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Dead to Wrongs

You'd be dead wrong. The first problem is that on missions without respawners, a dead teammate is a fail state. No matter where you are, no matter what's happening, no matter how close you are to finishing your objectives, if one of your teammates dies, the mission will instantly end in failure. So when the bots start doing stupid things like shooting each other, which they'll gladly do when they're not busy shooting you, the mission will come to a screeching halt. When they're not busy shooting each other, they'll shoot at walls. They'll get in your way. They'll ignore your orders and do whatever they feel like doing, which generally involves shooting each other in a blind attempt to drill their bullets through any obstacles in the general direction of an enemy bot, who is simultaneously doing something just as stupid. Some missions begin with friendly and enemy units so close that as soon as the game loads, the firing begins and your teammates start dying. This is when you'd be hard-pressed to think of a game more aggravating than Devastation.

Awaiting gentrification

Warehouse to warehouse fighting

Bombing run complete

Best game with a remote control rat!

The animation is just as bad as the AI behavior. Bots jump straight in the air as if they were on pogo sticks. Movement has that whole ice-sliding/moonwalking/rotating-in-place dynamic. The game is unstable, frequently crashing to desktop and only sometimes generating a crash save so you won't have to backtrack to your last saved position. Sometimes you'll get stuck on some invisible obstacle with no way out other than reloading the game from the last time you saved.

The weapons are tired variations on the same old themes: pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, miniguns, and shotguns, all in two or three different flavors. There's a rail gun that sets your enemy on fire before he evaporates in a shell of ash. The rat drone in an earth-bound variation on the redeemer; you drive a rat with a camera on his head around the level, detonating it with the click of your mouse button. This is used in the only thing in Devastation that might pass for a puzzle.

We're here to rescue you, whoever you are

Asian alleyway

Sniping snipers

So at least you have your multiplayer support, right? It's the Unreal engine, there's the cool Territories mode with respawners, and the last patch gave the weapons a bit of aural punch. Let's go online. Where, surprise! surprise!, we'll find a wasteland of uninhabited servers every bit as deserted as the level design.