So any thoughts on the final game?
I like it, but I'm a bit hesitant to recommend it to other people. As a big fan of JSRF and Mirror's Edge I'm really enjoying this game even though it doesn't play too closely to those games. The graffiti in Hover isn't emphasized that much and the controls are a lot floatier than both JSRF and ME.
The reason I'm enjoying the game so much is because it's fun just to mess around the world. Jumping from rail to rail and wallriding are just as fun as they are in JSRF and ME. It's definitely not as challenging to go from point to point as it can be in those games (if you've charged up your "hoverheat" you can jump up a vertical wall for quite some height). There are also little collectibles all around the maps (graffiti to spray over, signs to smash, etc.) and getting all that stuff is more fun to me than most of the missions. The signs in particular, just thinking about how to reach them with enough speed to break them is pretty engaging because it requires an understanding of the area layout (sometimes, other times it's actually quite trivial). Not that the missions are bad (although some of them
are poorly-designed), but a majority of them seem to be races and they're all super easy because the computer AI is so dumb. Just think of them as obstacle courses, and in that mindset they're also pretty fun.
The game's structure is kinda weird, too. The entire game is totally playable solo while offline, but it definitely feels more like an online game with an offline mode than an offline game with an online mode. It's almost like an MMO. It's kinda hard to explain, but an example of what I'm talking about is that you always have to talk to mission-givers twice to start a mission (once to join the mission and again to actually start the countdown) even if you're playing offline. I didn't play any of the missions online so I couldn't tell you how they work with other people, but I've heard of people getting kicked out of online missions so it's probably better to just do them all offline until its fixed. Other than missions though, there isn't really much interactivity between online players. You can create custom missions and play those online, but I haven't messed with that yet and I don't think there's an in-game tool to upload and download missions. I guess you have to manually download them and put the files into a certain folder or something? How archaic. An in-game custom mission browser would definitely make the online more compelling.
You can create a team which essentially acts as a new profile (although unlocked characters seem to carry over to all teams), and each team can have five characters who you can switch between at any time. To use a character you first have to unlock them by beating all of their missions. Using multiple characters isn't really required though as I beat the game using only one (although for certain missions it really helps to have certain characters). You ideally want these five characters to excel at different things as each character has different inherent buffs and debuffs and no character can be great at everything. You can also level each character up by completing missions to increase their stats, but it's not as simple as allocating skill points whenever they level up. Every time you complete a mission or open one of the containers scattered around the world, you get some skill chips. These skill chips are then placed into your character's
skill grid to give them the respective stat boost. Different skill chips boost different stats to different degrees (some maybe increase speed by 1% while others can increase jumping by 8%). You have a limited number of skill grid slots though, and more slots are unlocked by leveling your character up. Once a skill chip has been placed, you cannot overwrite it without destroying that chip making chip recycling impossible. Not only that, but each character has a unique skill grid layout and depending on
where and
how you place your chips you can get even larger stat boosts. And not only
that, but the game also has
pets you can equip who will follow you around (what did I say about this game feeling like an MMO?), and they too give you stat boosts (but not in missions for some reason) as long as you make sure they don't die by feeding them food that you get from, yep, completing missions and opening containers. It's... not that complicated once you mess with it in the game, although the game does a bad job of explaining it to you (as it does with almost everything). What baffles me is that it all seems so arbitrary. Why not just reward the player with money instead of chips and let them use that money to purchase whatever chips they want instead of making it an RNG grab bag? The system they chose basically just means that even when you max out your character's level, you haven't necessarily given them all the stat boosts that you can. Not that you
need to max their stats (I beat the game just fine with less-than-ideal stats), and you get a steady progression of better and better chips just by playing the missions and opening containers anyway. I never stopped and went "Alright, I'd better grind for better chips" because the game naturally handed them to me while I was playing.
There are six playable maps in total (not counting the tutorial) with only two of them being open city areas. Within those maps are several smaller areas (think of them as small sections of the map), each with their own list of objectives. The objectives are usually the same in each area: "Spray ## tags", "Smash ## signs", "Capture ## security bots", etc. As I said before, I find completing this list of objectives to be more fun than the regular missions. Even the smaller maps have these kinds of objectives, although less in number of course. The annoying thing about the two big areas is that they're very vertical. It's almost as if the city is a perfect cube that's as tall as it is wide. I personally don't find such a vertical map as fun to navigate and would have preferred if they made it more wide. It's especially annoying when you're doing a mission where you have to carry something, because rewinding drops whatever you're carrying so you can't even save yourself from a slip-up that sends you all the way to the bottom of the map. Another thing that's annoying is all the security cameras everywhere. If you skate into one's line of sight then a police bot will start chasing you and take you somewhere else if you're caught. Sometimes it's easy to lose them, but other times they stay on your tail for ages. There are so many times when I just want to get a collectible or something but I'll accidentally get spotted by a security camera so I have to run away for a while to get it off of me. They're more of an annoyance than a challenge, and they're in all except for one of the maps (the least-fun map, ironically enough).
I know I'm mostly pointing out the negatives, but that's only because it's easier to explain what I don't like about a game than what I do like. I can write a paragraph about something that kinda bothered me in a game, but when I'm writing about something that I liked I just go "This thing was cool, moving on." Still, I'm expecting most of the people who read this to think "This game sounds bad, I guess I'll skip it" but despite all the complaints I have, I still enjoy the game. It's janky in some ways, frustrating in others, and it seems like it maybe shouldn't have left Early Access quite just yet, but as a $20 game I can excuse its flaws for what it does well. The developers have said that they're going to continue updating the game with new features, although I doubt they can fix all the problems I have with the game. I think they've said that they plan on adding player houses with customizable furniture (another quirky MMO feature?).
Uhh... sorry, this post was kinda long. I just felt like ranting since I'd been following this game for so long. Consider this a critical analysis I guess? If you're expecting a good single-player mode, maybe don't buy it or wait for a better sale. If you're fine with just a fun world to run around and parkour in, completing small objectives along the way, you'll probably still like this game. Or screw it, it might be easier to just say that if you're at all interested in the game, buy it and request a refund if you don't like it. By the two hour mark you should have a good idea of how the game works and whether or not you'll like the rest of it.
