I’ve honestly not played a game as addictive as this in a while. Let’s list off the features quick:
-Play as ducks
-Wear hats
-Shoot ducks
-Blow up ducks
-Dedicated quack button
That last one is quite important. The quack button turns this game from a fun addictive 4 player shoot-em-up with a wide variety of weapons and a fully featured level editor with the incredibly cool ability to upload custom images to a fun addictive 4 player duck-em-up with a wide variety of weapons and a fully featured level editor with the incredibly cool ability to upload custom images. The distinction is very important you see as somehow the fact that they are ducks adds a certain factor to this game that just ups the comedy factor by roughly 200.
Along with all these online shenanigans is a fairly robust single player challenge mode, which allows you to play at an arcade to earn tickets to trade for hats and modifiers to the main game, such as infinite ammo and moon gravity, which only serve to elongate the experience. There is one thing about the arcade; it is absolutely hard as nails. You earn tickets by ranking bronze to platinum in the challenges and the platinum medals are incredibly tough to get enough of to unlock the later bits and bobs.
The devs of this title have quite the pedigree, having made such classics as Robot Unicorn Attack and Jazzpunk and of course, Duck Game, which although it actually came out 2 years ago, still has a very decent online playerbase and i’ve not had any troubles finding games when I fancy some duck on duck action.
This game is £10 on steam and is without a doubt the best game i have ever played to waste a good 10-20 minutes. Buy it. Buy it now.
Let me begin by saying I know literally nothing about this game but as far as I’m concerned it could be the second coming of christ and I’d still rip it apart like a poorly trained attack dog might rip apart a small child.
Early access on steam had been a mixed bag. On the one hand we’ve got the Rusts and the Space Engineers; good games that you can follow the development of by purchasing it before it’s complete and supporting the devs in their efforts to finish it but on the other hand you’ve got things like Towns where the game is not and will never be finished and the devs essentially took the money and ran. So it is a mixed bag but would you stick your hand in a bag if someone said to you “There’s a decent chance you’ll get a Mars bar but if you don’t you might hit one of the many bear traps I have in there.
So this came to my attention recently on Steam. “Surely not” I thought to myself. “Surely there has been some mistake. But no. This is a new game on Steam, an early access release of a soon to be Free to Play game called Holodrive. Now, as I said earlier I know absolutely nothing about this game and to be perfectly honest I really don’t intend to but this right here is taking the concept of early access a tad too far friends. This is an early access game that doesn't even have an image for the steam store front. This is the precursor to madness.
I clicked the broken image and was greeted with the above page. A bundle with only one item in, accompanied by the same broken image as before. This raises so many questions. Why make it a bundle? Why not just upload an image? They clearly have an image, as seen there, they clearly have a logo image, why not just upload that? Why would people be encouraged to buy a game by people who, by the evidence presented here, can’t even upload a fucking JPEG?
You wouldn't. I wouldn't. It’s just not sensible. So I dug into the developers a bit and tried to understand why this might happen. I found some pretty substantial evidence of fuckery within the company that I’ll be happy to show you right here; all from their own website mind you. I've not edited these at all, this is how they want to be portrayed to the public. I've helpfully circled all the problems.
So going clockwise, we’ve got a literal fedora wearing neckbeard, this off-putting grinning motherfucker, a man who was declared functionally brain-dead roughly 4 minutes before this photo was taken, this guy putting on his very best “fuck me” eyes, bottom right is actively flipping us all off and last but not least, the one only known as “the gurner”.
So that’s the dev team and if that wasn't bad enough, this is how they refer to themselves.
We’ve got the “High Priest”, the “Idea Prophet”, the “Tech Sultan”, the fucking “Brogrammer”, “Information Gatekeeper” and the “Grand Poobah”. Ignoring the fact that this all sounds very cultish, it’s also some of the more repugnant filth I've ever seen. But with this we've found our probable culprit, Matheus Rodrigues, the “Tech Sultan” himself. A man who, as we have clearly seen; cannot effectively upload an image.
Probably the most innovative shooter I've played in years.
