Warside, the new 2.5D platformer shooter, developed by Kraken Games, advertised as a MMO Action-RPG. This game sets up a rather unique art style with cartoonish drawings with sharp edges. Starting with Free Access they aim to get a community behind them before releasing the full game, though the full game is already on offer to purchase alongside the free version.
Warside is a mix of game genres. Using sci-fi as their aesthetic and using session-based MMO games with 2,5D shooter gameplay and RPG elements. You have the choice between PvP or PvE cooperative game modes, currently with 5 different battle-modes.
Story
From what I can tell, the story is mainly set in army or government backgrounds as you as one of the faction members. Between Zetta Corporation, New Empire and Galactic Commune. Besides fighting people of opposite factions you also have the choice of “story missions” where you fight your way through complexes, defeating bosses and machines.
Gameplay
There are 4 characters, Faceless who have double jump and speed, Huntress who has high attack and dashing abilities, Guardians with high defence and an anti-gravity ability and finally Mercenaries as the jack-of-all-trades combined with a jetpack. Along with those Characters you also choose a class which changes your weapons and improves certain stats, including of which are; Assault, Defender, Infiltrator, Medic and Destroyer.
Matches are fought within arena style maps, with around 8 maps currently available, 2 sides fight over 1 objective, either by holding several points on the map, or killing each other to earn score for your team. As you play through the matches you will get XP for your character, higher XP values come from headshots or completing a task in the match. The matches are very fast paced, with characters dying off pretty quickly with all the bullets flying in kill zones. Besides multiplayer there are also co-op missions to play, which have you and a team go through a facility fighting AI enemies and bosses, all with different difficulties.
Every character will level up, gain skill points to spend on the 3 stats, which unlock skills at certain milestones, as well as obtain new weapons, tools and armour to improve their capability in battle. There are levelled items as well as tiered items in colour that denote their power over other items. If you don’t want to grind missions for items you can buy them with credits you earn from matches or buy them from the Market where players put up their own items for sale.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
The music in Warside is probably one of the best sides of the game, the music is created wonderfully and really suit all the areas they are played in. Action and energy packed tracks for the multiplayer matches and some slower longer tracks for Siege and missions that really flow with the gameplay. Sadly there are a lot of problems with the soundtrack going from 1 track to another, sometimes leaving a couple minutes of silence between each song.
The game as a whole doesn’t feel very polished, the maps feel rather dull at times and characters can sometimes have several errors, one of the bigger ones are all characters being white, another is not being able to quickly distinguish ally from foe as a lot of the players look the same. Animations don’t always play when you do something and the meshes themselves jump around the map in a very glitch manner which really breaks the immersion. The customisations boils down to equipment over archetypes, as you’re stuck with the gender and look of the character you choose, with only 5 or so other options for face, hair and the like.
Warside makes up for variety with its number of weapons, armour and items that you can equip to your characters, but the maps and modes don’t continue with this. Matches become boring after a while as there is normally only 1 real way to approach something, with 1 or 2 others that are less efficient and no one uses. Movement doesn’t feel satisfying and the weapons have no feeling of impact as you fire them or they hit their target. Levelling up isn’t a major event and adds to the overall feeling that you’re just pressing buttons on this game and waiting for something exciting to happen.
Currently in early access via steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/320590/
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