I’ve played the demo and online beta on someone elses almsot top of the range PC just yesterday and today.
ONLINE:
Online beta is pretty awsome, but doesn’t have the physics or some of the directx10 effects, and is buggy as hell, but IMO this just makes it more fun, its frikin awsome, and with people cheating its bloody hard sometimes aswell. The graphics are almost the best i’ve ever seen, you cant turn the graphics up to full, so its only a little bit better than halo and gears of war/ new games that look awsome.
A round usially lasts an hour, and when you join halfway through a round everyone has better weapons than you. You have to buy weapons at spawn points and various other small places Counter Strike style. Killing people, taking bases and completing objectives earns you points, you use these points to buy yourself weaponry, and when you do this enough times your rank improves so your default cash improves, thus you buy better weaponry and this is why joining a match halfway though sucks.
THE DEMO:
Oh…My…GOD it looks beautiful, full graphics settings, full physics, it BY FAR looks better than anyother game, honestly the videos and screens do not do it justice, the wow faactor is just… WOW.
Gameplay is tricky to get used to, your options are so wide open that sometimes its too much. Its not a fast paced game, your Nano suit is alot more powerful in single player than online but because dying isn’t an option and because you have so many enemies which are all capable of killing you even with simple weapons you have to be strategic.
You can out flank them, use stealth, take them by surprise, maybe throw a chicken or crab at them (you can do that BTW) then move on. Alternatively you could use a combination of armour mode and speed mode to jsut run past the enemy and recharge your suit when you can.
So far one of the best thigs ive done is to pick up large objects like small skibs or metal outdoor bins, in strength mode you can use them as pretty effective makeshift armour. If its not doing you any good then in strength mode you can throw said large object the same as a chicken or crab or even a frog and AVAWABANG, its alost as effective as a head shot. Just remember to pick up something sturdy enough to be of use to you.
ANNOYING THINGS:
Anoying things include the fact that in so many modes it deactivates short cuts to other modes. Like when you’re aiming down a sight you cant switch strait to sprint, you have to go back to normal mode then sprint. Its especially annoying when grenades are being thrown at you and it jsut doesn’t feel natural, the shortcuts seem a bit strange to me and the middle mouse select function for the Nano siut is over sensitive in single player.
In the single player, the enemy has body armour, and no matter how many times you shoot them with an ordinary gun in body armour it wont kill them, its foot shots, head shots, explosions or super punches or nothing. Or maybe its annoying because i’m not good at the game yet.
Loading times, i’ve played this on a pretty damn high end computer and i was still waiting a long time, a good few minutes, and frame rates still vary alot in the demo, especially at the very start during the dawn sequence (that looked unusially gorgeous).
Ping, you need good ping, really good ping to compete online.
Lip-syncing, they havent got that spot on just yet, hopefully they will improve it before the full release.
Mushrooms::: You can pickup alot of stuff, but not plant life, and i thought it would be funny if you could eat the mushrooms and see effects. You cannot; TheANIMAL was not amused…