Superhot is an experience. You fall from the balcony, throw a sword through someone’s head, twist around just in time to see a bullet entering your cornea and you die. Dying is a big theme of Superhot.
So you go again. Fall, throw the sword, grab it, dodge the bullet, slice two guys in half. You are feeling good. The words “HIGHER-UP” appear and on the balcony that you fell from a man shoots at you with an assault rifle. Press R to restart instantly.
So you make the fall but this time when you throw the sword it misses and flies of somewhere to get stuck in a wall. You then get shot from three different directions. You hammer the R button, fall, throw, dodge, chop chop, throw the sword at the assault rifle guy up top, pick up a pistol, dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot. Super. Hot. Super. Hot. Super. Hot.
If it sounds like you’d have trouble dodging bullets and making all that happen, just remember the golden rule of the game: Time moves only when you move. When you stand still time slows to a crawl which lets you plan out your actions perfectly each and every time and once you’re done with the level you see a realtime version of what you just did which looks impressive as hell. You can see some of these replays on their very own Killstagram which showcases some of the best replays that have been made.
Superhot’s story is quite short, maybe a couple of hours but the real joy comes in the challenges, where you beat all the levels with Katana only or fists only and other such modes and restrictions and the endless mode which just throws wave after wave of enemies at you which progressively get harder and harder and trust me; throwing a sword through someone’s face and then switching bodies to the guy behind him only then to grab the sword again from midair and slice someone in half, never ever gets old.
Superhot has just got too much to talk about. Go play it. See for yourself.
2016 looks to be a very exciting year for people who like a variety of games. Here’s a look at some of them, in no particular order.
No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky just looks like the absolute best chill out game of all time. Right now I play Elite Dangerous to get my hit of flying about and exploring the universe but No Man’s Sky looks like it might actually edge out Elite on sheer beauty alone.
No Man’s Sky releases in June for PS4 and PC
Zelda U
Zelda U is the new Zelda game. I have quite honestly never been disappointed by a Zelda game. People will argue that they are too simple or easy but that’s not what Zelda is about to me. The game looks incredible, it’s experimenting with new ideas and I want it immediately.
Zelda U releases at some point in 2016 and is only available on WiiU
Dishonoured 2
Dishonoured 2 looks like a pretty basic improvement on the first game. Which is all I really wanted to be honest. New weapons, new powers, more focus on what impact your choices make and all wrapped up in a steampunky magicky absolutely fantastic setting.
Dishonoured 2 releases this year eventually and is on Xbox one, PS4 and PC
Starfox Zero
Oh Starfox. How you have been missed. This series was a staple of my childhood and now it’s back and looking better than ever. They haven’t fucked with the formula, they haven’t changed any of the things that fundamentally make Starfox; Starfox. It’s just updated into the modern age with a bang.
Starfox Zero is out in April and is only on the WiiU
Overwatch
I have got something like 800 hours in Team Fortress 2 and Blizzard’s Overwatch looks to me like it could very well be my new TF2. A multi-player game that I can just jump in, jump out. Pure online FPS fun.
Overwatch is out in 2016 and is on Xbox one, PS4 and PC
Yooka-Laylee
So. Playtonic games, basically a bunch of N64 era Rareware employees, decided that they were sick of waiting for a true successor to the 3D platformers we knew and loved in that era and they are making their own. It’s called Yooka-Laylee and it hearkens back to that classic era of game design that we all remember fondly. I for one can’t wait.
Yooka-Laylee releases in October for PC, Xbox one, PS4 and WiiU
Cuphead
In Cuphead you play as a man with a cup for a head who is doing the bidding of Satan after losing a game of chance against him, also the whole thing looks like a cartoon ripped straight from the 30′s. It looks stunning and I am very keen.
Cuphead is hopefully coming at some point this year on PC and Xbox one
Helldivers; made by Arrowhead Studios, AKA the Magicka boys, is a fun game. A 4 player twinstick topdown shoooter, all it involves is pure shooting action, with that dash of humour that we've come to expect from arrowhead and that "kill your friends and stop liking each other after an hour" that is so familiar from Magicka. The game revolves around you fighting a war for "super earth" and killing androids, bugs and the illumintate; an alien race. You play as human soldiers because Humans are the best and must erase everything else from the galaxy. Obviously.
