Feil wrote:I recall seeing some footage of set-piece battles that involved shooting at vehicles. I very much doubt that vehicles will play a part outside of set-pieces.
Since you've played a proper demo, are the hit effects and the like decent? In the MP stuff I've seen the bolters fire boring yellow lines that make boring yellow holes in things.
How does the animation work with changing between melee and shooting? Again, in the stuff I've seen it's pretty jarring interruption with no effort to blend the motions at all, which is a shame, especially for the pistol/melee combos.
I entered the game again to check, and it seems it takes 7 body shots or two head shots to kill a boyz from full health with the regular bolter. A bit more than my estimate from playing without paying attention - I must have been mixing head and body shots, or attacking enemies that my allies had weakened.
Speaking of those guys, the game handles them the easy/boring way: they're invincible, but they're not particularly great at killing lots of enemies. On the bright side, you're not constantly babysitting a pair of idiot AIs. On the other hand, they're basically just decoration, not useful squad members that you can command and use to help you fight.
Stark wrote:Since you've played a proper demo, are the hit effects and the like decent? In the MP stuff I've seen the bolters fire boring yellow lines that make boring yellow holes in things.
The shot effect is alright. The bolters leave little contrails behind them.
As far as hit effects, they're pretty generic. Big puffs of blood if you hit flesh, big puffs of sparks if you hit metal, a little explosion of dust if you hit the ground. The effect on hitting the ground is a bit disappointing, given what a bolter is and what it should do.
How does the animation work with changing between melee and shooting? Again, in the stuff I've seen it's pretty jarring interruption with no effort to blend the motions at all, which is a shame, especially for the pistol/melee combos.
"Jarring interruption" pretty much covers it for everything except for the pistol, which is not particularly blended, but at least not jarring.
Another thing: I haven't seen much in the way of destroyable terrain. A few pieces of cover can get shot up, but not reliably, and the hero doesn't seem to have the ability to run through terrain pieces like in that one video.
Ok, I gave the demo a whirl. Being, obviously, a 40k nerd, I went into this rather critically when it came to the details. Generally, I was pleased.
There were a few things which were as mediocre as I expected: The bolter is pretty lackluster, but that's par for the course for Relic. To date, only Firewarrior and Chaos Gate have ever really modelled bolters properly, and Space Marine doesn't take the golden opportunity to fix that, sadly. Bizarrely, however, the Stalker-pattern bolter (which in terms of fluff is supposed to be a weaker, suppressed bolter that fires non-rocket silenced rounds) behaves almost exactly like a regular bolter ought to. Each shot is chunky, explosive, and does lots of damage. The bolt pistol isn't too bad. I spent the majority of the demo using the pistol, since it looks a lot better in terms of animation (you hold pistol and chainsword in each hand, whereas with the full bolter and other weapons they just disappear while you chainsword 1-handedly. Oddly, the exception is with the jump pack, where you hold the bolter 1-handed opposite your chainsword, as if it were a pistol).
My only other serious complaint is that it's a little harder to change directions mid-combo than it should be. I found myself chainswording walls a little too often, because all the orks in front of me were dead while the super-final-combo-hit was wasted, instead of hitting the guys behind me. With some practice it wasn't as bad, it's just that it doesn't change direction as intuitively as you might like.
Minor complaint, hopefully a demo issue: Sometimes it wouldn't "lock on" to stunned enemies very well, and I'd sit there trying to do an execution move while they clambered back to their feet.
Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the attention to detail. This ain't a shovelware cash-in. You really clunk around and it feels like you're an 800 pound juggernaut, while still being plenty nimble. Sprinting in particular has a tiny (as in, not noticeable enough to be annoying) ground shake effect. An odd thing to notice, maybe, but I remember being equally fascinated by the original Gears' crouch-sprint thing.
I ended up using the chainsword a lot more than I thought I would. Those Orks really come at you, to the point where you just don't have time to reload anymore!
Like a lot of people, I was a bit nervous about the big hype they drummed up over "No cover system, LOL!!" But I'm pleased to say that Feil is absolutely correct in his analysis: A cover system really would just get in the way. You might hang behind a large piece of cover for a second or two while you get your bearings after a swirling melee, but beyond that you just don't get pinned down in this game. Ranged weapons can do a fair bit of damage to you, but the impetus is there to get up close to those guys and tear them up so they stop shooting at you. Best defence is a good offence and all that.
The jump pack in the second level is fun. Mechanically, it's pretty simplistic: Jump up, then either float down, or slam down and DFA anything under you. It 'blends' well, however, in that you can use it for little hops or quick bursts toward an enemy. It's quite fluid if you've a mind to use it for more than just soaring up to maximum altitude and spamming the slam attack.
I'll also say that the videos online definitely don't do it justice. Again, I felt that the vanilla bolter was a bit weaksauce mechanically, aurally, and visually, but everything else was pretty solid or at least decent. Even blasting Orks with quick pistol shots had decent effects, and the Stalker was definitely good in that department. I'm going to do another run through with just the Stalker and see how well it works.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Played through a round with the Stalker. The lack of ammo for it makes me sad, so I had to switch to the regular bolter a few times, but other than that it was quite possible to play through with 80-90% ranged action if that's your inclination. The sheer weight of bodies and the durability of Nobs forces you to hold them off in melee now and then, but then that's the idea. Blowing orks away with the Stalker is definitely fun. It'll one-shot most boyz (with good aim, anyway), with 1-3 required for the 'ard boyz, depending on where you hit. Definitely got that chunky bolter feel.
