As reported earlier this week, the Defiance Beta has made it’s way to Plus subscribers and I’ve had a little bit of time to play around with the 3PSMMORPG. I’ll continue to update over the next week but I will start with one big take away, I’m not immediately impressed. Complaints and gripes stem from minor issues (you can’t pause any of the cut scenes most likely due to the “online aspect”, even in the intro), to concerns (the graphics are not as impressive as I would hope), to glaring problems (the missions aren’t engaging in the slightest). I’ll build on whether these change over the coming week but you can follow my daily impressions below.
Day 1:
Installed the game but could not play because the PSN was down for maintenance. Due to this issue I placed the game on the back burner for the night and spent some time watching TV with the wife.
Day 2:
There is a lot of bitching to come because my first night of actual play was not what I would call fun:
I’m not thoroughly impressed with the character models that you have to choose from and customization options, but that’s all subjective.
What’s not subjective though is that the character conversations in cut scenes are painful to watch. The mouth models are horrible and don’t move properly. 1 character looks like he’s gritting his teeth while his lips are moving and another one looks like they have almost no teeth when they open their mouth.
The game handles like most 3rd Person Shooters, but I don’t particularly like the 3rd person perspective in shooting games so my opinion is that it handles like crap.
Touching on the previous point, aiming stinks and is coupled by not so stellar weapon accuracy in general.
There were many instances where the game seemed to hang a bit or not progress properly. Case in point; my objective for one mission was to take out a minor outpost and I killed everyone in the area. Once everyone was dead it switched to a cut scene where a big hulking “mutant” game out with grenade and made an impressive entrance with loud explosions, or at least I think that’s what supposed to be conveyed. When he came out on my game though all I could hear was background music and see subtitles that actaully said *loud explosion*.
Driving vehicles is atrocious! I actually got fed up with the game and turned it off after 10 minutes of clumsily trying to control an ATV using the R2 trigger to move forward and the L@ trigger to reverse, which isn’t too bad by itself but coupled with horrible controls made me want to throw my controller through the TV.
There is more talk about right now but I feel I should hit on some good points for a little bit.
The story seems to be built up pretty well. Just from the small section that I hit it would seem that there is a lot of predetermined animosity and a lot of lore to explore. I guess I can attribute this to the fact that the universe couples with a Syfy (I hate that name) Channel TV show to be released soon.
The powers and skill trees that you have to choose from seem in depth and differing, allowing for what appears to be a lot of customization in the future.
The addition of an AI implanted in your character, while a little played out thanks to the Halo Series, seems a lot better than some person squawking at you over an ear piece for the tutorial. The AI, or EGO as it’s acronymed, does a good job of explaining powers, creating dummies for you to practice on, and setting up way points for you to travel to.
That’s about all that I have for now, but I will try to get some more play in tonight and update if any of my feelings have changed after the fact.
For some reason I did not get a xbox beta invite even though I preordered it but I did get one for the PC, unfortunately it does not open till tomorrow and also its a MMO theres going to be tons of bugs for awhile 🙁
It is still in beta, so controls and graphics can be forgiven. Im more or less wanting to know / slightly care if its going to be fun or slightly worth playing.
It’s in open Beta, not close Beta, so I can’t forgive the graphics too much. Some of the glitchy things like the audio cutting out on the cut scene can be fixed, and I hope to god that the horrible vehicle controls can be fixed. The voice acting is horrible, I’ve seen and heard better in 80’s and 90’s dubbed anime than what’s in the game right now. They need to scrap a lot of the audio and start over.
yeah no fixing voice acting at this point if you hate it now you will hate it in the next few weeks.
Same thing with the character modeling, it’s gonna be hard to fix some of the issues that I have with the game w/o redoing a large chunk of the graphics engine.
Thankfully I can give a rats ass about voice acting as long as there is a way to sick that shit
agreed, i preordered it only because it comes out April 2nd and its on xbox lol
Well let us know if it gets any better haha.
If I don’t have to spend too much time on the ATV, I should be able to get more play time in. If I do have to I may kill someone!
haha
I don’t think the ATV is bad at all to drive
Somebody responded to my post on G+ saying that they heard the PS3 version was an earlier build. Maybe some adjustments have already been made.
That makes sense specially since it was opened before the PC and Xbox
Jumped on in the PC Beta, “You have been placed in a Queue: 1506, Estimated Wait Time: 13 Days”!
FAIL!
Thankfully I was able to just get on the xbox version which so far the servers have not crashed but there is a lot of lag, first impression is good though (minus the lag of course)
So far my over take on the game it good, I like the controls and think they are very fluid (including driving)
The lag was bad at first but by the end of the first day they corrected this and I never experienced lag again (expect for maybe a few things taking a little longer to load)
There is a lot there still need to do as far as content but then that is expected since the game is not even released yet and it is an MMO (which are never 100% when they come out)
The huge array of weapons is pretty sweet although the customization they talk about is not that huge but then again we only got to see the beginner stages of it. It could be HUGE in end game