Anyone have any impressions of this game yet? I’m considering buying it but I don’t know much about it.
“things appear pretty playable from the get-go” ? That’s the nicest thing they can say?
Played the very early beta a while back, and the game needed a lot of work. Took an chance and picked up retail. The game has come a long way. Really enjoying it. It takes a while to get used to the combat, and the way things work And you pretty much have to throw way some of your MMORPG preconceptions .
In the early beta lag was a big problem, and this seems to be fixed for the most part now. Tweaking the graphics settings yields good performance . I think the game may have a memory leak as it slows down abit over time. When the lag monster hits, its not worse than WoW or other games out there.
There is a fan based streaming radio station “Radio Free Zion” which is pretty cool to listen to and plays music that is true to the Matrix milieu and at times keeps you abreast of happenings in the game:
The next patch to the game will include a ingame media player that will stream this radio channel (or other channels if you likeas well as mp3 media on your computer).
There seems to be a dedicated community to this game, and if you are a Matrix fan, there’s a lot here to like.
I found this thread on another forum that I sometimes read that sums up the game’s good and bad points pretty well:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=11851
Will leave some more impressions as I play more of the game, I really like how the three factions (Zion, Machines, and Merovingians) try to curry your favour and get you to join up.
[EDIT] Just like to add as well, that if you are getting a little tired of the “fantasy based” MMORPG genre this might offer an enjoyable alternative. Also I would not recommend playing this game if you have less thatn 1 gig of Ram (like EQ2).
One more point. I really like the combat. This is the first MMORPG I have played where it is this interactive. In other games you usually have a set of manoeuvrs/spells skills that you “spam” consistently, which really becomes repetative after a while.
In MxO, I find that depending on what your oponent is doing your strategy is always changing. Some attacks can only be used if your opponent is in a certain state (“ie stunned”). If you opponent breaks interlock, you can either try to reingage and disarm, or pull out your own “little friend”. Sometimes the camera gets a little wonkey, and it took me a while to get used to the system, but once you get the hang of it its a lot off fun. As you go up in level and learn new abilities I can imagine the interplay and possibilites will make the combat even more interesting.
The dev’s are looking at improving the intermittant camera wonkiness in the next patch.
Bizarre bit in the gamespy review:
And though it appears that the story hasn’t officially commenced, a few players on the Method server were treated to a pretty slick sample of it this afternoon: an extended pep-talk by none other than Morpheus himself. (See the screenshots for proof.)
Well good thing they included the screenshot, otherwise I would have been sure this writer was lying to me. Makes me think not all is well in the game that he has to back up a statement with “I HAVE PROOF THIS REALLY HAPPENED, REALLY!”
Chet
Maybe it was, like, it didn’t happen in the REAL world it happened in the Matrix and so, you know, WE’RE ALL FUCKING BATTERIES HERE!!! GOD DAMMIT CHET, IM STUCK IN THE MATRIX AGAIN!!
That part didn’t put me off so much, since I think he’s just addressing the skeptics out there who think the whole “meet the actual characters” thing is all hype. What bothered me is that Morpheus’ face is covered by that dialog box, and the face in the dialog box is not Lawrence Fishburne’s. What the author says about it seems to imply that if you could just see under the box, the face actually is Fishburne’s, but his words are vague enough that they could not mean that, too. Why is that important? Because all the previews I’ve seen, including a very prominent one before The Ring 2 which I went to see the other day, featured Fishburne’s likeness. Thus, if it ain’t there in the actual game, there’s something, um, Fishy going on.
I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. A bunch of people here who’ve either never played the game or haven’t played it since early beta have said the game doesn’t stand a chance.
EDIT: Hehe. Irony of ironies. Guess what just arrived in FedEx? The Matrix Online. Evidently I preordered it and forgot that I’d done it. So it looks like I’ll be playing MO whether I want to or not, at least for awhile.