4. Metal Gear Solid V
MGSV is an interesting game. First open world MGS, a sequel to a game that a lot of people just never played, with the same unconventional gameplay as that game had. Good thing it worked out. This game gets bonus points for having the best PC port I have seen in a long, long time. In MGSV you extract soldiers to build a new motherbase, a place for soldiers to live and be all soldiery all day long. They are okay with this because you are the LEGENDARY BIG BOSS and therefore they will follow you without question. There is honestly not much more fun than sneaking up on a truck full of people and then fultoning the entire thing, people and all, back to motherbase for your own uses.
3. Fallout 4
Fallout 4 was a game that I was all but sure was going to be a disappointment. The dialogue system looked wank and I wasn't sure about some of the other systems like the power armour. Thankfully the game was ridiculously fun. I have spent an awful lot of time wandering the commonwealth, just exploring, just helping people i find. I don't even care about the main quest, whatever, fuck that. I just want to hang about with my dog and shoot some things. The dialogue system still sucks though.
2. The Witcher 3
The Witcher 3 was a game that I had no reservations about at all. All the way up until the release date I was just constantly hyping myself up for it. In the end though, after all the hype, it was all worth it. The Witcher 3 is amazing; one of those games that I just enjoyed back to back. It's challenging, it's fun, it's well written. It had everything I expected from it and more, CD projekt red have just continued this year to be a top quality company, wallowing amongst the AAA shit, but at the same time, rising above them. It's a beautiful thing to see.
1. Rocket League
Now, I know it's not the most conventional choice ever but Rocket League is a goddamn amazing game and it deserves all the praise it ever gets. This game is pure fun the entire time I'm playing it, just a fantastic game to play for a few minutes or for however long, it doesn't get boring quick. I really can't gush about this game enough. The game itself is simple but as a result of that, they have done nothing wrong whatsoever. It's just a good game. That's all that needs to be said about it.
Honourable Mentions:
Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows
The first actual expansion pack for a game in a long time. Completely revamps the game and, to top it all off, it's free.
Magicka: Wizard Wars
Kind of like a Magicka MOBA but unlike MOBAs, you need skill to play this.
Grow Home
Ubisoft has an original idea and to add to that amazing fact, they tried out an interesting concept at the same time; procedural animation.
Tribes is coming back and I for one welcome our new Hi-Rez overlords.
For anyone who played Tribes Ascend; the newest addition to the Tribes series, made by Hi-Rez, this news will be very exciting. There have been rumours of Tribes coming back from the dead for a while now and it seems that in the next few days we will see it actually happen.
The “Out of the Blue” update, will be a dramatic shake up of the game as it was, hopefully leaving some of that ridiculously fast paced fun we came to expect from the series. The update will be adding new maps, new weapons as well as changing many of the basic elements of the game, hopefully for the better. The class system has been taken back a notch, now only having light, medium and heavy builds, with each being able to carry a different amount of weaponry: three, four and five respectively. The perk system is now completely removed, presumedly to be replaced with a more in-depth customisation system and best of all, paying for weapons has now totally been removed, meaning the only thing to buy with real money is going to be skins and voice packs. In other words, the best kind of FTP system.
Vehicles have been totally reworked to make them more fun and viable and the differences between the classes is now no longer just speed and max hp, it also includes health regen delay times to further the gap between them. All explosive weapons now move you 25% faster which will definitely lead to faster gameplay and I just can’t even.
I was trying to stay calm for a bit there, I swear. You know, just state the facts of this new update which will hopefully rise a previously dead game from the grave but the thing is; i just had so much fun playing tribes when it was still up and active and I want so hard for this to be a success. I’m just going to gush for a second here. Tribes was quite honestly one of the best and most refreshing FPS games to come out in years and I mourned for it’s passing like a mother mourning the loss of her only child. Now that it’s coming back it just feels like my child has been brought back and the last thing I want is for it to rise magnificently from the ground, beautiful and original and such a fucking breath of fresh air, only for the mass of people to look upon it, say “bored now” and for it to fall back into it’s shallow grave, never to rise again.
