I am not NOT a shooter fan. I generally, hate shooters. When it comes to FPS I've played about twenty minutes of Metroid Prime, that's the extent. Oh, and old school DOOM on my gameboy. I couldn't even get into Dirge of Cerberus and I'm a rabid Final Fantasy fan. I thought my response times were too short, I don't like getting jumped, can't aim very well etc. I didn't think I'd like Tabula Rasa, I was pretty sure I'd suck at it.
I am *points to sig* hooked. Boo yah.
I played non stop for about 8 hours last night. I've never had as much pure -fun- in a game before. A lot of times, ok most of the time, for me combat is an after thought in a game. I'm there for the people, for the crafting, the world, the interactions and the roleplay. Going out and fighting is mostly something I do to reach the next level and get new cute looking gear, to make money or to RP through. It's not something I just want to do, and in fact after a few months is something I dred. Pretty much never do I think 'I feel like beating something up. Combat is fun, lets go grind off levels".
Yeah, not here. From the get go I was having a blast. In jogging across the landscape doing quests I hope to hear the sound of a Bane drop ship so I can spin around, duck behind a tree and have fun. I had fun sneaking past bane patrols by sticking to the cliffs, snipping when I got the chance. I spent an hour exploring looking for logos shrines tucked away in the rocks and caves. I gained levels where I hadn't even looked at my exp bar because I was having too much fun to pay attention.
Twenty minutes was spent helping defend a base I was in from a bane attack, defending the forcefield then repelling them when they broke through until we could get the fields back up. Dashing to buy more ammo before the next wave hit. It was a BLAST and a half.
The world feels really really alive, NPCs everywhere fighting and moving in groups just like players. At one point, I came upon two native shaman types fighting a few bane off the road. I dived in to helped them, after the fight the two (who were NPCs) dashed back to me and followed me for about a half hour wherever I went and helped me fight, as if in thanks.
Both Lord (now General) British and Darkstarr were online multiple times last night, the General even ran a GM event though I wasn't near enough to take part.
The UI is beautiful, it fits right in with the feel of the game. Works very well, reminds me of playing Oblivion actually. The hybrid auto-aiming sticky targeting thing is GREAT. You don't need to be precise in your aiming but it's far from lock on auto attack either. Weapons are diverse and choosing a weapon based on range and the weaknesses of your enemy adds a lot of tactical fun to it. The game runs fine at Ultra High on my average system, I could run it at maximum with just a few slight hitches. It's not -as- pretty as it could be but the animations are spot on, movement is smooth, I think it would benefit from more lighting, both spectral and shadows. I have seen screens where it looks much better so it could be my slightly out of date graphics card (7600gt) keeping the candy from my eyes.
I do have some concerns, beside combat and questing there isn't much to do at the moment. Crafting is suppose to get a rework thankfully, they need to add a market as there isn't one yet. I'm hopeful for roleplay, have my eye on three RP clans already. People seem generally nice, I've met far more regular MMORPG players than the FPS shooter crowd. Have seen but a few stupid names, and those were that bad. But the game will need some spit and polish, and some features to pull in the general RPing MMO crowd. There needs to be some civilian areas, we haven't seen any peaceful areas yet (as someone pointed out, all that armor, medical supplies and amunition has to be manufactured somewhere). It feels rather one sided at the moment, I'm hopeful that future content will flesh it out.
And I wouldn't worry about it being another Vanguard. One month to release and I call tell you that it has far, far less bugs than Vanguard did even two months after their release. It might be releasing a bit early, but that seems par for the course. If anything it will suffer from a lack of diverse content and community tools, it's two weak points. I don't think they're unfixable, and being that any game changes drastically in it's first few months I'm willing to give a chance.
I'll have fun blowing up bane regardless.
Oh! And ... it's not Hello Kitty Island Adventure buuuuuuut... *crooks finger in Vahsyl's general direction*
