So what can I say about Enemy Territory 2 thus far?
The Good
-The Enemy Territory formula is alive and well. Anyone who played Wolfenstien will be immiedietly familiar with the gameplay and organization. Field ops and their air strikes, assault and their general purpose setup, engineers and their fixing and building.
-The ET formula has been succesfully merged with Battlefield's large outdoor enviornments. Everything is very well balanced. Vehicles themselves are very mortal and lots of things can kill them. Almost every class has some way to deal with a charging tank.
-Lots of little details present. Vehicle cockpits actually have working gauges and maps. Even a computer screen build in that shows other people in the vehicle with you. It's not much I know, but it's nice to see someone finally said "hey wouldn't it be awesome if the gauges were more than static textures?"
-The game is very reliable for a Beta. I've had no chrashes, slow downs are uncommon (though I am running a 7800GS with a Dual Core CPU), and it is generally together. This beta is less of a bug test and more of a straight out gameplay test.
-The Strogg and the GDF do feel different from one another. The Strogg aren't as "different" as Splash Damage liked to advertise, but they do have their own flare. Many of their weapons are, essentially, like Halo's Covenant plasma weapons. IE: No "magazines" but they overheat.
-Deployables are awesome. They make one man ramboing a non option and force teamplay. They are perfectly balanced and give the game, for a few precious moments, an RTS feel.
The Bad
Note: The developers have made it clear on the QW:ET forums that the game is not finished. So i'm aware many of my complaints will end up being fairly typical of Beta problems, but I will state them anyway. The developers want constructive criticism, not "lol tis game sux kthxbai".
-The Vehicles don't "feel" good. Many of the game's light vehicles like cars and ATVs handle strangely and don't feel very powerful. They don't work with the terrain well and they are waaaaay to god damn sensative. Tanks are the other way around. They aren't sensative enough, and often work in an uncomftorably sluggish manner than to be expected for an ET game.
-The hit detection has lots of problems. The developers are aware of it and have stated that they will release a patch soon. Until then, you must aim ahead of your target. Which is agonizingly difficult with Enemy Territory's gameplay style.
-The current sound effects package is god awful. I'm aware the Beta was released without finish sound effects so they just stuck what they could find in the game. But Christ does it sound shitty. The guns sound weak, the explosives don't really "explode" so much as they "woosh." The voice acting is also really generic. But what's to be expected in that category from an action game?
-The Strogg are not complete. All of their ground vehicles have the same cockpit and all of their weapons have the same "iron sight". Minor complaint though.
Personally, I am enjoying the beta and am very impressed with its current condition. The devs are telling us that it is no way a test of the finished product (which they always need to make clear to the forum trolls) so certain complaints cannot really hold weight.
Also, lots of idiots have been going on the QW forums and bitching about the gameplay style of ET.
Like Stark warned in the gaming idiots thread, here come the selfish pricks who are out to sabotage the game before it even comes out.
