THRILLKINGS

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I debated leaving a review or not, but based on the current state of the game while playing it as well as the launch trailer, a few things need to be said outright; this game is not ready for release in its current state, even if that is called early access or not. Fundamentally, I believe there is something wrong with the early access model as it stands because it allows projects like these to be published and exposed to the public eye when it's painfully obvious that they're not ready for it. [b] immediate thoughts: [/b] [list] [*] feels very much like an Unreal template project or asset flip. It doesn't even have an icon and uses the Unreal logo [*] As a consequence it feels very unoptimized. I'm running a 1060 and getting 24 fps in the MAIN MENU. changed my resolution to 1920x1080, all settings middle of the road, and still barely cracking 30FPS. [*] gunplay and movement are very sluggish and lethargic. Swinging the mouse around feels like I'm meeting air resistance. No idle animations when standing still. [*] worst sin: [b] not being able to move while in the air! [/b] this game calls itself an arena shooter yet I feel like I'm wading through molasses. [*] Guns barely have recoil and that doesn't seem to affect aim [*] obviously trying its best to be an Unreal Tournament clone but doesn't succeed in the slightest (even has several UT-like guns that are clones of the link gun and shock rifle - as an aside, it has a weapon that's clearly meant to be an AR-style automatic rifle but somehow shoots like a shotgun? Makes no sense). [/list] [b] thoughts after playing: [/b] ultimate argument in favor of this game - give it time, still just an early access; but then why release now? the game is barely playable and has no actual identity. no guarantee that the developer even modeled anything on their own without browsing through an asset store and throwing things together. I mean, thankfully it's free, but even then you're not wasting money you're wasting time. I really dislike this attitude that someone can throw up an unfinished project and have some vague platitudes ready about how they're going to involve 'the community' to end up with a playable game at some point. What community? This is a tech demo that most likely started out as an Unreal Engine FPS template. It still has the Unreal logo for crying out loud! Minimum effort to reach a state that could be called playable by dragging and dropping various elements of the game from asset stores, resulting in a stylistically dissonant program. Even the main character models receive basically no customization aside from literal RGB palette swapping. On top of that, you have to pay real money to customize them with accessories? What? I understand the argument for having a demo released for a game in order to gather audience attention but even when demos were popular they were fairly fleshed out and not just a minimum viable product or whatever this new genre of asset flipped game engine template projects are. This game had no digital footprint until 4 weeks ago when a trailer released on youtube. the dev made a post about it on reddit earlier this month - but that's it. were there any devlogs? how did the skeleton of this game start? Where was the original idea? why should i care about it at all, what's the value proposition that's pulling me into playing this game as opposed to the dozens of other arena shooters that are competently developed? i don't score games usually but this gets a 0 from me because it's irritated me a lot. perfect representation of a lazy asset flip trying to gather some attention with basically no solid foundation underneath. There are tons of open source FPSes which play better and embody the spirit of late 90s/early 2000s arena shooters better than this. Cube, Warsow, Hexen, and hell even the original Quake itself (under the GNU GPL). plus it's not like UT or others are going anywhere anytime soon because they actually still have a community even after 20 years (for something like UT2004) - because they avoided the mistakes made above. primarily i think the attitude involved with a lot of newer developers when approaching a demo or 'early access' is mistaken; earlier on, demos were released as part of an already finished product, carved out to give you a taste of the game in a sort of sandbox. think Halo CE's Silent Cartographer level which was the demo. This game is being developed in real time, and we're given what feels like a pre-alpha build to experience. This game is still in development, and that shouldn't be the case for a demo I'm supposed to be excited for. Where's the publicity? The earliest record I can find from the dev's social (twitter) is a post on November 18th! That's last month!! Do better, and don't release your hamfisted products without doing the due diligence to make them optimized, playable and giving them an identity. This is currently an Unreal Engine project trying to ape Unreal Tournament unsuccessfully. [b] 0/10 [/b]