E3 Impressions - Huxley and Mass Effect 26
The 360 is playing host to some non-traditional titles in the near future. Huxley is an MMO, one of the first on the console, and combines MMORPG elements with FPS shooting. From Gamespot's Huxley hands-on: "We saw a residential area that has room for 5,000 players, and told that you'll be able to purchase your own housing in the game." Meanwhile, Mass Effect is Bioware's next great opus, an RPG with energy weapons. From 1up's Mass Effect hands-on: "Everything for the E3 demo was in-engine, and the graphics are impressive. The dialogue scenes revealed characters with lifelike eye movements that conveyed real emotion. Excellent voice acting, distinctive music, and a beautifully formed world with rich, detailed environments show real promise."
Not Impressed with Huxley (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, don't get me wrong. The graphics are very impressive. The Unreal Engine pretty much assures this. It's the whole concept that doesn't impress me.
This is a game that's not sure what it wants to be.
It wants to be an RPG, so it has NPC vendors, and "living quarters" for your character, and Classes.
It wants to be an FPS, so it has First Person style battles that require FPS Twitch skills to win with.
But it doesn't seem to want to be fully either one. For example, it still fails at one of the major stumbling blocks with all RPG games. Level Grinding. In order to keep high level players from stomping the newbies, they aren't going to let the newbies and high-levels fight one-another. How are they going to manage that? Instanced combat. Basically fighting in a box. If I wanted fighting in a box, I could go play UT or CS, or any other arena-based FPS game.
An MMOFPS is supposed to be LARGE SCALE. Fighting that takes place over an entire Continent or Planet. Not fighting in some goofy instanced arena that others can't enter. An MMOFPS should allow a complete newbie to kit up with his weapons of choice, go out on the field, and if he's skilled enough, take out the highest level player in the game. An MMOFPS should NEVER restrict the players ability to fight anyone, anywhere, with anything he chooses.
RPG's on the other hand, are all about Levels, Classes, grinding up the scale until you have your "Uber-sword of l33tness +15" that lets you go out and defeat anything you come up against. Huxley, from everything I read, is all about this. You can level grind up to level 50, gain your Uber armor with a gagillion expansion slots in it, get the noobpwner cannon of d00m, and go out and then fight in an instanced box against a predetermined number of opponents. (SNORE!)
So all Huxley gives you is a goofy taped together "mostly-RPG-with-FPS-elements" combo game, that looks pretty, but doesn't do RPG and especially not FPS really well.
No thanks, I'll stick with the first and only MMOFPS in existence, Planetside.
www.planetside.com