Posted August 30, 2017
I just tried it and found it to be very generic in every sense.
The intro is essentially a corridor, where you occasionally encounter enemies who pose no challenge and don't so much as slow you down. The surrounding story is supposed to feel epic and grand, but other than a couple of vistas has failed to impress me. The combat is pretty boring, you shoot duded with guns. Headshots are crits. You got a special ability that charges up and then you switch to 3rd person and run and hit dudes with a stick. You also have to pick up ammo, which drops in abundance.
Other than the intro mission there are also two PvP scenarios and a PvE instance.
The instance is more of the same. You (and two other players) run through a corridor and shoot dudes. There is a bit more dudes than in the intro mission. At the end there is a boss. The boss has a mechanic. By that I mean he occasionally spawns ... you guessed it, more dudes. Oh and sometimes floor is lava so you gotta jump on a thing. Also the floor falls from under you twice (just like the Blackhand fight in WoW's Blackrock Foundry) and you fall onto a lower platform.
The one PvP mission I played was a symmetrical area with 3 capture points. It's 4v4. Same weapons, same everything. Instead of dudes you get players. There was absolutely nothing special there, a whole bunch of games do this same thing better. The free Unreal Tournament for one. (I couldn't bring myself to play the other PvP mission because my eyes were tearing up from the sheer boredom of the experience.)
The graphics are okay. I have no idea what all the reviewers are going on about, it doesn't look "amazing" at all, just okay. I was playing on 2560x1440 with everything maxed out. It wasn't terrible, but nowhere in the vicinity of "amazing." Sometimes I'd see low rez textures. Sometimes the in-game cut scenes looked like something from years prior. The light and darkness contrast is very stark. Making out the details in darker areas is pretty much impossible. Which is just as well, because they are mostly used to hide low-poly, low detail areas. Maybe this was done with consoles in mind, I don't know.
Exploration, the part that's probably most important to me, is non existent. I stuck my nose into every nook and cranny I could find (given the overall corridor-driven design) and found exactly nothing. Disappointing, this.
All in all, I can't imagine spending $20 on this, much less $60. If the original was anything like the sequel, I completely fail to understand its popularity. Maybe the consoles lack games in this genre, I don't know. Either way, I'm glad I got a chance to take a look at it if only to make a decision to avoid.
On a positive note, the game is pretty tiny and downloaded in something like 20 minutes.
The intro is essentially a corridor, where you occasionally encounter enemies who pose no challenge and don't so much as slow you down. The surrounding story is supposed to feel epic and grand, but other than a couple of vistas has failed to impress me. The combat is pretty boring, you shoot duded with guns. Headshots are crits. You got a special ability that charges up and then you switch to 3rd person and run and hit dudes with a stick. You also have to pick up ammo, which drops in abundance.
Other than the intro mission there are also two PvP scenarios and a PvE instance.
The instance is more of the same. You (and two other players) run through a corridor and shoot dudes. There is a bit more dudes than in the intro mission. At the end there is a boss. The boss has a mechanic. By that I mean he occasionally spawns ... you guessed it, more dudes. Oh and sometimes floor is lava so you gotta jump on a thing. Also the floor falls from under you twice (just like the Blackhand fight in WoW's Blackrock Foundry) and you fall onto a lower platform.
The one PvP mission I played was a symmetrical area with 3 capture points. It's 4v4. Same weapons, same everything. Instead of dudes you get players. There was absolutely nothing special there, a whole bunch of games do this same thing better. The free Unreal Tournament for one. (I couldn't bring myself to play the other PvP mission because my eyes were tearing up from the sheer boredom of the experience.)
The graphics are okay. I have no idea what all the reviewers are going on about, it doesn't look "amazing" at all, just okay. I was playing on 2560x1440 with everything maxed out. It wasn't terrible, but nowhere in the vicinity of "amazing." Sometimes I'd see low rez textures. Sometimes the in-game cut scenes looked like something from years prior. The light and darkness contrast is very stark. Making out the details in darker areas is pretty much impossible. Which is just as well, because they are mostly used to hide low-poly, low detail areas. Maybe this was done with consoles in mind, I don't know.
Exploration, the part that's probably most important to me, is non existent. I stuck my nose into every nook and cranny I could find (given the overall corridor-driven design) and found exactly nothing. Disappointing, this.
All in all, I can't imagine spending $20 on this, much less $60. If the original was anything like the sequel, I completely fail to understand its popularity. Maybe the consoles lack games in this genre, I don't know. Either way, I'm glad I got a chance to take a look at it if only to make a decision to avoid.
On a positive note, the game is pretty tiny and downloaded in something like 20 minutes.