Here is some more thoughts posted by someone over at f13.net (home of the Lum the Mad alumni [read extremely jaded and hard to please]), which highlights some of the positives and negatives:
Hoax Said:
[i]The good:
-Interlock combat + many paths + relatively complex stat effects + all abilities avail = could be damn interesting GvG at high lvl’s.
-On a top notch system I bet the game is damn immpressive to look at, and if you have enough ram and interlock combat stays in sync it prob looks pretty damn amazing.
-The more games that dont have elves the better
-So many character options (there are like 8 shades of purple alone for each clothing type)
-They might not have been bullshitting about the storyline stuff, tonight on my server (enumerator) Agent Gray showed up in game and met with a bunch of the machinist factions which led to a bunch of speculation and shit talking at the main hangout area (mara central).
-RadioFreeZion, makes the community more fun, I like player-run game radio stations very much (they will suck when they sell out, which they will I’m fairly sure)
The bad:
-You prob need 1gb+ DDR ram to enjoy the game (at least it woke me up to taking advantage of current ram prices +2gb of 3500 are looking good to me right now).
-A potential flaw of interlock is the person who hits first can often just go on an unbreakable (or seemingly at lower lvl’s w/ less buffs and abilities) combo’s and just destroy their opponent, hopefully that gets more complex and interesting as you get better gear and more stat bonus’
-Each weapon type seems to only have one option per level, obviously not as much time was spent on ranged as melee
-Hacker/Patcher ect are just spells with another name, it really is stupid looking and doesnt fit well, just a crutch to include healer, pet class, nuker to a game…
-the story of the matrix is pretty dumb when you think about it, or its brilliant and I should actually watch the 3rd movie and read some of the backround none of the factions make much sense to me at all except zion which are just humanist crazy religious psychos…
I’m quitting why?
-Even w/ my computer set up as a DMZ I get dropped every 30min regularly, and shutting down my network for a game is not an option, games should be designed to not quadfuck themselves because people use firewalls/routers…
-I need more RAM
-I still have a tiny sliver of a sliver that FaceOfMankind will pull thru and fix: interface/combatsystem/items/mission reviews and come out smelling like roses… OF DEATH
-There’s always another beta of the next big thing… Each game I whittle down what works and what doesn’t in mmog’s and refine what I think are aspects to look for and what to avoid. Oh and bitching them is often more fun then playing them.[/i]
I guess I missed all the cool stuff in this game. I played the open weekend beta a few weeks ago. I was completly unimpressed. The world was drab and full of mindless mobs who had no purpose but to stand around and be killed. It was the absolute worst I have ever seen in any MMOG design since AC.
Even the orcs in east common lands in EQ have a reason to be there. But in matrix, you find empty lots with npcs standing around, or ally niches with gangs in them. Why? There is no immersion here. The matrix world is our world. Its not some endless decaying urban landscape.
Combat - Just as derivitave. I see from earlier posts that you were talking about some complex interlock system. Maybe I didnt get it. All I saw was a bunch of icons and moves I could do that hardly seemed earth shattering. As a ‘programmer’ my ‘spells’ were completly unimpressive, both visually and mechanically. Shooting my gun was also as dumb and mindless.
My impressions from the free weekend simply were that this game was derivative in almost all ways. It brought nothign new to the table. Its whack-a-mole at its finest.
Ok, first: every mob has a justification for its being there if you “examine” it. Of course, that’s all just a thin excuse for having convenient fodder standing around to annihilate, but don’t you think it’s funny how mobs milling about doing nothing in every other fucking MMOG in existence get a pass, while in MO they’re, for some reason, totally unacceptable.
As for the drabness, it’s supposed to be drab. It’s the Matrix, for chrissakes. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people walking the streets and cars driving around (obeying traffic signals properly) and trash being blown about by the wind and so on. Exactly what is it your Highness expects, one wonders?
Combat - Just as derivitave. I see from earlier posts that you were talking about some complex interlock system. Maybe I didnt get it. All I saw was a bunch of icons and moves I could do that hardly seemed earth shattering.
