Looks interesting.

The weapons, their sounds and their lack of distinction bothers me in these kinds of games. If you look at the guns in L4D they have distinct differences, they each have a really good feel to them (as far as a digital gun can have) and the sounds are just perfect. In the video above the guns sound like banging two sticks together. It's just horrible.

Ugh. Yeah. Generic sounds.

What disturbed me most was the dialogue in that trailer. It was nauseating for some reason.

It didn't bother me that much, i mean the shit you hear real people talk in a game is way worse. Obviously they were trying to simulate civilized people teamspeaking.

Looks interesting. If they deliver on the promise, I'd totally play the crap out of that game.

Ok... so I've pre-ordered this game for myself and Shiny. At $60 a pop and with my current economic situation, that was a really hard trigger to pull. But with games like this, it really pays to get in early. It releases next Tuesday. Expect some commentary then. I did not go for the gold edition... $100 a pop was a non-starter.

I haven't really followed this one. What is it about the game that makes it so exciting for you?

Third person shooter, expansive playable area that is a post-apocalyptic New York City, and massively multiplayer without MMO monthly fees. That's pretty much it. Post-apocalyptic is awesome, multiplayer is awesome, guns is awesome. I think you can go to first person shooter mode, which I'm likely to do if it's not terribly implemented.

Feedback from the closed and open betas was very positive as well. If it hadn't been, I wouldn't have bought in.

Aight, sounds good. Keep us posted!

I've played probably 8-10 hours so far and I'm enjoying the game. I'm still a noob, obviously, but the game hasn't immediately turned me off, which is a good sign. I have a level 8 character I play with Shiny and a level 6 one I play solo.

The game's very much a third person cover-based shooter. Taking cover and knowing when to shoot and when to hide is important. You get skills like in other RPGs, but from what I can tell, you can only have 2 active abilities at a time, one activated by q and the other by e. You can switch these out at any time, though, even mid combat from what I can tell. The abilities come from one of three 'trees'... essentially healing, dps or tanking. Unlike other games, you don't have to equip skills higher on a tree before pickings ones further down the tree. With Shiny I've been running with the second healing skill (which is a self or area heal) and the second dps skill (which is an automatic turret).

When you first get out of the tutorial part, you get released into Manhattan with a mission of unlocking your base. You can wander off at this point and do side missions if you want (and we did), but that's not the smart move. Once you unlock the base, you can do 3 missions (in sequence) to unlock the 3 wings, one for each skill set (healing, dps and tank). Once you unlock the wing, you unlock the next ability. You can then do side or main missions to gather supplies to then unlock additional bonuses from the various wings.

Besides the active skills, you also get traits, which you also equip, and then there are passive bonuses. The passive ones are always active. The traits you can only equip so many... right now it's one, but there are two more slots that are currently locked to me. My guess is they unlock as you progress or level up or whatever. There are levels and you get xp the usual way.... killing crap or doing missions, main or side. The main reason to level up is to unlock more slots for stuff, or so you can use better gear you've looted. All gear has a minimum level for use.

Gear is a big part of the game. You kill crap and loot, then upgrade the gear if it's better. All gear has 3 stats... heal, dps and tank. For now I'm mostly ignoring that, but I'm sure it'll matter later down the road. There are also various types of weapons, like sub machine guns, assault rifles, light machine guns, machine pistols, shotguns, etc etc. I've mostly been going with an assault rifle and a shotgun, one for long range plinking and the other for close up blasting. Some enemies like to charge up and jack you up with baseball bats or whatever, so a shotgun is damned handy. You also get a sidearm, which so far has just been pistols. You can also loot weapons mods, like sights, pistol grips, extended magazines, and other stuff. Most weapons can be modded, though not all weapons have all mod slots. Modding a weapon can greatly improve it. You start off with one slot for a primary weapon and one for a sidearm, but that bumps up to 2 main weapons and a sidearm at level 5 or something.

The equipment comes in various rarities too... gray is crap, basically and green is what we see mostly. Seeing blue gear drop is pretty exciting. There are further tiers up, but I doubt I'll see any of that in the near future.

There is a group matchmaking feature, but I haven't used it. However, Shiny and I have managed to beat missions that I got spanked on trying to solo, so groups are a good idea. For friends, the game runs in Ubisoft's launcher, so you have to make sure to friend anyone in that as well, not just in Steam. Once you do, they'll show up in your group tool and it's easy to invite them to join up. Quite commonly Shiny and I will be playing and one of us will come under fire from multiple bad guys, so the other person will go flank the enemy. It lets us seriously tear the bastards up. Solo doesn't work as well.

Anyway, I thought I'd give you guys a basic rundown of how the game plays. I plan on putting in quite a few hours this weekend, so I'll probably post some more updates. I'm trying to not spoil the story in case any of you decide to take the plunge

lol, yea. You can loot decorative gear, that's separate from your actual stat gear. There's a ton of it, and it's all ugly imo. We'll see if I can find something that doesn't come in an earth tone or 'torn blue jean' variety as I level up.

Some pics from the game.

Thanks for the writeup and the screenshots, it does sound pretty interesting.

I'm still a little lost on the 'genre' though. So basically it's like a coop mmorpg 3rd person cover multiplayer shooter with a free-form storyline? With some Diabloesque loot fever mixed in?

How much of the game is actually about fighting others? And are you mostly fighting other human players or NPCs?

I think it's underlying formula is quite similar to the first Guild Wars. It is a RPG at its core and much less a shooter.

I'm guessing the author of the article is reading a bit more into the game's premise than he should be...what do you think Satsi?

https://killscreen.com/articles/the-per ... -division/