Name: Anonymous 2008-10-24 9:20
Got the 360 version around noon yesterday and have spent most of the hours since playing the game. First let me preface things by saying that I've mostly played multiplayer and done some relatively extensive map editing. I'm only about 35-45 minutes into the SP.
Since MP is what I've played the most of, that's where I'll start. At first I was very frustrated with the multiplayer. The control setup is basically 90% identical to CoD4 (LB is heal, Y is action for vehicles, mounted weapons, picking up ammo, helping downed teammates etc), so I was expecting an easy transition, but I had to get the feel of some things before it really started clicking. For one, and as expected, the feel of the weapons isn't as smooth or quite as responsive as CoD4. Part of this is due to 30fps vs 60fps, and part of it is just because CoD4 really nailed the physics and handling of the weaponry. FC2 is still very playable, but I'd equate it more to something like Battefield: Bad Company in terms of the feel of the guns. Its also like BF in that you can't go prone which sucks on occassion. But overall, once you get acclimated, its more than adequate.
Even once I got the feel for the shooting down, I was still getting fucked up a bit, and the primary reason is because the game has a different kind of tempo thanks to the need to heal yourself, and the need to maintain awareness of and proximity to ammo supplies. Healing I think actually works pretty damned well, and is a balanced trade-off. Its essentially the same thing as healing in Halo/CoD (get to cover and buy some time), only because its user controlled, you 1) actually get the feeling that you earned your recovery, 2) can often catch enemies attempting to recover. So in all it just adds another layer to your approach and the overall strategy of the game, and it you're not hip to it, you're gonna get fucked up quickly. As for the ammo situation, at first I was pissed (and I still am, sorta) that you can't pick up guns/ammo off of downed enemies, but once you learn to follow icons to the ammo dump, its not a problem. Furthermore, ammo dumps add another layer of strategy thanks to the fact that they are a mutually desirable spot for both enemies and friendlies. They can also be blown up with gunfire/explosives, so you can pick up a lot of kills by catching an enemy unwittingly grabbing ammo and emptying a clip into the crate. Bullets start popping and whizzing, grenades burst, and the surrouding grass catches fire. So again, its sucks that you can't pick up other guns/ammo, but the dumps add their own little twist to the arrangement, and its cool.
The provided levels are actually more than adequate, and tend to grow on you. Stylistically they are very reminiscent of something from the GRAW series, with plenty of nature to be had, lots of sniper positions, and plenty of different elevation and terrain changes. All of this is far more accessable than GRAW however thanks to the fact that you can jump on just about anything, swim through water, and drive Jeeps, gliders, and dune buggies. Just having the option for vehicles is awesome, which helps cut down the size of big maps for those who don't want to do a lot of walking or like to blitz attack, and its also fun to team up as a gunner/driver combo with other players. I was in the back passenger seat of a 4-door Wrangler when I grenade-launchered an enemy who shot the guy in front of me. I also flew a glider off a cliff toward a teammate, gave him intel about the 3 enemies I could see from my vantage point on the hill in front of him, then I prematurely leaped off the glider and blazed one of them with a clip from the G3. Awesome. One time on a rocky, arid map, I quickly sprinted out of the spawn toward a rock outcropping at the middle of the map. I watched a team Jeep speed along the right edge of the stage, but then I heard engine noise to my left. As the noise got louder I stepped out from the rock into the road on my left, only to see an enemy dune buggy speeding head-on toward me. Luckily I had my grenade launcher in hand and prompty turned the buggy and the driver to ash with one squeeze of the trigger. Very nice.
One of my main gripes at the moment regarding MP is the leveling system. The setup has 5 or 6 preset classes (Commando, Sharpshooter, Guerilla etc), each of which have a limited number of weapons available. Each preset class is also capable of being leveled up with 3 diamonds so as to access other weapons available for that class. So for instance, Commando starts out with a G3 as your primary and a pistol as your secondary. By adding one diamond to Commando (diamonds are earned through XP by leveling) you unlock an AK as a primary. 2 diamonds for Commando gets you access to a single shot grenade launcher for your secondary. 3 diamonds unlocks the FAL Paratrooper as a primary. So when you max out Commando, you essentiall have access to any combination of 3 primary and 2 secondary weapons. The class is also restricted to one molotov as your grenade, with no option to switch. Thats it. Now other classes have other weapons (rocket launchers, flamethrowers, Mac-10s, mortars, snipers etc etc), but you can't carry weapons back and forth between classes. So its kind of flexible, and kind of not, which is a little disappointing. I'm sure they wanted to keep things balanced, but I would have liked it to be a little more open-ended type of setup.
