Been playing the free add-on to Unreal II since Friday. Like the team based sci-fi FPSs in the past XMP has a lot in common with games like Tribes and more recently Planetside. I liked Planetside a lot but XMP has made me turn away and never look back. In the spirit of the end of the year I've put my thoughts down in top 10 form.
- 1. XMP costs $10 to $20 with no subscription fees
2. You can always find a fight
3. Better scoring system that takes into account actions other than frags and captures and as a bonus shows MVP stats at end of round
4. Anyone can hack and anyone can take any class at any time
5. Victory conditions (i.e. someone wins)
6. Better graphics
7. More variety in the battlefields (asteroids to caverns to deserts to beaches, etc.)
8. You don't need a vehicle to get to the battle
9. Energy control system balances attack versus defense and gets you out of the base
10. Community support in addition to dev support through new maps and mods
So if you dig (or dug) Planetside (or Tribes, or Terra Nova: SFC, or any sci-fi team based FPS) you should at least try the demo, and for $10 you have no excuse to try the whole game.
Does it have battles with hundreds of other players? If not, it would have a tough time beating PlanetSide in my book, even if it's otherwise a great game. PlanetSide is the game that finally broke my BF1942 addiction. That takes some doing. Once you get the opportunity to fight in battles of that scope, it's hard to feel impressed with 16- or 32-player fights anymore.
Like Ben said you left out the part of the battles with hundreds of players that Planetside has. This is competition for standard team MP games not Planetside. Also even comparing it to those it doesn't hold a candle to the current king, BF1942.
How hard is it to find those battles? I seem to hear a lot of talk on this board about server consolidation for Planetside, so how many of those battles are going on on one server at a time? I can start up XMP and find multiple 8v8 or more battles going on at any time.
The gameplay in XMP is "similar" to Planetside and it answers a lot of the concerns I've had about Planetside, most prominently the cost. People who aren't willing to pay the subscription fee or have other problems with Planetside but still want a scifi team based FPS should at least try the demo or fork over the 10 bones for the full game.
I didn't necessarily say XMP is better than BF1942, that's more of a sci-fi vs. WWII. BF 1942 doesn't have hacking, power armor, and energy management so I thought a comparison to Planetside was more relevant. Although BF1942 is more similar in terms of choosing classes at spawn that defines your weapons and deployables and there's a lot more gun emplacements in BF1942 and XMP.
I've been playing again for the last couple of weeks. Get this. Before the server squeeze I was having no problem finding huge battles. Granted they were all on only one continent. All the others were pretty much empty. But these were huge, massive, and just plain big battles. Full-on attacks with tons of aircraft and vehicles swarming around.
Now that they have consolidated the servers, there are even more giant battles across multiple continents. I don't know when you stopped playing, but in addition to the hotspot indicators (which work great now) there are on-screen notifications when a large enemy presence is attacking your base. It makes it very easy to find out where the action is.
And if you are spawning in a base that has the "speed" power-up (from Core Combat) it's takes just 7 seconds after you die. This can make a huge difference in a tough battle.
I'm not currently part of an outfit, but within 5 minutes of entering the game, I'm invited to join a squad. There are still lots of people playing.
It was rarely a problem, even before they implemented hotspots properly. You could just ask around about where the action was, and you'd find one.Originally Posted by Rorschach
The large battles in planetside is the reason I played. Only reason I stopped is that I have little time anymore for games, and when I started playing planetside, 5 hours at a stretch would magically disappear.
Does XMP have a giant continuous level like planetside's continents? If not, that's another black mark against it for me. I love giant maps. And I'm not sure what you are talking about with variety... every continent on planetside was different.
The levels in XMP are Tribes large, but not the size of Planetside continents.
In terms of variety, the demo level is the most basic and feels a lot like a section of a Planetside map. When you get the full game there's a level that's low grav jumping from asteroid to asteroid. Another is two facing citadels that are hundreds of feet high so there's a lot of verticle battles. Another is two bases built into the hills on a beach, with an cavern providing another route.
I've played the demo, and while there a few things I like, it really doesn't stack up against Planetside or BF1942 IMO. Movement in XMP feels very floaty, the sound is poor, and close combat is a lot of bunny hopping silliness. The vehicles aren't nearly as fun to use as they are in PS or BF. And the only games I've been able to join that have bearable lag are 8 v 8 or less.
Not bad for the price though.
I didn't see any 100 player battles in PlanetSide, either.
what exactly is the XMP supposed to stand for anyway?
eXtended MultiPlayer
Outdoor battles do involve bunny-hopping, much like Tribes. In fact the asteroid level is nothing but airborne combat since there's very little "ground." Indoors or underground hopping isn't very effective at all.
Vechicles can be tricky, especially if you don't have a good ping. OTOH vehicles do not dominate battles since a few grenades or rockets or the static turrets can take out even the heavy tank. Some of the maps take advantage of vehciles where a well placed jump can cut your artifact (flag) run time in half, or the vehicles provide some protection on open ground like on the beach.
There's a little easter egg in the game took me by surprise the first time I heard it. All drivers can sound the horn by hitting jump while driving. If you take a big jump and hit the horn you get a little Dukes of Hazzard love.
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