Archive for category Soapbox

For KZ3 last night I played with a friend and tried Operations, which I hadn’t played a lot of before. Here are my thoughts.

1. Just like many other shooters, playing with a team that actually communicates makes a big difference.
   Not only did I have my friend on my team, but others on my team were communicating as well. We played several rounds, and had a lot of fun. As Helghast, we never let the ISA get past the first set of doors. As ISA, we always accomplished the first two missions, and got to blow up the dam two times out of three (IIRC). I played a lot better last night than the previous night, which was also a lot of fun. The voice chat is very good. I could always understand my team mates. Why can’t other PS3 games do this?
2. The Marksmen weren’t a problem this time around.
   Sure, they annoyed a little. I remember one that was majorly corner camping. But on the whole they didn’t annoy me as much this time around. I don’t know if it’s because of the game type, the people I was playing with and against, or what. If most sessions go like this with regards to the Marksmen, I won’t consider them a problem.
3. Some of the weapons a class starts out with aren’t very good.
   I find myself doing strange things to level up. Like using the Engineer class to get kills to get points to unlock the good weapons on the other classes so that I can finally use them. I don’t know if everyone’s wearing armour or what, but it takes a lot of bullets to kill someone with the Tactician’s SMG. (The Tactician, in case you’re wondering, is my favourite class. I just don’t like the SMG all that much.)
4. The class system plays a greater role in KZ3 than it does in KZ2.
   I think that’s cool. In KZ2, everyone pretty much chose whatever class they liked playing. But in KZ3, it’s important to have at least one Tactician and Engineer on your team. As to Infiltrator, Marksmen, and Medic, those are all pretty generic classes when it comes to getting things done in the game. But at least there are now two invaluable classes, which mixes things up a bit.
5. The Infiltrator is the most selfish class in the game.
   People who play the Infiltrator do so for kicks. It’s the danger-close noob-tube class of KZ3. (For those of you who played MW2, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) The Infiltrator is annoying as anything, and last night was no exception. In KZ2 it was much easier to spot an Infiltrator (for an ISA, the blue light on their suit wasn’t on, for Helghast, I think maybe their eyes didn’t glow). But in KZ3, no matter what people say, it’s hard to spot an Infiltrator. Judging by my team mates’ comments, I’m not the only one with this problem. To be honest, I tried the Infiltrator once or twice last night to see what the fuss was about. It is indeed easier to get kills with this class. I walked right up to one guy’s face and blasted him away. He had no idea that I wasn’t his team mate. We were up against a lot of Infiltrators last night, and seeing how easy it is to get kills with this class, I better understand why.
6. The UI could use some tweaking.
   There are several places where they use text that scrolls back and forth. It’s very hard to read at a glance. It’s also hard to find your name in the stats when you want to see how many kills you had (or didn’t have, in my case).

Am I still bringing back my pre-order? I’m starting to waffle, to be honest. If I can find a group of guys to play with more often, then I think this game can be a lot more fun than my first long exposure was. We’ll have to see. I’ll play the beta some more and make up my mind.

I haven’t been able to play the KZ3 beta very much, just because I couldn’t get online. After the patch last night, however, things were a lot better. I could connect no problem, and so I played several games. I was placed in several Guerilla Warfare matches right at the end, which was frustrating. But I also got to play through several full matches of Guerrilla Warfare and Warzone.

I’m going back to the store and asking for me pre-order money back. There’s no way that this is an enjoyable game. KZ3 is more frustrating than MW2 ever was.

One. It’s not fun being killed by people you can’t see. I was walking along, minding my own business, and a guy right if front of me, who was cloaked, shoots me dead. Sure, it might be fun for the cloaked person. “Tee hee. I was standing right in front of him. Giggle giggle.” But to everyone else, it’s an annoyance of epic proportions. (Well, as epic as annoyances in a video game can get.)

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