It takes A LOT from Left 4 Dead. If you die, your character is held hostage somewhere along the level, and you can be freed again to rejoin the party. Specials also act in similiar fashion to the way Special Zombies did. Poison Globardiers are spitters, Packmasters are Smokers, Rat Ogres are tanks and Gutter Runners are the pouncy-guys which names I forgot. I think the only specials that cant be linked directly to a L4D Zombie is the Ratling Gunner and Stormvermin.
Now, that doesnt mean it's a straight up Rip-Off. The game is much more melee-oriented. Each class has up to 3 different Weapon Choices for either Melee or Ranged. Some are armor Piercing, some hit multiple Enemies in front of you, some are faster others are slower. To get trough difficulties past normal, you need a decent setup. Without a good counter for armored targets, Stormvermins will tear you apart. Without a guy or two focused on taking down Hordes, Slaves will overrun you. There's a randomized Loot system, paired with a Forge to salvage gear and upgrade uncommon, rare or epic items.
Basically, green items have one trait, blues have two and purples will probably have 3 (I didnt get a purple equipment yet). These traits are locked off until you upgrade the gear at the forge, which costs materials you get by salvaging other gear. The traits arent anything massive. Usually you have a % chance to get attack speed after pushing, more Stamina while Blocking or something along those lines. The real motivation to get rarer gear is that they usually do more damage. And the difference between killing common Enmies with two or three hits can be massive.
Looting is based on dice. Basically, you roll your dice Pool, while on the right there's a line of stuff you can get. On the bottom there's grey standard items, followed by greens, followed by blue or purple equipment. For each success, the bar goes up one level to the next item. You usually need 3-4 successful roles to get a green item. 6-7 for rare stuff. You can increase your dice pool in three ways. The first is picking up Loot Dice, dropped by Pack Rats or found in Chests. The second is to carry Tomes to the end of the Level. Tomes take up your Healing-Slot, denying you the ability to carry around Medpacks and Healing Draughts. The third is Grimoires. They are pretty well hidden in each level. If you pick one up, it takes up your potion slot, and each Grimoire carried by your Party also decreases the Max Health of each character by 25%. Carrying two will make you fall in only a couple hits. The tradeoff however, dice gained by Grimoires are a guaranteed success when looting.
Missions are also your standard L4D stuff, only in a Warhammer Setting. Sometimes you have to open Doors (Which triggers Hordes, and they open slowly, of course). Sometimes you have to gather items, other times defend a position for a couple minutes. After your objective's done you have to bolt to the Cartdriver to make a swift exit.
That's the basic gist of it. Just so it was said, the Beta only includes 3 Maps, while the Full game will appearantly have 13.
Now my personal opinion on the deal:
- Special and Horde Spawns are randomized for the most part. You will get different ones each time you play a Map. You can encounter basically nothing for the first minutes of Run A. While you can run into a Rat Ogre in the very first area in Run B. It increases Replayability and makes the game very intense. On the other hand, the randomisation can make some Encounters basically impossible. A Rat Ogre with a Big Horde of Slaverats is bad enough. But sometimes you'll get that AND 2 or 3 Specials. It can seem incredibly unfair at some points.
- Some Weapons seem objectively better than others. The Imperials Musket for example is probably the single best counter agaisnt armor and Specials in the game. It will kill anything except Rat Ogres with one Headshot. Since ammo is limited and basically wasted on regular Horde-Enemies, there is no reason to take any other ranged weapon on him. Smaller, faster Weapons also seem a little inferior to their big Counterparts. You need 3 o4 hits to kill a basic rat with the Witchhunters basic Rapier for example. That's way too slow to adequatly deal with Hordes.
- Hitboxes are a little f-ed up, and something they should work on while it's in Beta. Skaven will hit you from a mile away, sometimes flat out ignore hit Boxes and have a terrible habit to sink into Walls or the ground where you cant hit them back. Same goes for big weapons. Some weapons are supposed to hit all Enemies in front of you, because you swing them. But this seems to be limited to 3 rats at best. This means that you can swing your sword like a maniac, briefly stunlocking 3 enemies in front of you. But one or two will be absolutely not-bothered by the metal tearing trough their model, and still hit you. The only reliable way to actually do AOE are charged attacks. But they get interrupted if a Skaven so much as coughs in the same room as you.
- You NEED to stick together at all times. Specials will ruin your day six ways to sunday the moment you turn that corner alone. Hordes will also tear you apart if you dont take them on as a team. On one hand, this is cool, as it would be too easy otherwise. On the other hand, this also means that a random guy in your team of 3 can completely ruin your chances of victory. There is no way to limit your party to a certain Level. It's possible to be playing a Level on Hard or Nightmare, almost reach the end, and then suddenly a Level 3 Newb joins and completely ruins everything by charging ahead alone.
- The BOTS are awful. They steal your healing items, dont stick to the group and will sometimes ignore downed allies. They also have a habit of picking up Tomes and the loosing them somewhere along the way.
- The Game desperately needs a "Play as the Skaven" mode.
All in all, the game is rough, but fun nonetheless.
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Topic: Warhammer: End Times, Vermintide. Now with II! (Read 22297 times)