Well I just played the beta for a couple hours and wow, I'm quite impressed. I didn't do much of the competitive, I spent most of my time doing co-op.
I did a couple of competitive capture-the-flag style games with some of our VGchartz buddies and that was fun. Not mind blowing but fun. they were small games though, just 8 on 8 I think. I haven't had a chance to get in on one of the huge 60 player wars.
The co-op though I already can tell is going to own my life. It's diablo/PSO in the form of a FPS. I have a level 5 special ops guy now and I can't wait for more levels. The graphics don't look great compared to some other games coming out, but you can see why they sacrificed detail. So there can be 50 enemies or so on screen at any given time. It's really insane. If you don't act as a team you will be slaughtered in seconds. I'm a special ops so I have a sniper rifle, a bullseye rifle and the ability to throw out ammo boxes. Soldiers have miniguns along with a force sheild they can throw down, and then medics are obviously the healers with light weaponry.
Just as a for example. We finish destroying a proto-type stalker, a fairly easy fight seeing as how it's immobile and you just have to flank it and sustain fire. After it's dead the gate to the next area opens. We're at the top of a hill, at the bottom there is a vast army to numerous to count. Soldiers jump out front and thrown down their shields as cover. No sooner than they do that we are flooded by the quick moving zombie aliens that only attack melee. They are pouring up the hill and we're trying to kill them as quickly as possible. I'm trying to pop them off from behind the shields with my sniper rifle while the three soldiers lay down heavy suppresion fire from their mini guns. but they are starting to break through the line and and manage to pick off a couple of the other spec ops guy and a medic. The remaining medic is trying to revive them while I'm now trying to give ammo to the soldiers to maintain the line.
What I haven't mentioned is that this entire time hundreds of bullets from the guys at the bottom have been showering us. The shields absorb most of it, but some of the bullets still make it through. At the bottom of the hill they have their own soldier class throwing down huge shields preventing us from picking off anything more than the stray monster or two. Which becomes tricky after we've finished off all the melee attackers and push down the hill. With much gusto the soldiers push on with the barriers while I and a medic stay close to them. We're pushing their numbers back but as soon as we get to the bottom another wave hits. Tons of them, no idea how many. Twenty? Thirty? Lots. They crush us. I die in a swarm of bullseye fire, and as the camera zooms out from my body I see the skull icons of all my dead allies. None of us survive except a couple of the spec ops guys at the top of the hill who didn't follow. The enemy begins to push up the hill. If nobody revives you, then you automatically respawn where you died after 30 seconds (which feels like an eternity in the organized chaos taking place). I wake up in the middle of a swarm of chimera. I make a charge back up to the top of the hill to rejoin my allies and attempt to push them back down, seeing as how the other direction is nothing but an endless death march. I die within a second of living again.
We eventually fight them back, but it's just a non stop slaughter with the occasional breather so everyone can stop and pat each other on the back, as well as heal each other and give out ammo. The co-op campaign is insanity. But a very good kind of insanity.
Screw this, I'm going back to the beta.
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