So please. When this comes back, play it, I know I will be. It’s made of jetpacks and explosions and goes fast. It’s well worth your time.
It’s been a few weeks since Fallout 4 was released and the modding community is already buzzing with ways to improve the game. Here are 5 of them in no particular order.
NewDialog
by shadwar
A very simple mod that simply turns the dialog wheel into the more traditional fallout 3/nv/everyfalloutgame list of options. The main reason I like this is because the wheel was one of the many things about the game that put me off initially in a big way and I just want to be able to see what i’m actually going to say. I hate it when the option comes up for “SARCASTIC” and your character screams “I’M GOING TO BREAK YOUR FUCKING NOSE” because that, by the way, is not how sarcasm works.
Settlement Supplies Expanded
by Troy Irving
This mod adds a bunch of new objects to the settlement building aspect, which, let’s be honest should have been in to start with. You can now add hundreds of items including; new furniture, new doors, a few odd objects, cars, trees and rocks and an alternative power armour rack. Adding some much needed variety to the usually quite restrictive building system.
Craftable Ammo
By kr1ck
Another thing that really had no reason to be in the base game, now you can craft ammo similar to the way you could in new vegas. Here you use the base materials to make it like copper, lead, cloth etc. I just really like using laser guns guys. But there isnt enough ammo in the base game to deal with my terrible aim.
Armorsmith Extended
by Gambit77
The base game only allows for a few peices of clothing to be worn underneath armour such as the vault suit. I wanted to wear a normal suit with leather pads on to kill raiders with and I wasn’t allowed. This mod fixes that so I can finally travel the wasteland in style.
More Where That Came From - Diamond City Radio Edition
By OldManMode76
This mod adds in 74 new songs onto the Diamond City Radio playlist, all lore appropriate and many from other games that didn’t make it in. All it really does is add a lot of variety to the music when you are wandering the wastes and means that you aren’t going to be hearing the same song too soon after the other.
So, I basically want to make this a short rant about a couple problems then I’ll get on with what I like about it, which is a lot don’t get me wrong, it’s just that in typical EA fashion they’ve done a couple of things that left a sour taste in my mouth.
So the first thing is how prevalent the Season Pass is in the game. We all knew that the game would get DLC somewhere down the line, what with the new film coming out, it would be ridiculous for them not to have us playing as all the new characters and in the new settings as DLC but it’s right there on the home page, at all times. Play, Collect, Stats, Season Pass and Settings. I get that a lot of games do this now but it’s just so in your face it’s ridiculous. Not to mention the obscene fucking price tag of £40 and the fact that there is little to no information on what the pass will actually contain, means that I will definitely be passing on that one.
The game itself is really solid and fun, like an unbelievably good game for a fan of the films. It’s pretty much a big fanwank for the original trilogy, the new trilogy isn't even so much as mentioned. The best thing by far is the sound design which just shits all over anything five seen in games before. The sounds are just spot on from the films and with so many people shooting, throwing grenades about and swinging lightsabers, the whole experience feels incredibly frantic in the best way possible. The graphics obviously deserve a mention as they are some of the best I've seen out of this generation yet. Not only that but for a launch of an EA/DICE game it was surprisingly good, no crashes or dodgy servers to report, from my end at least.
The game modes are really fun and varied, you’ve got the standard modes, such as: Team Deathmatch, here called Blast, which is 10 v 10; Control Points, called Supremacy, which is 20 v 20 and is played on huge maps and CTF which is called Cargo, is 6v6 and played on much smaller maps. The other modes are somewhat more original such as the well known Walker Assault which has you take on or defend an AT-AT and Hero Hunt, an asymmetrical mode where you play as a squad hunting a lone hero character, if you kill the hero, you play as him next, fighting against the other seven players. Also worth mentioning is Fighter Squad, which is the dogfighting mode and allows you to fly the slave 1 or the millennium falcon.
