Long ass post warning.
So having had tons of time with alpha and now beta I think it's time to put my thoughts out there about the game. I'm not good at putting my thoughts to written word so hopefully this is easy to understand. If not then well I tried.
First let me start off by saying that this game is going to continue a long long tradition of Bungie games I absolutely love. I have no doubt there. The gameplay and the story have all the makings of an interesting tale. I find there is so much good to talk about that this post would be 10 times the length it is now. So I’m going to mainly concentrate on my nitpicks and complaints. Let this be known though. I love what I’ve played and can’t wait until September. I just can’t. It’s going to be insanely hard to wait that long.
Now onto my thoughts. First I love the campaign. I know there are many who want everything spelled out for them but I’m not one of those folks. I love them slowly unveiling everything. I have no doubt that as the game/franchise goes on we’ll learn more about who we are and everything else. I did like that each race had their own voices. That’s a nice touch. My one complaint about the start though is that it isn’t tailored to your race. I would like a bit of tailoring there. For example a robot can’t die. So why not have the ghost say something like you ceased to function, etc instead of died. It’s just a bit of a nitpick.
The pacing of the campaign seems to flow well. I do feel a mission or two are a tad on the short side. An example being the 3rd mission. It seems to be a quick mission to complete. Others though do make up for that by being longer. So maybe it will all balance out later. I understand the reason they did the campaign why they did but I won’t lie and I will say that I would have preferred campaign to be a bit more pieced together. Have the missions flow into each other without having to go back to the map and pick the next one. Course this is understandable due to you needing to be a proper level for the campaign missions and due to the loading times needing to be masked. But yea this does kind of take me out of it a bit. However if the campaign keeps me wanting to know more each step of the way like the beta’s missions have then I’ll forgive this.
This brings me to the strike. I really love it. I think a better job though needs to be done to help the players realize what they can do to make the fights go faster. I’ve run into a lot of players who don’t realize that you can focus on the walker’s legs and that turret on the left side of the cannon. They also fail to keep the trash dead. This can make this fight drag out forever. Same with Sepik’s Prime. People don’t realize that the real boss is the trash in this fight. If you let them build up the fight is going to drag on forever but if you burn them down he goes down quick. Relating to this I also would like to see more feedback and for the bosses to show more progression when you’re working them over. I’d like to see them deform and to really show the damage you’re doing to them as you progress. There is some of this on the Spider Walker but not enough. Sepik’s I don’t think has any of this. As a result you don’t really have any sense of progress when attacking them. Other than that I do hope that other strikes do have more variety to boss attacks. Course we do have to remember this is probably the first strike in the game hence it’s more of a tank and spank type boss.
Next up is the open world they have created. I love exploring this world. I can’t help though feel it’s very empty like others have mentioned. Chests are few and far between and they a lot of the time just don’t have anything interesting in them. I’d like I’d like things besides chests too. The ghosts are a start. I do like finding these also. It would be cool though to come across more things you can interact with. Say a control panel somewhere that would open a door or something as an example. Maybe some generators you can activate to bring some areas to life again. Anything. Fill the world with more to do. Like the alpha I’m not digging the missions you get in explore either. The variety is still a problem. In alpha it was a ton of kill mobs but now I’m finding most of them are go here and survey this. I dislike those a lot more because they involved a ton of traveling between areas and I tend to like to do the missions in an area before moving on to the next. I wouldn’t mind having some that are gathering missions. There is a lot of old abandoned stuff in the world. Why not a gather these parts that are scattered through the area. Some missions like that? Overall though it’s a good start they have here. Just needs some work.
Next the multiplayer. I do enjoy that but I do have a few gripes. I’m in the camp that agree a few of the vehicles do need a bit of work. Not a huge nerfing like most but small ones. Maybe longer firing rate, longer reload between firing, etc. At the same time I’m not a big fan of the Mars map. It suffers I feel from an issue Reach did. Map flow. Due to your jumps, hovers, etc there are a ton of levels to the map and as a result many different ways into an area. This makes it very hard to control a point at times or to just find your enemy to attack. Call me old fashioned but I prefer good old fashioned map flow. Rusted Lands, Venus, and the moon levels are prime examples of maps that have a good flow to themselves. I do also agree that you should be rewarded more in control for actually staying behind and guarding your zones. There is no incentive to hold as a result. As someone who likes to help hold down a zone I find I come in lower just because I’m actually playing some defense. That seems somewhat unfair. Course I’ll probably be team deathmatch in retail anyway but still this kind of sucks. I also agree with what someone mentioned about if you neutralize then capture a point you should get more points than you do. More so if you do it solo. Those are my only real huge complaints about the multiplayer myself. Overall it feels decently balanced otherwise I feel.
Next is the UI. Overall it has grown on me but I still dislike how seeing your friends in it and interacting with them is done. I’d like to see more friends per page. Also it would be nice to invite them to fireteams etc without having to go back out into Sony’s XMB. It’s slow and a bit cumbersome doing it this way. I don’t know if this is due to limits that Sony has imposed or what but I would like in the future to see it done more with in the game. That’s my only real complaint UI wise.
Last but not least is the vendors and glimmer, etc. The vendors need to be more useful. I find most of the gear you get from them isn’t very useful. Same with the weapons. I’m not asking for best in class but I’d like to see more variety then almost just all common weapons and gear. I did notice that as you level the cryptarch he did have some better gear but of course it was unusable due to level cap. I’d like to see that leveling the vendor feature improved upon also implemented with other vendors too like the gunsmith. Maybe level him up for better weapons. This brings me to glimmer and lack thereof. I felt that glimmer in the alpha was at a good level but the prices on things were a bit cheap. In beta here you’ve upped some of the prices while majorly nerfing the glimmer you get. This makes it very hard to afford consumables, etc. I feel that I’m having to grind a lot more just to be able to afford basic things. This isn’t fun. I do hope this is re-examined before retail and I have no doubt Bungie will. They’re the kind who tune up until they can’t anymore.
So those be my thoughts. I love the game already and can't wait. Even if they do not change anything I've mentioned I'd still love the game. Bungie should be proud of the game they're making without a doubt.
