Edited / snipped my first rant against the game, as it probably wasn't really fair.
Ok, I'll admit it, I downloaded it. With everybody slamming it so badly, I just had to see if it was as bad as everybody says it is.
The first mission sucks ass, and it sucks it hard. It runs into virtually every goddamn cliche of the first person shooter that's ever been invented in the last five years (enemies spawning in behind you to "up the difficulty", totally linear path to walk along, ambushes in small rooms so you can't move etc.)
Also, I like that a game makes you walk from the intro to your ship. This adds to the immersion factor. However, Legend decided to take a half assed middle path here. They force you to walk to an elevator and take it to the bottom of the installation, at which point you are deemed to be "in your ship", and the next level loads.
If the only reason you are on an elevator is so that the next level can load at the bottom, WHY PUT IN THE FUCKING ELEVATOR IN THE FIRST PLACE?? My ship was still half a level away... This is probably minor for the large majority, but I hate stupid design shit like that, it makes you wonder if someone actually sat down and THOUGHT about things before just starting to draw some polygons...
Furthermore, remember those graphics you saw in those screenshots over the past few years? Forget them, they don't exist. I thought the game looked pretty enough, just not very sharp in it's textures, and that's when I remembered that because I had played NOLF2 previously, my card was still set to 4xFSAA! Once I turned it off, the pretty disappeared, and quite frankly it just doesn't look all that great.
Furthermore, the much hyped and vaunted "physics" model by virtue of their "Karma" engine is a joke. Either it's totally fucked up, or it's not even in there. Before my briefing, Aida was standing in a corner, and I was standing right next to her, blocking her exit from the corner (my intentions were honorable, truly!). So when she wanted to go to her console to start the briefing, I was in the way.
Now, since 1998 I'm used to NPC's in games asking me to move, or to just bump into me endlessly like they're some kind of zombie.
The marvelously realistic physics of the Unreal + Karma engine solve this problem by letting Aida WALK STRAIGHT THROUGH YOU!! Goodbye realism, goodbye immersion, HELLLLOOOOOO -10000% to your review score.
Furthermore, the skaarj and the marine tutorial guy (and presumably the others further on) are aimbots. There is no other way to describe them. Don't bother even trying to dodge the marine guy, he'll hit you anyways, so just stand still and shoot him.
This game isn't about dodging and evasion, it's about health and shield management.
After the first mission I had a very bad taste in my mouth about this game.
However, something made me go back and play a little more. The next mission is rather atmospheric and good fun, with three marines fighting alongside you.
Hmmm, ok, perhaps one more mission then.
I love the next mission. Some people will think it's boring, because the monsters are mindless and nothing but gun fodder, but for me the game doesn't HAVE to be an endless repetition of Aimbot Skaarj. I like the simple slaughter of hordes upon hordes of monsters.
The level design of the 3rd mission also picks up dramatically.
I was going to buy it anyways, even if I had still been disgusted with it after the first mission. Legend worked hard at this game, and even though it's not great, they deserve to be paid for it if I'm going to play it.
After having played on a little, I will say that I'm going to get it, and quite likely keep it. It just gets better after that horrible first mission. Personally, I also think it might be fun to replay a couple of times, but that's just me.
Also, the game seems to run fine on my system with everything turned on at 1024x768x32. It even ran fine when I was still running it with 4xFSAA on (which makes a VERY noticeable difference). I've got an AthlonXP 1800, 512 2700 DDR SDRAM, Geforce 4 Ti4200. Some of the posts that say that the game runs very badly for them even if they have a system a lot faster than mine, either their computer is a bit wonky, or we just have different definitions of "running fine" (for me, 20+ fps is perfectly fine, I don't NEED 60fps, and I definitely won't turn off the eyecandy just to get it to run at that speed).
At first I said the game doesn't deserve more than 75%. After seeing a few more missions, I'd crank it up to about 80-85%. I think the 6-7 hours might be underestimating the length a little, but ofcourse I don't know how far along I am. I played for about 3 hours, and I'm still fighting the spiders in mission 3, so...
I think this is a bit more of a fair assessment of the game.
Going to pick it up when it comes out. However, Legend, you DEFINITELY need to make a demo, and you DEFINITELY need to pick up some copies of Jedi Knight 2, NOLF2 and some decent other first person shooters and LEARN from them.
The kind of crap that's in the first mission is pathetic.
Creston
This comment was edited on Feb 2, 05:13.