But thats not my actual problem. My problem is that, when earning XP in Ranked Matches (which I assumed I had to play in order to unlock the goodies) your loadouts don't transfer to Player Matches!! "Well just don't play player matches!", you say! Well player matches appear to be the only way you can play custom maps, which is one of the major selling points of the game and one of the primary reasons I bought the game!! "Well then rank up in the Player Match lobbies!", you say, which is exactly what I thought. The only problem with that is that PLAYER MATCH XP ONLY LASTS AS LONG AS YOU ARE IN THE ORIGINAL ROOM. Thats right. Once you leave the lobby, you're back to rank 1 and only the basic weapons. Which means that, while I'm enjoying my custom crafted map that I worked hours on, I can't use the weapons I've worked hours to unlock. Its fucking ridiculous. I hope to god that I'm missing something about this arrangement because that is an EXTREMELY disappointing development IMO.
Which brings me to the map editor. Its fabulous...unrivaled in a console editor and very accessable. I've already seen some near-professional quality maps, and the download times are extremely quick and painless. The lobby even gives you an update bar for each players progress as the maps come in. Aside from making other types of vegetation/weather available (like evergreens and snow, basically) there's really not much of anything that the map editor needs. Maybe if you could put some animals from the SP into MP (you can do birds, but they're just window-dressing and non-interactive). The online lobby system is also very complete in that it gives you the option to vote to change maps, shuffle teams, and ban individual assholes to have them kicked. I can't believe its taken me this long to play a shooter on 360 that incorporates the 3 of these things in one game.
So basically, I'm very pleased with FC2 MP, aside from the one VERY major gripe about weapons transferring to Player Matches. I could understand if they transferred, but that you couldn't earn XP in Player Matches (like CoD4), because that would be fair. Or maybe if you could do Custom Maps in Ranked Matches, which you actually may be able to do, but because ranked rooms close down after the completion of each round, it kind of defeats the purpose of being able to find and play the custom maps you like. I don't understand why they set the game up this way, but hopefully its something that can be patched accordingly..
I'm actually tired of typing at the moment...I'll have more detailed impressions (including SP) later..
Since MP is what I've played the most of, that's where I'll start. At first I was very frustrated with the multiplayer. The control setup is basically 90% identical to CoD4 (LB is heal, Y is action for vehicles, mounted weapons, picking up ammo, helping downed teammates etc), so I was expecting an easy transition, but I had to get the feel of some things before it really started clicking. For one, and as expected, the feel of the weapons isn't as smooth or quite as responsive as CoD4. Part of this is due to 30fps vs 60fps, and part of it is just because CoD4 really nailed the physics and handling of the weaponry. FC2 is still very playable, but I'd equate it more to something like Battefield: Bad Company in terms of the feel of the guns. Its also like BF in that you can't go prone which sucks on occassion. But overall, once you get acclimated, its more than adequate.
Even once I got the feel for the shooting down, I was still getting fucked up a bit, and the primary reason is because the game has a different kind of tempo thanks to the need to heal yourself, and the need to maintain awareness of and proximity to ammo supplies. Healing I think actually works pretty damned well, and is a balanced trade-off. Its essentially the same thing as healing in Halo/CoD (get to cover and buy some time), only because its user controlled, you 1) actually get the feeling that you earned your recovery, 2) can often catch enemies attempting to recover. So in all it just adds another layer to your approach and the overall strategy of the game, and it you're not hip to it, you're gonna get fucked up quickly. As for the ammo situation, at first I was pissed (and I still am, sorta) that you can't pick up guns/ammo off of downed enemies, but once you learn to follow icons to the ammo dump, its not a problem. Furthermore, ammo dumps add another layer of strategy thanks to the fact that they are a mutually desirable spot for both enemies and friendlies. They can also be blown up with gunfire/explosives, so you can pick up a lot of kills by catching an enemy unwittingly grabbing ammo and emptying a clip into the crate. Bullets start popping and whizzing, grenades burst, and the surrouding grass catches fire. So again, its sucks that you can't pick up other guns/ammo, but the dumps add their own little twist to the arrangement, and its cool.
