hehe, sounds like you have changed your tone since your first postings about the game.
Well after spending one day with the game here is my review:
When I read the system requirements my eyes were stuck, I couldn't belive what I was seeing. The requirments on the box were pretty much listing off my system. This is the first time my computer felt old and weak. I figure those are "recomended" not miniumum tho.
But upon installing the game, and trying to play at its preset levels (it auto set everything to high, 12x7, with no AA) it played HORRIBLE, and offered little in the way of tweaking the game. Its low or high.
After turning everything down to low, it seems to run fine now and honestly looks the same to me for the most part. But for a game of this visual quality there is just no excuse for the system requriments and poor performance. Thing thing could be the "bad coding" poster child.
It seriously reminds me of somthing that predates UT2004. I blame this partially on the idea your forced to use Vista. I have benced a few games on XP vs Vista on my own time and lost about 10% of my FPS on Vista.
So lets go past the performance/quality issues and move into the game itself.
Well for starters, this game IMO is definitly not worth 50$ that retial goes for the 20$ that I got it for seems about right as somthing to add to your collection and pass time on, but by no means has what it takes to be your new main game to play.
The bad coding in the performance catagory is passed down into many other bad flaws in the game tool
I only had to go as far as training stage 5 where your a dwarf to get stuck on a bug that will keep you stuck and unable to pass the stage, you cant throw a anti-magic generator to complete an objective. The solution after googling around is instead of setting the skill to your active skill slots in the normal manner you must use "quick select" where you purchase the skill and equip it at the same time. Also you must not equip anything to skill slot 3.
This is the 5th stage.... part of some 3 minute long training sessions and somthing that major was not found by the game testers and bug control?
Well I guess we can forgive that right? Its a mistake and they can patch it. But how about this one...
Games online plauged by lots of people who have horrible white noise comming thru there mic, with a constant on status. It just ruins the game and there is no way to block the noise, only kicking the player can solve it.
Why is this a big deal and somthing I cant easily just overlook like the training bug? Because quite simple mics should always have an option of push to talk... Its so standard, and so very important and this game does not have it!!! your mice is ALWAYS on unless you go into your settings and mute it, but then you cant use it at all. This also means people playing on speakers instead of headphones you hear reverb when somthing loud enough happens to turn there mic sensor on.
So besides the horrible implimentation of voice chat on here, there is the white noise problem. Thats a whole diffrent monster. apparently alot of people are suffering from it where you have horrible noise/distortion being broadcasted when you talk on your mic. The forums have little info on it, they guess its related to creative cards. But I happen to run onboard right now, and my microphone is part of my webcam wich runs thru USB and I suffer the same problem. So I have to mute my mic and not be able to speak with players.
Not a big deal you would think for 99% of online shooters/games. Voice may be more convienent than typing but atleast typing gets the job done... Well not this time!!! There is NO text input interface. You cant chat with anybody so if your one of the many with the mic problem, your a fish out of water and unable to answer your team mates when they ask you somthing or even comunicate with anybody online wich totally kills a large part of the game.. the online part. Wich is the only part of this game.
So now the next big subject, this game is online only.. and goes thru Microsofts Live service. When you go to join an online game your given two options. Something like "join a game now" and "dedicated servers"
I kept trying to join a game and get an error "you must be signed on an online enable account to use this function" I thought it was a bug because I went thru the process of making a Microsoft Live account for the game and was signed on, but just so you know this is the option that lets you play people that are on the 360 and auto sets up fights based on skill. You will not be able to use this unless you have a Live Gold account, and that will cost you money... Yes for what I belive is the first time in hisotry you get charged to play an online shooting game if you want most of the options. This only leaves you with dedicated servers wich..... for me sucked.
I only have 3 servers show up, and I guess its a good thing the games not too pouplar because that could have been full easy. When you setup your prefrences you choose what kind of player you are "hardcore, casual, ect" I belive this is what determins what dedicated servers show up because its part of that playing type's lobby. However I have not confirmed this yet. But still for a "casual player" only 3 servers are in the list in total... thats so pathetic.
All of this so far and we didnt even talk about the game mechanics or how good the game is.
I'll try to make that part short since there is so much to read already.
The gameplay can be fun... I like it pretty much only because of the magic you can use. It sort of reminds me of the good ol' jedi knight days (and katana instead of light saber)
It has the interface and play syle of counter strike... Infact I could almost say this is a conter strike mod... You buy your weapons and skills ect ect... You can find this on any of the games reviews.
What makes the game sucks tho is that the maps are so few in number and somtimes gives one team a strong advantage over the other I think (like the pyrmid type stage, taking on a onslaught of snipers and grenades if your on the bottom)
Worse than that tho is the weapon selection is so few.... Unlike counterstrike where you had a selection of handguns, smgs, rifles, ect...
You pretty much only get one of each in this game.. There is the weak pistole, wich runs out of a clip way too fast.
Then the smg, wich is so horribly inaccurate even in burst fire so forget about range, then the rifle wich is ok at range but not much better.
The sniper rilfe, slow to shoot and can only be shot zoomed but considering the games setup its hard to use it, then you, have the meele weapon the katana wich I seem to suck with but others are ok with it, then the shotgun wich is super close range only and I never seem to get that close and its really hard to actually hit people with it even up close.
Finaly the rocket launcher, cool gun but it cost so much to buy that I saved every round for it and only was able to afford the gun at the last round and 2 rockets for it then I was broke, and if you die you lose your weapon.
So long story short, the game needs a patch BAD, I mean REALLY BAD, to correct the bugs, performance issues, sound issues, hopefully add some content and features that should be there standard like push to talk mic.
Its not that great of a game, but since its diffrent its worth a play, but only if you have the oportunity to buy it cheap like the sale I mentioned, dont buy this thing full price or you will be hating yourself.
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