Ouch to all the other games that will get ignored this fall (for me). Im in the public beta, and I played like 3-4 hrs or so, so I thought I would share some of my impressions so far.
Graphics
I think that this is an old build so that would mean that the graphics are not yet polished, but if its not an old build, then it's not looking good. I know that the Single player and multi player will have different graphics, but I thought it would look better (if this isn't an old build). I won't get much into the graphics because I am currently playing it on my <27 inch SD TV (I need a new DLP lamp) so my TV is not doing the game justice. Although, I will say that, when u go to ur profile and u see ur character there, those are some bad graphics. They were very bad, I don't think that it would look that much better on my HDTV, they look very skinny and stiff, and the faces are just bad.
Gameplay
The most important aspect to a game. I must say that so far, I am thoroughly enjoying the multiplayer experience and Insomniac Games have definitely delivered on their promise: A fun game. I know that I haven't played the Single player yet, but I have no worries about that. For R:FOM, the Single player was what I liked about it the most, the multiplayer was good, but I didn't play it much, but this time, the multiplayer is awesome.
Co-Op
Co-op is very fast paced, very hectic, non stop action. Wether you play it with 8 players, or 4, it will be very challenging. Me and my team members must have died like atleast 20 times...EACH. At one point, there must have been alteast 2 dozen chimeras on screen, and bullets filling up the screen. The "bosses" are insanely hard, they have a red bar on top of them which is their health and have a number of stars, the more stars, the harder the boss is. You would think that after a few dozen chimeras, at the end of the stage, you are rewarded with a good some what hard boss, but thats not it at all. You have bosses numerous times, not just at the end, and there are more than one at a time coming at you. At one point, we fought like 3 chimeras (dont know their names) in a cabin and that was pretty challenging, then later we fought one stalker which was kind of easy, but the last "boss" fight, was 4...yes 4 Titans! Killing 1 titan is hard enough, so 4 titans (with a bunch of chimeras helping them) is insane. Communicating is important, there are times where you may run out of ammo and need to communicate to a special ops so they can give you ammo, or when you're close to dying/dead, you need to communicate to a medic so they can heal you. At first, I didn't have my headset (it was charging) and I was soo out of synch with the rest of my group members, that I kept on dying alot, it was much better with the headset (magically, every CoOp game I played, everybody had a headset, thats good to see).
One thing that I really liked was that not every battle was the same. At one point, we were being blasted by like 5 laser beam turrets (or w/e that was) so we could not just run and gun our way through them, we had to sneak up behind them. Then we were faced by a bunch of hybrids, then after that we had the grim chimera (the weaponless naked ones) running at us (there must have been like 50 on screen!) and it was very overwhelming. One thing that I must point out is that there was NO lag at all, granted, it could be because there is not that many people playing yet, but I would think that after the beta players stress the server, Insomniac would add more servers to help manage the load. More importantly, with all of the bullets, chimeras, and players running around, there was NO framerate dips, not once. It is soo smooth.
Competitive
The competitive was just like the first one, but with a little bit of COD 4 added on to it, result = awesome. Everybody knows about the modes, so I won't get into that. The experience points you get for each bullet differs on the weapon you use. The carbine will give you 10 points per bullet, while the rossmore (shotgun) will give you like 27 points or so (this also applies to CoOp). Experience points not only levels up your character so that you get more weapons and berseks available, it also lets you use your berserk. Berserk is a skill used when you gain enough experience points in that round and so far I have five: Ironheart - reduces enemy damage by half, Advanced Radar (humans only) - which lets you see enemies as red dots on ur radar (and nearby teammates get this as well), Electrostatic Orb Burst - shoots an orb in the air which acts like a turret and shoots lightning at nearby enemies, Prototype Ammo - Creates ammo that inflicts more damage than regular ammo, the player automatically gets some, and some are dropped for teammates, and Chimeran Range (Chimera only) - grants hybrid vision which highlights enemies yellow which lets you see them through walls (also nearby temmeates get hybrid vision as well).
Although one thing that I didn't like was the deathmatch team deathmatch. Yea it's good but I thought that for deathmatch and TDM, there would be a 60 player free for all and a 30 vs 30 match, yet the 60 player TDMs are broken down into 6 squads of 5 players, I was under the impression that that was only for skirmish mode and everything else would be hectic. Hell, for deathmatch, the max players is only 10! Maybe (Hopefully) this is only because it's a beta.
So far so good, my only complaints are the some what poor graphics (atleast on my SD tv) and that I can't play a 60 player free for all or 30 vs 30 TDM. These two things can be explained if the beta is indeed an old build, if not, then it should have been addressed earlier. I feel as I have been very unbiased in stating my impressions, and with that said, I feel that if the single player delivers, and the story is good, this game is contender for GOTY, if not, atleast Shooter of the year.
