So here's the game in a nutshell. You're a space marine (get your spes mreen gear ready folks!) who is sent into a city on Mars, overrun by super zombies (think Dead Space) with a few objectives to accomplish. You control one unit, the multiplayer cap is 8 players, a few NPC marines may follow you (but it's unlikely you'll find any), and the swarms are relentless.
If you've played old school Warcraft 3 custom maps from back in the day, you know this type of game. You control one unit as if it were an RTS, but it handles more like RPG in practice. The game generates objectives for you, either single things to accomplish like "find out what the hell happened here with these zombies" or secondary objectives like "the power grid is about to overload, go activate this terminal to stop it or else the lights will go off". As time goes on, the swarms of enemies get worse and worse, and you'll die. A lot. The game claims to have a victory, but I've not seen any party get close. You gain experience and ranks as you play, though, and each consecutive play gets easier, either because you learn new tactics or because leveling up gives you a numerical advantage.
PROS:
*Decent multiplayer. Group up fairly simply, and generally don't deal with guys who are useless - it's actually pretty difficult to hurt your team by being inexperienced.
*Auto-aim works very decently. You can move while shooting, so you mostly just point where to go and you'll strafe around and walk backwards while mopping up. Miniguns and sniper rifles work well for this, as you can easily clear large hordes without manually clicking, and you can peg enemies that are beyond the edge of the screen.
*Information is clearly displayed. Stats like speed, damage, rate of fire, armor value, etc. are all clearly visible. In the match, the map is one button away (escape) and shows where everyone is, where known enemies are, and where the objective is.
*Leaders (the first two people to join the game) can draw routes on the map.
*Several distinct classes. Assaults are standard versatile rifle grunts, medics have healing abilities, heavy support get miniguns and group buffs, marksmen get snipers with single point of damage abilities...
CONS:
*Alpha development. You know what that means.
*Auto-aim isn't super smart. Darkness is extremely prevalent, and firing into darkness is almost an assured miss, but auto-aim will take every shot it can, wasting tons of ammo.
*Not nearly enough ammo. It's becoming more and more apparent that proper survival is about how you can conserve ammo and choose your fights. While walking down the street casually, you might only have the Assaults firing rifles while the medic and minigun-with-legs doesn't fire. When you get in trouble, actually turn on the heavy weapons.
*Limited play options. Right now it's one map, albeit a very large one, with a few random objectives. You get used to the gameplay mode. This will almost certainly change further in development.
*New players are hobbled. You have to rank up to unlock... anything really. Starter skills are like "you deal more damage" while end-game skills are more like "you can teleport" or "you generate ammo at a rate of 1/sec passively". ~6 matches will unlock a lot of content, but if you want the 'good' stuff, stay with your class and learn it.
Advice?
Stay with the group if you're a light weapon, or wander wide if you're a heavy weapon. Turn on as many turrets and lights as you can. Loot everything. Cooperate - ammo should be a shared resource!
Screenshots:
Early Access Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/265590Website:
http://www.theredsolstice.com/
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Topic: The Red Solstice - Squad-based multiplayer survival. (Read 3563 times)