The provided levels are actually more than adequate, and tend to grow on you. Stylistically they are very reminiscent of something from the GRAW series, with plenty of nature to be had, lots of sniper positions, and plenty of different elevation and terrain changes. All of this is far more accessable than GRAW however thanks to the fact that you can jump on just about anything, swim through water, and drive Jeeps, gliders, and dune buggies. Just having the option for vehicles is awesome, which helps cut down the size of big maps for those who don't want to do a lot of walking or like to blitz attack, and its also fun to team up as a gunner/driver combo with other players. I was in the back passenger seat of a 4-door Wrangler when I grenade-launchered an enemy who shot the guy in front of me. I also flew a glider off a cliff toward a teammate, gave him intel about the 3 enemies I could see from my vantage point on the hill in front of him, then I prematurely leaped off the glider and blazed one of them with a clip from the G3. Awesome. One time on a rocky, arid map, I quickly sprinted out of the spawn toward a rock outcropping at the middle of the map. I watched a team Jeep speed along the right edge of the stage, but then I heard engine noise to my left. As the noise got louder I stepped out from the rock into the road on my left, only to see an enemy dune buggy speeding head-on toward me. Luckily I had my grenade launcher in hand and prompty turned the buggy and the driver to ash with one squeeze of the trigger. Very nice.
One of my main gripes at the moment regarding MP is the leveling system. The setup has 5 or 6 preset classes (Commando, Sharpshooter, Guerilla etc), each of which have a limited number of weapons available. Each preset class is also capable of being leveled up with 3 diamonds so as to access other weapons available for that class. So for instance, Commando starts out with a G3 as your primary and a pistol as your secondary. By adding one diamond to Commando (diamonds are earned through XP by leveling) you unlock an AK as a primary. 2 diamonds for Commando gets you access to a single shot grenade launcher for your secondary. 3 diamonds unlocks the FAL Paratrooper as a primary. So when you max out Commando, you essentiall have access to any combination of 3 primary and 2 secondary weapons. The class is also restricted to one molotov as your grenade, with no option to switch. Thats it. Now other classes have other weapons (rocket launchers, flamethrowers, Mac-10s, mortars, snipers etc etc), but you can't carry weapons back and forth between classes. So its kind of flexible, and kind of not, which is a little disappointing. I'm sure they wanted to keep things balanced, but I would have liked it to be a little more open-ended type of setup.
But thats not my actual problem. My problem is that, when earning XP in Ranked Matches (which I assumed I had to play in order to unlock the goodies) your loadouts don't transfer to Player Matches!! "Well just don't play player matches!", you say! Well player matches appear to be the only way you can play custom maps, which is one of the major selling points of the game and one of the primary reasons I bought the game!! "Well then rank up in the Player Match lobbies!", you say, which is exactly what I thought. The only problem with that is that PLAYER MATCH XP ONLY LASTS AS LONG AS YOU ARE IN THE ORIGINAL ROOM. Thats right. Once you leave the lobby, you're back to rank 1 and only the basic weapons. Which means that, while I'm enjoying my custom crafted map that I worked hours on, I can't use the weapons I've worked hours to unlock. Its fucking ridiculous. I hope to god that I'm missing something about this arrangement because that is an EXTREMELY disappointing development IMO.
Which brings me to the map editor. Its fabulous...unrivaled in a console editor and very accessable. I've already seen some near-professional quality maps, and the download times are extremely quick and painless. The lobby even gives you an update bar for each players progress as the maps come in. Aside from making other types of vegetation/weather available (like evergreens and snow, basically) there's really not much of anything that the map editor needs. Maybe if you could put some animals from the SP into MP (you can do birds, but they're just window-dressing and non-interactive). The online lobby system is also very complete in that it gives you the option to vote to change maps, shuffle teams, and ban individual assholes to have them kicked. I can't believe its taken me this long to play a shooter on 360 that incorporates the 3 of these things in one game.
So basically, I'm very pleased with FC2 MP, aside from the one VERY major gripe about weapons transferring to Player Matches. I could understand if they transferred, but that you couldn't earn XP in Player Matches (like CoD4), because that would be fair. Or maybe if you could do Custom Maps in Ranked Matches, which you actually may be able to do, but because ranked rooms close down after the completion of each round, it kind of defeats the purpose of being able to find and play the custom maps you like. I don't understand why they set the game up this way, but hopefully its something that can be patched accordingly..
I'm actually tired of typing at the moment...I'll have more detailed impressions (including SP) later..