» Thu Feb 10, 2011 7:10 am Starting off with the very beginning of the game you are introduced to the world by Ishmael. (Oddly enough to learn the narrators name you have to read the manual.) You are then given the option to decide to play as the Security or Resistance. After that you choose an archetype and a voice actor. Now I'm not a girl, but I do support a bit of equality. But to be honest a Heavy female character would look "awkward" with the art style at hand. (No offense to obese people...) By the way could you imagine The Sensei(Asian) with the Scottish actors voice? From there you can jump into any mission in the game making the initial decision almost pointless.
Now as for the character customization, I'd like to say this is one my most favorite parts of the game, but to be honest I hardly notice what other people avatars look like in the midst of the action, but the amount of items you come to unlock can defiantly waste at least an hour figuring out the perfect combination of items to be unique.(I personally like a military precise looking security officer and a mechanical looking Resistance fighter.
As for the campaign, even if it is almost nonexistent I did feel a bit of a pull for the two side in the beginning. The Security Captain Mokoena obviously has a hard time in front of him having to defend the Ark and keep what he thinks is the only safety in the world safe and intact. While Chen (A Welder who helped initially build the Ark, once again read the manual) feels that things are not fair and that the Security, who the resistance calls fascists, in only holding them down.
Now i'm not going to spoil anything else about the story so I'll get on with this.
The controls are fluid and SMART system works great. There virtually no tutorial so it's hard to learn things like the fact that you can lean side to side while aiming down the sights. The gun stats are done in an old school bar-graph style that makes it a little hard to tell the difference between guns with similar stats. I'd prefer numbers or dots, something clearer to anolyze. The weapon attachments suffer from the same problems, with a series of colors on the bars to tell you exactly whats going on.
The lack of a game lobby to be honest is a tad obnoxious, and the game never clearly tells you that your lower ranked friends have to join your game until you try to do it. The games themselves have some lag problems at this point in time but those should be fixed soon enough, once thats out of the way I feel the multiplayer will explode. But to be honest I do feel that the game is in serious need of some DLC. With only about 12 maps (Guessing) I feel this game will go the way of LP2 (Lost planet 2, the campaign was great but without anything extra got old fast). Now I know some will say it should have been released with more, and I would agree that some extra maps that maybe aren't even related to story wouldn't be bad. But they can't change that now. So maybe in some DLC the level cap would be raised with a serious amount of XP required to level. I know people are already maxing out characters.
So my final thoughts:
-Read the Manual, it's like fixing a car, you'll only get so far by yourself.
-Do the challenges first, unlock attachments while doing the closest thing to a tutorial.
-Play with friends, the BOTS like to watch you die.
-The game would make a great competitive game. Just needs more meat.
-This is by no means a legit review, and it's just a convoluted bunch of thoughts. So please don't say "You misses this and this" cause to be honest this was just written as a I thought it.
