[h2]EMPULSE offers a movement-based playground, alongside solid first-person shooting. [/h2]
[b]The Strong Suit[/b]: The main thing the game deserves to boast about above all is the sense of maneuverability, speed and control of your character while airborne, wall riding, grappling and sliding. Using Jump P.A.I.N.T (more on that later) and then bouncing hard off walls to gain a lot of momentum becomes addictive in a great way. There's a speed count you can enable in the settings, the way you would activate your FPS display. Seeing that number ramp up rapidly gives you a good high. Speed can be both your friend and your enemy in a gunfight, so there's a good bit of learning how to use the movement in an advantageous way. It's - in all the sense of the word - fun to hop around. As long as you're cool with players doing the exact same thing and trying to track their movement.
[b]Colorful Utilities[/b]: P.A.I.N.T is essentially splash grenades that work for you or against you. Let me explain. There's Jump, Speed and Heal nades, that when thrown on a surface and you're in the pool of it, the corresponding effects apply to you AND your teammates and linger for a sec or 2. Then there's Slow and Damage nades, which you preferably throw at enemies (but you do you). All effects feel good and the throw of the nades feels fast, there's an upgrade to throw it faster and have their effects extended + pool size increased.
[b]Weapon Feel[/b]: Firing any weapon feels meaty. Sound design and feedback is in good offering here. Hitboxes feel very fair and hit registration has been splendidly responsive in my experience. Kills feel satisfying, sound and visuals back that up. Headshots are difficult to land but super rewarding, got a nice pop to it too. Gunning down airborne enemies while being a speed demon yourself makes you feel powerful and it's a feat to master it.
[b]Weapon Selection[/b]: The guns are limited at the moment, but there is something for everyone here. ARs, SMGs, a Shotgun, a Sniper etc. You can pick one gun at a time and you always have your trusty hammer as a secondary. There's a rewarding sense once you use a gun a lot and learn to use it properly, unlocking important attachments the further you level it up. Most weapons feel balanced, except of an SMG that fires explosive rounds. Damage output is high and fast. At the receiving end of that, you get overwhelmed and flinched, that would need a rebalance in the future. The shotgun's range is also something to look at.
[b]"Okay, what do I do with it?"[/b]: When it comes to progression, this is a very standard of the mill point, with practices of daily objectives present. 2 Season Pass interfaces: You've got your Level rank up rewards in form of a season pass and an "Early Access Celebration" season pass. BIG PROPS to the team for not including microtransactions anywhere in-game, which gives a massive positive mark towards me recommending the game, personally. Unsure if the team will follow the footsteps of traditional FOMO or go the way of "You can do this later". If you dislike this "daily objectives, season passes and box checklists" format, you won't find anything here that'll change your mind. Also, leveling up your character doesn't feel like the main drive here (past a certain level at least), more so the very well designed gameplay can do the talking for you.
[b]Trampoline Enjoyer to Professional Skyscraper Cleaner[/b]: Character upgrades are tied to your level and are helpful to the fight, like longer grapple, heal slightly when getting a kill or mech healer for faster mech health regeneration. You are motivated to level up for your character, at least for the first 20-30 levels. You can equip up to 3 upgrades and they are impactful enough to care about getting them.
[b]"Lore?"[/b]: Story is pretty much a nothing-burger. I'm not sure players who press play on this type of game expect a robust story and characters. That being said though, the game's style by itself is fairly generic and lacks identity. If you stripped "EMPULSE" and showed me the banner artwork for this game, I wouldn't for the life of me know what the game is. It's going for a futuristic corpo vs punk militarized city aesthetic, however there's nothing that jumps out as unique to someone familiar with the setting.
[b]Modes[/b]: Modes are the standard tried and true modes, with Team Deathmatch, Control and Capture the Flag (or "Drive", a throwable ball). There is even a Mech Deathmatch mode that is experimental. Mechs feel tanky and slow, with a Dash, Shield and Rocket ability selection. No complaints with that honestly, and as runners mechs are easy to deal with. The standout mode imo is a "Hold the Flag" like mode, where a runner needs to carry the "Drive" for a set amount of time to score a point, so the match turns into a full on chase around the map, movement shining particularly here.
[b]City Tour[/b]: Map design favors the movement. Walls, ramps, all placed right to help build up momentum. The layout of each map has advantages and disadvantages for differing playstyles, as there should be. In this case, they are visually distinct with each other and not hard to learn. There's about 6 maps available. I will say that, because all maps can host all modes, some maps don't adopt certain mods appropriately. So e.g capture the point in this map really favors the defenders. Despite this, again, balancing is in good standing as is right now. Spawns also seem to work properly, although it is easily predictable where the spawn will happen in association with enemy locations. Good maps.
[b]"Drip?"[/b]: Cosmetic items don't really speak to me, it's just more of the generic style that was mentioned prior. Weapon skins, character models and skins, charms etc. For "Player Expression", honestly? Really lackluster.
[u]For reference[/u], all this is coming from a player who has reached level 60, 70 should be the max. I have played exclusively Quickplay, not Ranked. I imagine it's a sweatfest. I plan to play some more of this game, given it's maybe the only game right now giving flowers to fast-paced "in the flow" movement, an enjoyable offering. This review was made during the game's Early Access period. The hope is to help you make an informed decision!
[h2]If you love great feeling movement and don't mind an Early Access feel to games, I recommend you give this game a fair shot. No matter what your thoughts are about the studio making the game, having a shooter focused on movement feel available in the current market is great and the team's efforts on making a serviceable package with that same movement at its core has definitely paid off.[/h2]
IMPORTANT: [i]Keep in mind, there is forced cross-play in this game, and at the time of this review, console or controller players have a significant advantage against PC players. The stickiness of the aim assist is apparently absolutely disgusting, which is #1 of the tweaks 1047 need to make right away.[/i]
