Update (20160722): I noticed that SCORE was no longer in my account today. I'm not sure when it was removed. From other comments on Steam discussions it looks as though the developers revoked all keys from those who had given the game a negative review. Well played, developers, well played!
My original review is unchanged, below:
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NOTE: This game was given to me by the developer for review purposes. This did not influence my review in any way.
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---------------------------------------OVERVIEW-------------------------------------
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Note: SCORE is currently in Early Access. The version reviewed was current as of the date of this review (20160708).
SCORE (all caps) is intended to be a GTA-like massively multiplayer open-world action game combined with an online FIFA-like multiplayer European football ('soccer') game.
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----------------------------------------QUALITY-------------------------------------
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Graphics - The graphics in SCORE are mostly rather simple and poor quality by today's standards, more similar to GTA 3 than GTA V, but not even quite that good. Buildings and cars are low-poly models with sharp edges everywhere and painted with simple, bland, flat textures. Cars are poorly animated and drive on rails, not responding to anything around them. The few people you see in the game are better looking, but still not great, and don't respond to any stimulus either, including being shot. Player characters look like they have broken or handcuffed hands when holding a pistol.
The city ("Legend City") is virtually uninhabited and you can run for minutes at a time without seeing anything but the endless stream of cars that completely ignore you. It also freezes intermittently, presumably when the world-streaming code kicks in to load another city tile or whatever.
It's a shame, too. In the couple of hours that I spent trying to play SCORE I could see that a lot of effort had gone into development of the city and its surrounds. I ran to one of four golden stars on my minimap (no small feat -- it took about half an hour!) to find a weird pedestal thing at a castle and signs up espousing the medieval fair. Screenshots on the store page show beach areas and hills, as well, and the whole thing seems to have at least some logic to the layout from what I could see.
The two exceptions to the poor graphics are the water, which looks bad at a distance, but actually rather good up close, especially with the wave motion that's been implemented; and the trees, of which there are only very few varieties, but which look very nice, with well-animated branches and leaves blowing in an imaginary breeze.
The minimap also deserves a special mention as it seems to be implemented in real-time as an overhead camera, looking down on the area around your character, with some symbology added over the top. It works really well, but has a big impact on the overall game performance, and a recent comment in the Steam Discussions for the game suggests that it will be removed and implemented in a more traditional fashion in future, which would be a shame.
There are lots of graphics settings to play with, as well, but it performed so poorly on my machine that I turned basically everything to minimum to try to reduce the freezes and lag.
Sound - Sound is very minimal. There are no traffic sounds, no in-game music, no pedestrian sounds, or much of anything yet, really. There's a nice little nature sound track that is completely out of place in the middle of a city, and you can fire your guns until you run out of ammunition, making suitable gunshot sounds as you go.
Gameplay - Starting SCORE takes a short time as you have to create an account; join a club; create a character by choosing gender and a look from four clothing options with very minimal selections available: hats (hair cuts), shirt, pants, and boots; and choose a profession from the small and slightly odd selection: Police, Doctor, Fire Fighter, and Assassin. But don't worry, none of the choices in character creation seem to make any difference, as there's no way yet to complete any missions for your profession and it seems to ignore clothing selections, too. Then you check your real-life email for an activation code, activate your account, and finally you can log in. You then have to wait a few minutes for your character's residence interior to load, but all you can do there is change some game settings on a laptop. After that you leave and have to wait another few minutes for the external environment to load. Yes, load times are very long.
After about 10-15 minutes I was into Legend City and looking around, and I quickly discovered that's all you can do in SCORE at the moment. You can't interact with the few pedestrians you see, and even the cars follow their pre-defined paths regardless of whether you're in their way or not -- they just push you aside, causing no ill effects. I found a parked motorcycle and a parked car, but could enter neither of them. The city is devoid of any sort of interactive life, with the beautifully animated tree foliage blowing in an invisible breeze adding to the sense of desolation. I briefly wondered if I was playing another post-apocalyptic zombie game.
SCORE stuttered like mad when loading new terrain and Task Manager showed a continual gobbling up of memory, implying a large memory leak. It has Steam Achievements incorporated into it, but only one of them works at the moment from what I can see. The limited in-game writing (such as the news feed and loading screen tips) are badly written and in need of an editor, or at least a proof reader. SCORE also crashed twice on me, but it is Early Access; to me these things are forgivable.
The game has promise, but it's much too early to tell whether it will reach the lofty heights the developers have set for it.
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-------------------------------------PROS & CONS------------------------------------
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Pros:
+ A grand idea, and an interesting combination of games
+ Potentially good world design (but implemented poorly in the current incarnation)
+ Nice trees and water, particularly the animations
+ Steam achievements (although they are mostly broken or otherwise unachievable at the moment)
+ Trading cards
Cons:
- Mostly poor graphics and animations
- Horrendous performance, very buggy, and poor writing (but it IS Early Access)
- But most importantly, there's simply nothing to do
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--------------------------------------CONCLUSION-----------------------------------
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I'm a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. I've played every game in Rockstar's excellent series and spent more real-time days (weeks!?) than I care to think about in their game worlds. I was really excited to play SCORE.
SCORE is a grand idea, but in its current state it is little more than an under-performing demo. If it sounds interesting to you then follow it, certainly, and check back on it regularly. But at the moment I can't recommend it.
[h1]3/10[/h1]
