Operation: Matriarchy

I'm a connoisseur of games that are considered "bad first-person shooters", it's been my lifeblood for the last 5 years. During the pandemic I got really into scouring the internet for FPS games that no one had ever heard of, and since then I've slowly been making my way through the list. The latest one on the chopping block is Operation: Matriarchy or Velian, its original Russian title, a game that, according to reviewers, sucks. Well I'm here to tell you that they're kinda right, but also extremely wrong. This is quite frankly one of the most ridiculous games I've ever played. A 'so bad it's good' ordeal that is sooooo bad it wraps back around to being a one-of-a-kind experience that is genuinely incredible. Let's talk about that. What's the story here? It's the 24th century and humanity have begun their colonisation of space thanks to the Federation of Earth. Along the way they come across a planet called Velia, home to a virus that has infected the female population turning them into freakish killbots. The male population? Enslaved and experimented on! The Velians then instigate an all-out war against the Federation, because why not? The game begins amidst the war when our bel…

Operation: Matriarchy, developed by Madia Entertainment and brought to Steam by ESDigital Games, is one of those curious artifacts from mid-2000s PC gaming that feels equal parts ambitious, misguided, and strangely unforgettable. Released in 2005, it arrived during a wave of corridor-focused sci-fi shooters heavily influenced by DOOM 3, Halo, and Half-Life 2, yet it never attempted to imitate their storytelling polish or production values. Instead, it pursued a pulp-horror premise so unusual that even today it stands out: a parasitic alien contagion has spread across a distant human colony and transformed nearly all women into biomechanical hive creatures, leaving devastated male survivors pleading for rescue. Players step into the role of a Federation marine sent to investigate and contain the outbreak, plunging into a setting where collapsing social structures, gendered terror, and grotesque biological mutation collide. The concept is provocative and even uncomfortable, but undeniably bold—exactly the kind of risk a smaller studio might take when unconcerned with mass appeal. Moment-to-moment gameplay reflects the era’s traditional design sensibilities. Operation: Matriarchy is …

The visuals and graphics is very old but the overall gameplay was good.

It looks charming in an obscure way, but it's just too unfinished and boring.

Who's janking their slav rn? Only worth wasting your time for the H.R giger visuals (in which the actual interesting levels only start the half later, the first 1-2 hours of this thing is pure copy pasted generic Doom 3 sci-fi levels), besides that there really isn't anything else special about it. Mediocre level design that's serviceable enough, okay weapons, average charming graphics, just overall whatever it's fine, definitely nowhere as bad as something like KREED. The only problem I had to deal with were the atrocious loading times (apparently can be fixed if you play it on crusty low resolution), and once in a while some crashes but nothing constant. 6/10

mouse doesn't work and my keyboard barely does either