I think the first order of business when the game hits is figuring out how to mod the game so the bolter behaves like the Stalker. Then just make the Stalker a scoped version or something.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
I took some screens. I basically just spammed F12 while shooting at Orks, so the resulting slideshow should give a decent indicator of what hit effects are like.
Screens are in reverse order, so start at the unrelated Red Orchestra screens and go up. Also make sure to hit "View Full Size", the Steam resizes are pretty crap.
What's the squad AI like? Your shots make it look like Dynasty Warriors, which isn't ... y'know... appealing. Dynasty Warriors, only really linear and with no objectives?
I'm a bit sad they apparently didn't fix the UI either, it's still set to 'awful'. Does it at least do contextual fade or do you have to look at your giant empty horseshoe all the time?
All the various screen effects and the like, sure, but no, that goddamned Ultramarine symbol just sits there all the damn time. And I'm speaking as someone who actually likes a chunky, ever-present HUD.
Squad AI is... eh, I guess? They're not completely useless, as in I've seen them score kills and do stuff, but they don't really help you out all that much. In terms of actual AI, they seem smart enough, and tend to take up positions behind cover and shoot at things, and chainsword back at enemies who mob them.
EDIT: I know the health fades when you're not in combat, and I think the weapon/ammo display does too. Just not the Ultra symbol.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
I've seen Dynasty Warriors in play, although I haven't played it. Aside from the obvious - they're both hack-em-ups pitting a superman against a horde of lesser baddies - I don't see much similarity. For all that you're an unstoppable power-armored Angel of Death, you die extremely fast if you get stuck in and don't use the Execute attacks to keep your health topped off. Even then, on the harder difficulties, it's possible to get quickly overwhelmed, because you don't have any 360 degree attacks, and enemies attack aggressively, instead of standing around and taking a poke at you every five seconds. Plus there's the whole ranged combat aspect, which I don't recall from seeing Dynasty Warriors (although it may be that it was there and my friend just didn't use it).
So far as I know, there's been no word on modding one way or the other. I wouldn't expect mod tools / sdk.
Dynasty Warriors loads a thousand enemies and sends them at you one at a time.
This sort of combat seems more like what Dynasty Warriors should be. Well, this mixed with a healthy dose of God Hand.
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
Feil wrote:I've seen Dynasty Warriors in play, although I haven't played it. Aside from the obvious - they're both hack-em-ups pitting a superman against a horde of lesser baddies - I don't see much similarity. For all that you're an unstoppable power-armored Angel of Death, you die extremely fast if you get stuck in and don't use the Execute attacks to keep your health topped off. Even then, on the harder difficulties, it's possible to get quickly overwhelmed, because you don't have any 360 degree attacks, and enemies attack aggressively, instead of standing around and taking a poke at you every five seconds. Plus there's the whole ranged combat aspect, which I don't recall from seeing Dynasty Warriors (although it may be that it was there and my friend just didn't use it).
If you are invincible while you're using executions, it may actually be WORSE than Dynasty Warriors. Remembering Gears with uninterruptible executions is a lol, but it's unlikely anyone at Relic pays attention to other platforms.
What's the level design like? It clearly isn't open, but is it lots of s-bends and chokepoints, or is it arena-style setpieces?
You are not invincible during Executions. There may be damage reduction or time-slowing, I'm not sure, but you are very much not invincible. Using executions in mobs of enemies when you're at low health is suicide.
It's hard to comment on level design from an hour of demo gameplay. The levels seem very linear. There's plenty of open space with plenty of clutter within it to allow for multiple options for reducing hordes of green guys into red smears, and swinging a chainsword around against twenty screaming orks takes up a good bit of space, so the game makes sure to provide it, but there really aren't any open areas or multiple routes from point A to point B. The 40k universe blends well with the design - everything is supposed to be huge and imposing, so I never felt like I was in a world that had been inflated in size as a concession to gameplay.
Shooters generally use either the s-bend or the arena approach to 'hide' the essential linear nature of the levels, and even close-range melee-intense games like Gears2 can lean more towards s-bends than open areas. Oh well; is there any idea on how long SP will be?
I was looking for information, not marketing copy. I'm told Toy Soliders: Cold War has a 10-hour campaign too. Playtime bullet points are so useless you can't even compare them to each other.
Is coops some separate thing, or the regular campaign? Being PC developers, they may consider it impossible to have more than one character in a story at a time.
Stark wrote:
Is coops some separate thing, or the regular campaign? Being PC developers, they may consider it impossible to have more than one character in a story at a time.
Considering it is DLC, I'm assuming it will be its own thing.
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
Is there any reason to think that? Plenty of games just hack in coop to SP (sometimes just turning off the cutscenes to avoid narrative problems). If there is a 'coop story' that is DLC, doesn't that suggest it's pretty short?
Not necessarily, but since when have you not assumed the worst about anything not confirmed.
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
So you admit you have no confirmation? I love how my thinking they might add coop to regular SP is 'THE WORST ABOUT ANYTHING NOT CONFIRMED', but the one thing we can confirm is that you're a fuckwit.
What the guys say about the demo suggests that it might be difficult for them to balance coops with the number of trash mobs and decent badguys etc, if the AI guys are essentially useless. Uh oh, assuming the worst! Wah!
Playtime bullet points are so useless you can't even compare them to each other.