Played a good bit this morning. Will play some more this evening. Early impressions.
Fun stuff. Is it the second coming and the dawning of a new revolution? No. But its a darn fun game. The easy analogy is that its a mix of COD, Mirror's Edge, and Hawken but simplified from those three concepts.
When you first start playing its overwhelming and chaotic. It's very easy to lose focus because so much is going on that its a little bit like brain/sensory overload.
After you play a few games though you start to pick up the rhythm and grasp how you are actually supposed to play. The hardest bit so far for me is wrapping my brain about how to successfully navigate around the map when I'm outside the mech. It's hard for me to break COD/Battlefield habits of running around on the ground when its much more useful to be up on top of stuff and utilizing the movement system. That will take a bit for me to integrate.
One surprise for me is how much I like the mech combat. It's really fun. For some reason I thought I wouldn't like this part maybe and that would be my big issue with the game. But the mech stuff is really fun. In fact I think the mech combat is more fun than the ground combat. And when I'm on the ground I find myself anticipating getting the mech. It's like a mech game for dummies and I mean that as a compliment. It's very accessible for a type of gameplay that's usually alienating and niche.
I don't like the attrition mode. (TDM) It seems to go too fast and is over before you know it and its just not very exciting to me in the way that say even a COD TDM can be. I don't know. Something about it felt off.
The hardpoint/domination and last mech mode are a lot better. Just adding in some tactical elements makes the gameplay feel better as I can form a strategy for doing the things that I do.
The gameplay is at its core very simple but there is a lot of potential skill differentiation based on how you actually end up playing it.
I think it will be a hit. I don't think it will obviously take down COD or anything. Although the gameplay is simple and accessible for the concepts its using, I don't necessarily see it denting COD. The core COD gunplay (gun on gun I mean) is more solid than it is here. Because COD can concentrate on that one aspect completely. The gunplay here is "okay" but it's not at COD level. And I think that is what attracts the COD audience or even for me the part of my brain that likes playing COD. This is a hybrid game. You will play this if you like fast action. The parkour stuff. And mechs. But its not like it replaces COD.
edit: Oh yeah about the AI grunts. Yeah they don't really matter. In a competitive MLG type environment, yeah I would understand getting rid of them but for me in public games, they are really simply there to farm to get your mech earlier. Honestly I didn't really think about them as I was playing that much as there are enough human players to worry about who are far more dangerous to deal with it. It's a non-issue for me personally.
