As another week rolls by it’s time to check in on what we’ve been up to.
LawBreakers
I got an invite to the LawBreakers Beta which was running over the weekend. LawBreakers is a fast paced gravity defying FPS that offers players the chance to take on multiple classes each with different guns and abilities to utilise on the battlefield.
With no option for a tutorial – that I could see, bar some videos, I just went ahead and jump straight in to the action. One team is the Law and the other are the Breakers. I had no idea what I was doing, what any of the characters abilities were or how best to use them, I was completely ignorant to all of it and it showed.
People were flying past me at an alarming rate scoring ‘goals’ in Blitzball, bullets rained in from all angle and the death screen was an all to prominent feature for me, needless to say I was getting a pummelling. After a few rounds I was starting to get the hang of what to do, and realised that in the middle of the map there was no gravity so you were free to fly around like a mad man. I still hadn’t really gained a good grasp on any of the characters, but generally I was ok as most of them were basically just shoot the bad dudes with bullets, but all of the extra abilities etc… I wasn’t really sure how to best use them.
For the most part LawBreakers felt like an overload on my senses, there was so much going on at once that I couldn’t digest most of it. Like I said, I got a little more used to things the more I played and playing the other game mode – Overcharge, felt a little easy to get on with. You have to nab a battery and take it back to your base area to defend it whilst it charges, once fully charged your team gains points. But Blitzball was just crazy, I don’t know if it was just because I got a little unlucky in that the teams I played against seemed very good and knew exactly how to score easy points all the time, but every time the ball became available in the central area an enemy player would have it and would basically fly through the map straight to our goal area and score, all I could do was watch as they would soar past my trudging walk. It was a little frustrating, but it was definitely due to me not knowing how to play very well.
I’m already well invested in Overwatch, so I can’t really see myself getting in to another FPS game like that for a while, as it stands I will probably be giving LawBreakers a miss when it finally comes out.
Destiny 2
Most of my attention this past week has been firmly focused on Destiny 2 and the reveal of the gameplay. I think for the most part the reception has been pretty positive. From the people who were invited to play the game, feedback has been good. Destiny is always going to split opinions though and there has been a little negativity too. I think most Destiny fans were hoping for an evolution, whilst non Destiny fans were more hoping for revolution – a reason for them to get on board with the game. I think we’re firmly in the evolution area though.
For me, I’m really happy with what I’ve seen so far, the new planets look interesting, the new story sounds good. But what I’m most pleased about is the fact that the PC version, so far, sounds very promising, people are reporting that the build they played on PC was solid and a really good start. It’s a little disappointing that PC players might have to wait a little longer to play, but no one wants a poor port, so if it takes a week or two to get it up to scratch, I don’t think people will be too annoyed.
I also really like the idea of being able to create proper clans – with banners and all sorts, in game now. It’s a really nice idea to include it and I’m looking forward to either starting my own up, or joining up with some others. It will be interesting to see how the expand on this in the future. Will we be able to organise clan fights?
I wrote up the details of the reveal and gave a few initial thoughts on it on Friday, so if you want to check out what was shown go here.
-Will