What are your thoughts on Hal's Hands-On review?

[Kyllian]

First off, if you haven't read it yet, what the hell are you waiting for?!
http://www.beyondunreal.com/content/articles/180_1.php

Anyway...

Goliath - secondary deploying a wider infantry-killer shell.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I'm torqued the zoom is gone, it was great for long range suppression, on the other, it's going to make it a lot harder to bunny hop around it and hammer away til the tank goes boom

Scorpion - in addition to the upgraded appearance, this little buggy-that-could fires off an electrified bouncy ball that rolls and explodes either on contact or after a moment or two lying on the ground.

Interesting. While the bolas were handy for taking out Mantas, I won't really miss them much, but that depends on how this overpowered basketball works

Hellbender - The driver, however, has taken control over the popular skymine gun. Player two controls the twin beam o' death.

I'm glad the driver finally gets a weapon, tho I was hoping it would remain a 3-seater with the driver getting a new weapon.
Then again, there's nothing really stating that it's reduced to a 2-seater

Enforcer - fires a fairly rapid single shot or a triple-burst in secondary.

Grace reborn

LinkGun - the secondary is pretty much an arrow-straight beam of finite length.

I'm gonna miss the arcing, made it look nasty(especially when customized to arc even harder)

FlakCannon - though the secondary has a much shorter arc

I liked putting long range lobs right in someone's face

Rocket Launcher - slower rocket speed and the much more useful lock-on. The lock-on probably won't be useful against people, but against some of the slower vehicles, it is tremendously more effective.

Speed is going to take some getting used to. Lockon was useful for chasing down an opponent.
Should be interesting either way


So, what do you guys think?

[Zoso Fan]

I pretty much agreed, with a lot of the changes they made. As long as the core gameplay is there, its an instant buy for me. (pc and 360 btw!)

[Zynith]

"Scorpion - in addition to the upgraded appearance, this little buggy-that-could fires off an electrified bouncy ball that rolls and explodes either on contact or after a moment or two lying on the ground."

Lmao, bouncing bombs afterall!

[Molgan]

This is the only review worth reading since none of the other journalists seems to have played ut before.

Sounds like they listened to the community a lot, allthou I think they are still testing weapon and movment config so everything can change.

For example the Shock Rifle with lower primary ROF, smaller and faster secondary cores + more deadly combos. This way you cant lock down an opponent with primary the same way as in 2k4 and close range comboing is eliminated.

But slower rockets wth? If anything they should be FASTER. Good thou that it has a better lock-on ability, especially since Avrils seems to be out of the picture for now.

The Flak cannons secondary is nerfed with shorter arc, sad news for the flak monkeys. ^^ But its logical since Flak IS supposed to be close combat. In 2k4 it was just too useful, but that had to do with the movement I guess.

The bio is back from the dead, and with the same functionality but more close up game play it will be even more deadly in UT3 probably..

It sounded like they nerfed the movement a little bit too much thou, or maybe Hal is a dodge jump fanatic. I want the dodge and wall dodge to matter not just beeing a gimmic.

Player vs vehicle balance have shifted over to the vehicles favour. Vehicular resources become more important, it will make mapping more interesting and one dude on foot with a sr can no longer wipe out all of the enemys fleet effortlessly. It makes map balance much more important and for me thats a good thing.

[fuegerstef]

Oh, I take back where I said EPIC had convinced me that this game seems to be good. I only read the other hands-on previews till now.

Not promising anymore, sorry. THE DM parts sound good... ...but the vehicle parts do NOT sound good to me.

I am waiting for the next playtest... ...where they hopefully "fixed" that stuff mentioned in the first post of this thread (only good thing: Hellbender stuff, but that was known before.).

[Beerzebub]

But slower rockets wth? If anything they should be FASTER.

I also loved the accelerated rockets it UT2k3/4, coppared to UT99. But there's no dodge-jump in the upcoming game, so in fact the rocket speed should be reduced slightly.

[»madMar†y»]

Avrils seems to be out of the picture for now.

Don't think so...IMO it would not be very smart to leave them out. I think Hal forgot to mention it, just like he didn´t mention something about the Raptor and Leviathan.

[hal]

There was no Raptor, Leviathan, or AVRiL in the demo we played. Doesn't mean it won't be there later on though.

fuegerstef - what about the vehicle changes don't sound fun to you? I can guarantee you that they were fun to use. Remember this: if the vehicle sets are now going to be Axon vs Necris, you won't need bolas to take out Mantas. You'll be going up against heavy Necris vehicles.

[fuegerstef]

There was no Raptor, Leviathan, or AVRiL in the demo we played. Doesn't mean it won't be there later on though.

fuegerstef - what about the vehicle changes don't sound fun to you? I can guarantee you that they were fun to use. Remember this: if the vehicle sets are now going to be Axon vs Necris, you won't need bolas to take out Mantas. You'll be going up against heavy Necris vehicles.

I am more concerend about the impression that the vehicles are stronger now against infantry. That was so well balanced in UT2004 and got high remarks from PLayers as well as in reviews.

[hal]

Look at it this way - in 2004, other than moving faster, vehicles were simply deathtraps. The ShockRifle was all you needed to take down a vehicle 90% of the time. These big hulking machines shouldn't be taken out so simply. The game is more about vehicle resources now - making them more important not less.

Now that's not to say that you can't take out a vehicle with weapons - I took out more than a few. But you can't honestly say that handheld weapons should be the equal to a massive tank. The hoverboard, at least, makes you less of a sitting duck.

Molgan: dodging is still very much effective - just as it was in UT. double-jumping is not as effective as there's very little effective difference afaik between the height achieved with a single jump and a double jump. The wall dodging, as I said, is still in. It's useful in gaining momentum to places you couldn't otherwise reach, but it's not something that is going to confuse new players. (to be honest, the wall dodge never seemed like it was that confusing anyway)

Mostly what I'm saying is that the gravity seems a little heavier.

[fuegerstef]

But you can't honestly say that handheld weapons should be the equal to a massive tank.

No, but will I be able to hop onto a tank to take it out and to escape this new Grenade thing against infantry with dodging??

[°Psyco]

hopefully there will still be balance, i expect there will be new ways to quickly take down vehicles but i need to play it myself to see...

[Nietzsche]

A while back there was talk about locking ppl out of their vehicles for a short periode of time, was this possible in the demo and if so, how did it work?

[Magwa]

The only one that really concerns me is the slower rocket, the RL as it is in 2004 go to the top of face load 3 fire straight down and jump off at the same time you will hit first, in other words the rocket already go slower than you fall and they are making them slower yet?? it is a rocket i mean a ROCKET last time i checked they flew really fast ..

[Molgan]

Molgan: dodging is still very much effective - just as it was in UT. double-jumping is not as effective as there's very little effective difference afaik between the height achieved with a single jump and a double jump. The wall dodging, as I said, is still in. It's useful in gaining momentum to places you couldn't otherwise reach, but it's not something that is going to confuse new players. (to be honest, the wall dodge never seemed like it was that confusing anyway)

Mostly what I'm saying is that the gravity seems a little heavier.

Ty, at first I got the impression that there was allmost no gain from the dodges, but then its just like 2k4 minus double dodge with added gravity. Phew. =)