So Overload is out for the PC and I highly encourage everyone to check it out. I almost lean towards going Mouse Keyboard due to the highly refined mouse inputs configurations. However, if you are using a J-Stick, I think you will find it to be what you expect. Game play is a bit faster and I think its some really intelligent levels. Find me on the Overload discord as pdxgeek. You can quit reading here as what I am posting next is my overall feedback of the game as it is now. My Full Thoughts: In full transparency, I have not kept up with playing D1/D2 for many years. I come back occasionally and get some games in, but those that know me from the old days know I am a middle of the pack player. As such, my feedback may not help a highly skilled player that has kept their chops up. I can at least claim I kept a Demigod rating in D2 :) Overload's game play is much faster and a lot more balanced than D1/D2. You really can feel the development team put their hearts into this game and really spent time fine tuning, then tuning again to create what I believe would have been the natural evolution of the game from D2 with the more open world arena areas like D3. Fortunately that is all they took from D3. Ship movement is buttery smooth and yes folks, tri-chording is back. However, it is a electable option that has to be set in the options menu. Gone is the bounce, and the heavily tuned mouse input had me switching to the mouse from a joystick pretty quickly. In order to ensure an equal playing field though, mouse inputs were limited so they couldn't have a turning advantage in the game. Another sign of the focus on game play balance. Additionally, support is in for someone that want's to try a gamepad and the game will be releasing, with cross play support, in the near future. Weapons in the game feel very good. I don't find myself limiting myself to a few of the good weapons like I did in D1/D2. I also find myself switching weapons to be more effective in certain areas of the map. A fusion like cannon is back, with its charge up enjoyment and overcharge damage, and you will find a more interesting selection of ammo using weapons beyond the gauss and vulcan that were in D1/D2. This has created some weapons that are really good at short range efficiency allowing for multiple kills against energy weapons that tend to focus on single target. This not to say there aren't energy weapon options that can fit a similar role. I think one thing I like is no one weapon seems to have a massive advantage in power. Some might argue this with the flak cannon but I think its marginal at best. The missile weapons are very cool in Overload and much more interesting. Since bombs are gone, they have added a missile called creeper that slowly creeps towards a target as a large sphere. You can setup some really fun traps with this weapon and force players to use escape paths that you can then close in on and spring a trap. Some other missiles you will quickly recognize from D1/D2. The homer now shoots as a twin set of homers, but I find them easier to dodge in Overload. I think they move a bit slower. The smart missile sees a revival as the Nova and I believe the guided missile is somewhat replaced with the devastator. The main difference being the devastator can be activated but it isn't guided. One of my new favorite missile types is the Missile Pod. This fires several fast missiles that slightly track your target and looks awesome. Imagine firing a ton of mercs at the same time as you hold the button down. Like many other elements of the gameplay, the missiles feel balanced. There are no standard missiles that would compare to the Mega or Earthshaker missiles but that doesn't mean there spirit is lost. During game play, you will be notified when a super weapon is about to spawn and this adds a small additional set of powerful weapons that are limited to that single spawn. These super weapons are highly identifiable by there color and shapes and spawn randomly throughout the map. I am not sure how I feel about these items yet, but they don't seem to be game changers, and you drop them like everything else when you die. Multiplayer is where I think the game needs the most work. As many modern games are doing, multiplayer sessions are hosted via cloud servers. Rather than seeing the sessions that are in progress, you join a queue and wait for other players to also join the queue. Once another player is in the queue, some logic is used to put you in a lobby with that player and more people will then join your queue. This means you are often times waiting awhile if there are few players on and there is no way to join a game in session. This also means you may end up on a server where your ping times are higher than what I would call comfortable. To me, anything above 120 is pretty challenging, however when you get on a server where everyone is <100, the game play is very good and almost LAN like. Once your lobby is full, or the timer runs out, you are then presented with 3 maps that are voted on for that session. If there is a tie, or no one votes, the map is chosen randomly. I like this because it prevents that always playing Minerva problem that existed in D2.There is a Private Match section that allows you to customize many aspects of the game and you then set a password. Anyone else using this password can join your server up to 8 players I believe. Finally there is a heads up queue that works the same as the standard multiplayer queue. Like the multiplayer queue, no options are adjustable and the map is voted on. The reason for this is the multiplayer modes you select utilize the modifications to your ship and starting weapons layout earned via xp earned from game play, more on this later. Finally, there is a LAN option which requires the LAN setup to run a dedicated server that only works locally and is currently not able to run over the internet. I am not sure if this is resolvable through some fancy routing or not, though I am sure someone will figure it out. One of the biggest changes to multiplayer, and something I think makes the game more fun, is the ability to select between two different ship load outs before playing. Initially you start with two load outs and earn more via XP (again more on this later). The load outs are predefined starting weapons and missiles and give you can change between your two setups every time you die. This adds some interesting strategy to the game as you might want to change to a more close fighting load out if the players are dog fighting or a more ranged setup for those that are runners. This also unfortunately creates some unfairness as you have to unlock some of the more powerful load outs, like ones that use the creeper as a starting missile, before you can access that setup. So new players are at a slight disadvantage in terms of starting strength in the beginning of their pilot career. I think this trade off is good though because you are always starting with a weapon and missile set that makes you viable in the match versus starting with level 1 lasers and basic missiles. XP is also not hard to earn and can be easily farmed in the new challenge mode maps. New to Overload that is not represented in D1/D2 is Pilot experience points. XP points are earned by completing multiplayer match's, single player game play and challenge mode maps. The fastest way to earn XP is to play challenge mode maps set to timed (hard set to 5m) and rep them out on trainee and rookie settings. The challenge mode maps are also the only place you can practice the multiplayer maps, with the exception of 1 I believe, without playing in an actual multiplayer game. I really enjoy the challenge mode game mode and find that the game play really increases my skill for the multiplayer games, since the bots really start to overwhelm you pretty quickly and you have to use all your dog fighting abilities to keep up. There are leader boards for highest score for challenge mode so I am sure many will be striving to be in the top 10. I wish I could tell you how long it would take to unlock all the ship configuration's but I haven't got there yet. I have maybe 8 hours of challenge mode game time in and have unlocked 4 ship types I think. As far as single player goes it mostly plays like the previous Descent games. Find keys, unlock doors kill reactor find exit. One main difference is you can kill the bot spawners (now called auto-ops). The levels are different than the tuned multiplayer maps and I have only put in a couple hours of time into the campaign so I don't have much feedback on it. There is also a level editor, along with training videos available for Overload. One thing I think is awesome is you can import the skeleton of a map from the editor files used in D1 and D2 (I think D2, D1 for sure). The map will only be the skeleton of the map and doors. You will have to place the bots and items again manually, as well as the custom triggers. The only bummer here is the maps can't be used for multiplayer and only in challenge mode for now. We might see this change if the game sells well, but no guarantees. Overall I give Overload a solid nod and I encourage everyone here to check out this reasonably priced game. If you do, join the Discord (you can get the link from the FB page or from their webpage) The devs are still very active on Discord and communicate with the players on a daily basis. This is handy because sometimes the cloud servers need to be reset and you can ping the devs and have them reboot them when needed. I have only seen this happen once so far in my week of play, so its not something that is happening at a frequency that is super frustrating. Right now it would be nice to see more folks playing the game so we can get more multiplayer games going beyond the current player base. Once console releases I believe we will see another spike in players given Overload supports cross play. Hit me up if you join in. Call sign is pdxgeek now not Primus. Thanks, PDXGeek Find me streaming me learning Overload and getting used to a mouse plus Logitech G13 Setup at: http://mixer.com/pdx_g33k