You’re right. You didn’t get it. You spent five minutes playing the game during beta, didn’t know your ass from a hole in the ground, and concluded that the game is busted. There may be many things to fault MO for, but combat’s not one of them. At its very worst–ranged combat, as you say–it’s no worse than any other MMOG out there. (Yet even with ranged combat, there’s more flexibility; you can freely and easily change weapons during battle to take advantage of your opponents’ weaknesses, for example.)
My impressions from the free weekend simply were that this game was derivative in almost all ways. It brought nothign new to the table. Its whack-a-mole at its finest.
While of course WoW, the most wildly popular game since Sliced Bread, isn’t derivative at all and brings tons of new ideas to the table. Right. Never mind that MO isn’t a fantasy game or a cartoon game, has a relatively coherent (relatively, I said), developed storyline, has live game interaction featuring well-known characters, has interesting missions, etc.
Oops. I’m sounding like a fanboi again. I’m really not, but I feel like I have to defend MO against the legions out there who are running around saying things like, “My neighbor Beavis looked at a magazine ad once and told me this game sux.” No, the game doesn’t sux. It’s an MMOG, but there’s plenty there to interest Matrix fans, and even some non-fans like myself, at least for awhile.
(My biggest problem with the game right now is the lack of mature players on my server. It seems as if everyone there is twelve years old. You know: “Hehe ure gay lol” and that kind of shit. That gets very old very fast.)
Right now, is not CoH better than MxO?
Niether has implemented PvP live yet, and in MxO it’s really going to be a faction vs faction game when put in? Or is that only on “Hostile” servers?
I’ve been waiting to check MxO out, no copy available as of yet.
Combat - Just as derivitave. I see from earlier posts that you were talking about some complex interlock system. Maybe I didnt get it. All I saw was a bunch of icons and moves I could do that hardly seemed earth shattering.
That is the impression I got a first, and my first instinct was to button mash. Once I read up on the abilities and started to learn the relationship and interplay between them, it really became fun and challenging. Actually being involved in the combat process and its ebb and flow is really refreshing as oppossed to bashing macroes to predetermined results…
Even with the limited abilities that I have now, there is enough variety and challenge.
As mentioned earlier, sometimes the camera gets a little wonky, and sometimes something happens and you go…HuH???, but overall the system works well, and it continually being worked on.
A great feature of the game is the ability to explore all character types (you are limited on how many abilities you can download to your personae ) through the same character by downloading a mixture of abilities.
With the same character I downloaded a “proxy” program, that could be activated to create a virtual guard ( read pet), and sent them into combat and then healed them and attacked the enemy from a distance with firearms or viral attacks (read spells). Sometimes I would close to interlock for the coup de gras…
At the low level I am at there is enough variety in the system to keep things extremely interesting. I can just imagine when I start expanding the ability trees more. Haven’t even tried exploring the “Coding” (read crafting) tree.
Right now, is not CoH better than MxO?
Niether has implemented PvP live yet, and in MxO it’s really going to be a faction vs faction game when put in? Or is that only on “Hostile” servers?
On the surface it is possible to see some similarities between CoH and MxO, but they are really different animals. The thing they share the most is the virtual city aspect, and I think CoH does this a little better, as the city seems more “alive” (ie thugs atacking pedestrians) and the pedestrians saying thanks after you defeat that thugs. The mission systems are also a little similar and I would say CoH’s is a little more polished. Some of MxO’s mission definately have that “whoa…cool” factor, while some are generic (like some of WoW’s Eq2’s etc).
The interlock combat in MxO is pretty unique, so there is probably no comparison. I think the character development and economy is much more developed in MxO than in CoH. This for me is the advantage MxO has over CoH (I have not played CoH since just after retail, so things might have changed).
Overall, although just a personal preference, I enjoy the “gritty” feel of the Matrix to the cartoony theme of CoH.
Played it for two weeks during the midway (beta) point and despised it.
Then again I feel “The Matrix” itself is one of the most overrated pieces of Sci-Fi ever written so no great loss for me.