much better than it currently is. If the young studio Vivat Team is willing to listen to a potential community that could give them ideas for progress and the future, we believe that Vivat Slovakia could become a successful small title inspired by the well-known Grand Theft Auto series.
[modula id="2892"]A copy of the game was provided by the development studio Team Vivat for review purposes