The game modes are by far the strongest aspect of the game, with there being 9 in total, the variation in how they play makes for a very interesting time, allowing you to get a lot of gameplay out of it.One of the major complaints I hear is that there are only 4 maps, which, while technically correct, is mostly irrelevant. The four maps themselves are absolutely huge, with the size varying depending on the game mode. Some game modes allow for the most of the map to be used such as Walker Assault or Supremacy and some put you in a much smaller location such as Cargo, where the team sizes and maps are very small but very well suited for the game mode itself.
All in all, it’s a fun game in my option and i expect I will sink many hours into it in the future. If you like star wars even a bit, you will enjoy yourself, whether its because of the game itself or just because you can ride an at-at down to the ground as Luke Skywalker while swinging a lightsaber around like a maniac, that is entirely up to you.
Fallout 4 released this week. What else would I post about?
I’m going to be honest, when to comes to Bethesda games I'm somewhat more cynical than the average consumer. For instance, whereas most people see Skyrim as one of the finest games ever made, I see it as a disappointment on par with that feeling you get when you see a pound on the floor, go to pick it up and discover that has been super glued down. You feel let down, mildly ashamed to be taking part in the whole affair and you feel like the universe now owes you something in return. So, needless to say, I wasn’t the most excited person in the world for Fallout 4. It didn't help when, in the months leading up to it’s release, every bit of information that came out about it filled me with a little bit more dread; the Bioware style conversation wheel, the total removal of all skills, the graphics just looked appalling. But somehow, I still don't know how, they really pulled this one off.
There are little mini games that you can play on your pipboy, like this mini RPG
Fallout 4 has changed in many ways since Fallout 3 and New Vegas and even more so from the series roots in Fallout 1 and 2. What Bethesda have done here really strips away a lot of the RPG elements from a series that used to exclusively be an RPG, however, as long as you are able to be a bit open minded about the series and what directions it can be taken in, this is by no means a bad thing. Yes, these changes were made and yes it really means there is a little bit less to making your character unique now but that is the way this game was designed. They’ve taken away the ability to assign single points to skills now but they’ve basically made them perks so that in way, the skills are still there its just that you can only assign points in blocks of twenty, which is fine really.
So suddenly you can’t assign 19 points to Small Guns and 1 point to Medicine anymore, which obviously is a shocking loss to the world of gaming but in return we get so much more. The gun customisation is insane and allows you to craft your own gun in the way you want it. It also means that when you are fighting raiders you don't just find 500 10mm pistols, you find long barreled automatic pistols with bayonets on or stubby little revolvers with a rifle stock, it makes the world feel a lot more alive when the weapon you find on one guy have little tweaks that make them a bit different from what the other guys are using. The armour system is amazing, literally the best armour system in a game in a long while. You basically have a base layer, which is typically the vault suit, which can then me overlayed with left and right arms, left and right legs, a chest piece and headgear which is spilt into three sections. That’s nine individual parts for someone with every piece on at once and each one of them can be totally different, with the armour parts being customisable as well, just like the guns.
The world that we’ve been presented with feels alive, you walk into a city and a gunfight breaks out between a gang of super mutants and some raiders and rather than just walk through it, 9/10 you’re going to walk the other way. Ammo is scarce and expensive and you don’t want to waste all the ammo for your best gun just trying to get to the place you need to be. For the first time in a Fallout game I've been running out of ammo, running out of stimpacks and actually using and abusing chems just to survive. Jet used to be a useful source of income, now it’s an absolutely necessary part of my backpack when i start a quest. This game is genuinely hard but it never feels unfairly hard, it gives you all the tools you need to succeed, it’s just that you maybe forgot to bring your power armour along to the party.
