First of all, I actually really enjoyed this game so far. I haven’t made it that far, have been play the campaign mode on easy, but I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far. There’s a couple of things that make it a bit different than some of the other shooters that I’ve played, but there’s much that is similar as well, making this game easy to jump into and start enjoying almost immediately. I will warn you that in the following paragraphs, there are definitely spoilers.
When you enter the game, you get to stare at one of the coolest looking space warriors ever… love the backsplash for the menu. If you think of the most hardcore warriors in the entire galaxy, I at least think of Warhammer 40k’s Space Marines. These recon guys from Section 8 are probably just a tiny notch below that (sorry, TimeGate, but you just don’t have chainsaw swords…). I guess I’m just a sucker for full body armor and glowing lights (Yes, I loved the new Tron movie… so many pretty lights).
The tutorial mission is helpful, not very long, but gives you an ample introduction into what the differences in controls are going to be. It’s also not very long before you’re into the real game, dealing with real enemies taking you out. I’ll take a quick note here to mention a couple of things that are very different from your random generic shooter. First of all, there’s jetpacks. Now I’m aware that these aren’t revolutionary, but they’re fun and I enjoy boosting over things that I can’t jump over. Add to that the boost you get to the jetpack when you’re already in overdrive and it’s awesome. Which is a great segue into the overdrive.
I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything with an overdrive like this. Basically, you’re sprinting along, when suddenly you have the option to go into overdrive… so you hit the button and boom, you’re really fast. Sadly… you lose overdrive if you stop running, hit something, or try to turn to sharply. But, on the bright side, you can overdrive into people and damage them that way. It’s awesome! You can just imagine how much fun I have overdriving around and smashing into people before pulling a knife and ‘fatality’-ing them to death. Which is another great segue into fatality…
I’ve never seen it work in multiplayer, so it may not be possible… but in the single player at least, if you get close enough to someone and have the knife equipped, you can hit/hold ‘F’ (by default) and it enters fatality mode. Basically, you zoom out a bit and get to watch as your soldier beats the crap out of this guy, just before jamming a knife down his throat… at which point he dies. I love doing this in singleplayer, it’s just so much fun… until you take too much damage while you’re doing it and die. But it’s definitely pretty awesome to watch.
Before this thing gets overlong, I suppose I should wrap it up a bit. The one other thing that sets this game apart from others in its genre is the spawn method used in multiplayer maps. You start on a spawn ship where you can pick and choose through your loadout until you have what you think you’ll need and then you just jump off the ship. As you fall, you can start seeing where the enemy is and move towards them a bit, hopefully staying out of AA range. Then you hit the ground and up and shoot everything in the face. Falling to the ground, basically spawn wherever you wish, is very neat. Not only is it fun to watch the drop, but it’s also alot of fun to land on top of a sniper position and smash them. Let’s just say there isn’t the camping problem that they have in other games. Good times!
I haven’t had a chance to play through the swarm mode at all, and have only gotten lvl 6 in Multiplayer Conquest mode. Also, I haven’t gotten that far in the campaign either, about 40-50% of the way through, I’d imagine. But so far, I’m really enjoying the experience. My plan at this point is, to finish up the campaign, try out swarm mode, and then put this game on the back burner, maybe shooting stuff in the face in multiplayer when I feel like it, and move onto the next game on my list. But for now, this should keep me occupied for a couple of weeks, I’d imagine.
Good times!
~Nick Sykafoo
Neoteric Gamer 