My quest to try every single game offered on the Playstation Plus Extra membership plan continues. The way I approach this is simple: I try every game for at least an hour and then judge the game based only on how well the game is able to suck you in and keep you there from the very start. I pay no attention to whether or not the game becomes better later because I don't have enough time for that since I only have a few months and around 100 games to go through.
I think the first hour of a game is the most important part of the gaming experience. If a game cannot entertain you at the very start I am not going to stick around to see what the later game content is like. Some of my favorite games of all time have been ones that were immediately fun and stayed that way for many hours afterwards.
Today I'm diving into a game that kind of reminds me of many other games like it in that it is fun and probably a lot better if played in a group online. However, I only played it in single-player mode.
Although classified as an "action-RPG" game I feel as though it is definitely more of an action game and I don't really see the RPG aspects of it. In this game you are dropped onto Earth's surface at various locations and you are charged with clearing out Alien infestations. It certainly isn't a novel approach to the game's plot, but I don't really think that would ever end up being the appeal with this sort of game anyway.
The action is pretty fast-paced and even though I played it with just one player, it is playable with up to 4, and I think it would be a lot more fun if I had been playing it with more people. Gameplay is simplistic in that you just run around shooting stuff and the enemies gradually become more difficult and take more than a couple shots as you move on. There are also various chests that can end up containing weapon upgrades and this seems to be completely random in a "Diablo" sort of way.
There are other aspects of the game that are quite Diablo-esque in my mind in that while the map you are currently on is relatively huge, you are only required to venture through a certain amount of it. If you venture off the main track you will occasionally encounter various bosses that might end up dropping something special for you in the way of armor or another weapon.
They mix things up by having various events such as defending a position for a certain amount of time but for the most part your objectives are always to invade a certain area and destroy some sort of Alien structure. It's fun at first but ultimately, I found it to be quite repetitive after a while because honestly, how can they really mix things up when you are basically just running and gunning and killing wave after wave of alien creatures.
The screen can get really full at times and for the most part I would imagine that most peoples' strategy will end up being to backpedal a bit and mow everyone down before proceeding forward. Things get a bit annoying because the main thing getting in your way is the reloading process that while realistic, becomes a pain rather than a feature since you have to do it 96 times per level. Also you tend to run out of ammo on a regular basis and the only way to get it back is to kill more enemies with your melee attacks and they will quickly overwhelm you if you do this. Of course you can never really "die" you just respawn at a checkpoint so I guess this doesn't matter too much.
You gain XP and can level up your stats over time but for me, after an hour and a half I started to feel like the game was just an endless repetition of doing the same thing but slightly different for the sake of gaining levels and getting better guns.
For people that enjoy leaderboard type games and joining in with what is bound to be toxic strangers in MP games, this could end up being a lot of fun. Or if you are a casual gamer and you have online friends that are not looking for anything terribly hardcore to do as a team, this could be a great way to spend a bit of time running and gunning with buddies because the control scheme is extremely simple.
I would recommend this for people that play with friends but not attempt to dive too much into it because the variety of scenarios and weapons for that matter are not varied enough to really hold your interest for very long as a single-player game.