Changes in the weather in game can cause genuinely spooky moments
Okay, one last thing because I feel like I could ramble about this game for a good while longer. Currently, according to Steam, I have twenty hours in this game. I think about three of those were spent on the base building and settlement system and I haven't even remotely scratched the surface. None of those three hours felt like busywork or felt like it was there to pad the game out. it’s totally optional and it just adds a little bit of flavour to a game which I could already spend so much time in.
Fallout 4. Shockingly, most likely contender for my GOTY 2015 and this year, we’ve had some good ones.
BlizzCon was this weekend and we got some more information on Overwatch as well as Hearthstone, which is handy because they are quite honestly the only things Blizzard are making now that I even remotely care about.
Overwatch is a game I am very much excited for, having spent many hours in TF2, I’ve been looking for a fun class based, fast paced shooter to fill my time with ever since I gave up on my hat collection for good. Overwatch seemed like a strong contender, unfortunately I recently discovered that it is not going to be free to play. Don’t get me wrong, I really have nothing against a new full price release, it’s actually a refreshing change of pace but the thing is, with every other FPS on PC at the moment being free to play; Dirty Bomb, TF2, Warface, Planetside and many more, I’m not sure how much of a chance a new full priced release has to survive, even backed by blizzard.
The real problem I have with Overwatch is the news of the pricing for it. The “Standard Edition” is $40, which is just the basic game. All good so far. For $60 you can get the “Origins Edition” which adds five skins for some of the characters and finally the standard physical “Collector’s Edition” which costs $130 and includes and source book, a statue of Soldier 76, the soundtrack and everything you get with the origins pack. The outrageous price of the physical version aside, the real problem here is the $20 mark-up for five skins. That is all you get. Five bloody skins. So $4 per skin basically, which when compared to some of the free to play games i’ve mentioned above, is downright fantastic. Hats in TF2 are pretty much never that cheap. The problem here is that Overwatch is not a free to play game, it is in fact a full price release and if these skins are anything to go by, a full price release with a store for skins. Bad Blizzard.
In brighter news, Hearthstone is getting a new adventure, yay! It’s called The League of Explorers and it is set to release on the 13th of November. It will work the same way that Curse of Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain and will see you facing off against AI opponents to earn yourself some shiny new cards, 45 of them to be a bit more precise, as well as two new boards. It is also going to be introducing a new mechanic: Discover. Discover allows you to pick from any three cards your class can use to add to your hand, completely independant from your deck, usually one with a condition such as the Raven Idol which is a one cost Druid card with “Choose one - Discover a minion; or Discover a spell.” or the very interesting Sir Finley Mrrgglton, a new legendary; a 1 cost 1 - 3 with “Battlecry: Discover a new basic Hero Power” which promises to shake things up a fair bit which we always like.
Overall a decent showing Blizzard, bit of good, bit of bad. I would watch the Warcraft trailer or find out about WoW: Legion but I really am struggling to care about all that nowadays.
So heres the thing. I like Nintendo, I really do, however this thing with them being stuck about 10 years in the past really has to stop.
Now, I have a 3ds. I have a WiiU. However they are both assbackwards consoles and if Nintendo wasn’t releasing games exclusively on them no one would have ever bought them. They literally have zero redeeming qualities beyond the games themselves.
This rant was bought on by the recent demo of triforce heroes, the new legend of zelda game, in the same vein as four swords. Impressively enough the demo actually includes online play, with a choice to play with friends or strangers, which is great, its really quite a big step forward but every time I try to play it I get a message of “Online play is not available at this time, check the schedule on the Nintendo Website.”
I’m genuinely not sure if its me being stupid but I cannot find that schedule anywhere. Not anywhere official anyway and the posts I found about the schedule claim that it’s available for 3 days, for two hours each day. Nintendo. What the fuck.
So this demo, the only way to play it is with two other friends in local play or online. For two hours a day. For only three days. There is a single player component, of the full game, but the demo itself has none of that on display at all.
Compare this demo to the recent “beta” of Battlefront, which is essentially just a demo. It had online, it had co-op and it even included a single player option. When EA are fucking up less than you are you know you messed up something catastrophic.
