Monday 30 April 2012

A quick Guild Wars 2 beta review


OK I got a few hours in over a range of characters and unlike some I don't give two turds about developer promises and hype train bollocks.

Graphics
Decent enough to distract from the generic fantasy by numbers art design. It's as if the basic art style was thought up by an 8 year old, but then the layout and structural stuff was designed by a grown up. Same as WoW was really. Thankfully this adds up to me being able to stomach it. Also I was quite impressed by the cities and their (false) sense of scale.

Performance
Reasonable, but potentially very good if it really is as un-optimised as claimed.

Classes
Many interesting and fairly diverse classes to play with. But to be honest low level stuff means bugger all and you can't tell dick about them until end game. I liked the Warrior the most, shock horror I know.

Combat System
Fast, a bit floaty at times, but encourages movement which is a good thing. It feels like Wrath of Heroes with more buttons. I'm not entirely sold on how abilities and weapon skills are distributed, but I think really I need to get much further through the levels than dabbling in a beta weekend allows. Potential issues with ranged being too easy in PvP.

PvE
Solid enough, not as dynamic as RIFT's, not as dull as most everything else. It's still kill 10 rats, pick up 10 apples crap, but it's masked fairly well and you can get a nice sense of exploring the zones.

PvP Scenarios
Same as every other game. Other than the stat, ability and gear bolster for all levels (making everyone 80 and in PvP gear), I would say "Move along, nothing to see here".

WvWvW (RvR, open world PvP)
Lacks flavour because of the lack of true factions, but didn't matter too much because it was fun. Not done much with keeps, etc, I was just roaming and fighting with a group. I liked it. Was like old school DAoC in some ways. Lots of good systems built around this too, so much potential there.

Is it the second coming of MMO Baby Jesus?
No.

Will I buy it?
Yes. Though I still plan on dropping everything for Planetside 2.

4 comments:

  1. I plan on selling my first born when Planetside 2 comes out.

    Thanks for the review on GW2. Still trying to decide if I want to buy it.

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  2. looks like the hatorade is coming around.

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  3. I see no hate?

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  4. You're only allowed to talk about GW2 as if it's the best game ever made, anything else is considered hate no matter how balanced or constructive that may be. I'll do a hate post next to illustrate the difference.

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