What the heck happened to the art direction for this game?
I dunno, but on day one of Early Access on the same engine (I think? I know it’s an UE version of some kind) they already had a status/error ticker on the main menu ui which puts it about 2 years ahead of pubg which still just endlessly tries to reconnect during maintenance.
Boy the art and animation in this game look really fugly…
PUBG Mobile does this for new players. Remember that when you see people who just downloaded the game posting their chicken dinner screens on twitter.
No, it’s definitely not. You haven’t played enough. Get caught in the middle of a field in PUBG and you are just fucked. In Fortnite… that’s when shit gets crazy, with the building.
This is kind of an interesting idea, particularly for newbies, to ease them into the game which is… y’know… brutally hard.
This might be a little Too Early Access yet.
I landed in a building with no roof and no doors to get out…
Loot crates dropped right outside my new prison, just to taunt me…
And the final zone was right outside too…
So I finished third out of one hundred and earned… absolutely nothing. Because this game is all about the money you collect by being out in the world looting and not trapped in a placeholder interior.
What things do I like about the game so far?
The environment cues - for example, some houses have (invisible) puppers. When you’re running around those houses looking for loot the ethereal canines will bark, letting everyone else know someone is nearby.
The bikes - the physics are terrible. Funny terrible. Not quite as ridiculous as that time you saw a VW camper van in PUBG doing four thousand miles an hour across the sky, on fire, but pretty ridiculous. In one round I found an orange bike with pink rims and just spent ten minutes smashing it over some sweet jumps.
The gameshow stuff - there’s a bunch of different gameshow affectations here and my favourite so far are the big prize boxes that open slowly while you’re standing on a pressure pad. The whole time you’re standing there the box is playing gameshow music VERY LOUDLY. Loot drops are “spin to win” wheels that drop from the sky and there are also things like money chutes, where you collect Dollars for every second you can stand in the giant spotlight without being killed.
Best of all, sometimes start and finish banners will appear on the map. First person to ride one of the special bikes from start to finish wins gear and prizes.
Apart from all the jank this is… ok. And janky.
It’s also nice that the Spin to Win drops are clearly marked on the map insuring that there is contention and action in the vicinity. I also like that the play zone shrinks in a non uniform grid pattern which is far more interesting than a huge blob.
I do think that the player sounds like footsteps and gunfire seem crazy muted and quiet and need to be much louder. Same thing with the visuals. I’m not sure if they’re using some kind of scanline effect or what, but everything appears very color muted and lower resolution than it should be.
Scoping in with any sniper weapon is also very laggy and janky.
Overall though, all of the “wacky” gameplay elements are actually very good. This thing just needs some love and polish and I’d totally play it over Fortnite (really dislike the tree house on crack stuff).
The player models and animations are borderline awful and definitely need attention in the above mentioned polish.
I also feel like the announcer/game show bit could actually be amped up a little. Maybe not Smashtv levels of corny, but it fits into the vibe and it feels a little half-baked when it really should just have a really strong personality announcing to give it some real flavor. And think about doing that and having announcer packs down the road like dota or hots. Who doesn’t like those?
I think this is where the game is going to have to differentiate itself from that other free to play cartoony BR game. I’d like to see them just really go bananas here in early access. If someone has a gloriously dumb idea that pumps the 80s aesthetic then I’d say double it and put it in and hope it hits the right notes.
I’d even suggest dumb things like having cassette tapes as drops in game and in the store for the Walkman you can pick up, so you can build your own soundtrack to play to. I’m sure licensed musical wouldn’t be economically viable for a f2p unless it explodes in popularity, but I’d love to be able to throw in my all-Rush mixtape for a barnstorming run on my dayglo yellow BMX.
There’s already a cassette player drop, but right now it’s basically just like picking up cash.
But your idea is good.
If they become popular enough maybe they could add cassette players as a cosmetic item and sell “tapes” of music similar to csgo music items.
Yeah, I’ve picked it up. Now I want to be able to put tapes in it.
The idea of the bank-able cash is kind of interesting from a design perspective. It’s kind of like a Shiren the Wanderer / Mystery Dungeon, which is a roguelike, but you can bank stuff in a treasure chest to keep for a later life. Basically, you get to decide “do I want to make a serious go this round?” and decide whether to bank stuff for the future, or to withdraw and try to go for broke.
In practice, I think it’s probably a terrible, terrible idea multiplayer, because every time you lose now, you’re going to be thinking “well, the guy who won was just banking from previous rounds!” even if he wasn’t. But, chances are he will be, because it seems like there’s a positive feedback loop (the better you are, the more likely you are to be net positive cash after a round), and because if there’s 100 other people, and you bank cash for out every 10th round, on average 10 people per game are going to be cash-rich that round.
Most of the stuff you can buy in a round, you could generally afford to just by taking a few risks, finding a decent couple houses with cash/prizes in them, or killing people and taking their stuff.
Even with a wad of cash you still might not find armor or a vending machine that has a good gun to pay for. Some dude might walk out of the minimart with a free gun that’s better.
It’s a theoretical concern, but with everything being random it seems like an extremely small one.
Slightly more players than Lawbreakers is not a good endorsement. :p
That peak number for Lawbreakers came in its free open beta stage too.
As soon as you actually had to pay to play Lawbreakers the numbers cratered.
I assume BossKey kept the lights on and the devs paid with the publisher advance. Doing that with its self-published F2P game will be harder.
Bleszinski is a millionaire, I am sure if this new game is truly his Studio’s passion, he will put his money in to help finish it if needed.
pokerface
I think he tried to open a restaurant in recent years too and those are notorious money pits.
So mean, but at least Cliffy can take a joke!
Savage.
I admit I laughed, but I’m glad Cliff responded and can take a joke. I like folks who can laugh at themselves just a little more than the average person.