I really wanted this to be a little review of the demo, me saying how pleasantly surprised I was but that is obviously not going to happen, seeing as I couldn't play the game itself. So now it’s just a rant about Nintendo’s fucked up business practises.
Here’s what to do about Nintendo: Get rid of friend codes, release a console with decent online and with half decent specs and make sure it has a standard fucking controller for once. I love that Nintendo try to innovate because if they didn't no-one else would be doing anything and we’d just have brown FPS games till the end of time but we need some stable, next gen additions to some of the series’ that we all love and we just aren’t getting that right now.
Star Wars Battlefront is a game that I have been tentatively looking forward to over the past year. On one hand, it is a brand new battlefront game with all the bells and whistles that modern systems can provide. On the other hand it could end up being just Battlefield with lasers instead of bullets.
Battlefront is a series very close to my heart. I played it nearly non-stop when I first got my hands on it. It was Star Wars, it was a shooter and in 2 they introduced the heroes, allowing you to play as many of the characters from the films. In short; they were fantastic, so DICE has a lot to live up to and a lot of people to potentially disappoint.
As with any series reboot there are plenty of changes that are going to rile people up. No class system anymore, you only have one gun in your loadout and the lack of any sort of ammo are the sort of things that are going to put fans of the series off. I feel the same way, I get this gut instinct that when something is changed in a series that it’s sick and wrong and I want the old way back. But I don’t think these changes are necessarily for the worse, the game has just been designed in a different manner to the older titles and that's the first thing we’re going to need to accept.
Here’s the thing though; it works. It really honestly does. One new feature is that there are power-ups scattered around the level and awarded for completing objectives that can give you access to anything from a rocket launcher to playing as Darth Vader. The class system was replaced with the loadout cards, allowing a greater level of customisation in what you are taking into battle with you, you do only have one gun in your loadout but the loadout cards also contain different guns to use to help switch it up a bit and the lack of ammo is built into the way the game is played. Gone are the days of standing next to an ammo station until your gun magically filled up, now we’ve got an overheating system with a gears of war like active reload system to instantly cool the weapon back down. It works because that's how this game was designed and personally, I think it works very well.
There are three playable modes in the beta; survival, drop zone and walker assault. Survival pits you or you and a friend in co-op against waves of enemies which die in a couple hits. It’s surprisingly fun and allows you to pick between a couple of different loadouts so you can try out some of the options before you unlock them in online. Drop zone is kind of like capture points, drop pods fall from the sky and the teams have to compete to control the most of them, they come one at a time and when one is captured fully, the other team can’t capture it anymore.
The hero characters make a return in the walker assault mode, allowing you to play as Luke or Vader for the rebels and imperials respectively, they come in the form of power-ups like the special weapons and seem to strike the right balance between being massively overpowered and too easily killed. Walker assault also brings back vehicles, again in the form of power-ups, with various ships available along with at-st’s. The ship combat honestly leaves a lot to be desired, they just don’t feel that good to move through the air with for me, although it is incredibly satisfying to dive bomb a group of players and decimate every one of them.
The beta itself is really rock solid, no disconnecting randomly or glitches and only a very minimal amount of lag, which is promising given that the release days for battlefield have not traditionally been the best ever. Most modes and features are locked for the duration, leaving us with “pod mode” and “hoth bitch” as well a sort of single player/co-op horde mode where you just fight off waves of imperials. The game is very obviously heavily multiplayer focused which is to be expected but at the same time, a bit of a shame. Some of my fondest memories with the series have been playing galactic conquest over and over until i could finally take over the galaxy.
The controls on PC leave something to be desired although I'm sure they are totally fine on consoles. Using 1-4 to use your loadout weapons is a bit cumbersome and even worse is the use of f1-f3 to dodge while you are in a ship, it just doesn’t work at all and while they can be rebound it just shows a huge lack of thought going into an otherwise perfectly fine PC port.
All in all the game seems to be in a good spot and after playing the beta I no longer fear how it will turn out on release, it’s not going to blow anyone’s mind but it’s looking like a decent Star Wars game and we have precious few of those.
izzy806
dededos
discoholicmusic