Caution: the following rant is based on first impressions and represents my opinions formed after roughly 10 to 15 minutes of gameplay.
So I've been spending a little time with Eliminate (Ngmoco's free to play FPS) and I'm left wondering if I'm playing the same game as everyone else. All I hear is how great it is but my experience so far has been quite far off the mark.
Firstly the graphics seem rather underwhelming, particularly the environments which are some of the most forgetable arenas I've played in in recent years. I understand that this is probably intentional to keep the game running smoothly during online play, and that is totally cool by me, at least it would be if I could connect to a game and maintain any kind of decent framerate. That is when the game connects me at all. Maybe the server isn't so responsive here in the UK?
The worst offender for me are the controls which are at best a screwed up confused variant of Gameloft's superb Modern Combat control scheme and at worst too unwieldy to shoot a barn door with and feel like you have any kind of precision. The virtual stick that controls movement is so far into the middle of the screen and feels so unresponsive that my thumb inadvertently ends up sliding directly over the action in the middle of the screen obscuring my view. The stick could be moved almost a centimeter to the left extremity of the screen. I know it sounds picky but a centimeter is a crap-load in screen real estate when your whole vision is no more than 11cm wide.
For me to even consider dropping money on power-cells or any kind of in-game DLC for that matter I have to be seriously involved in the core experience AND I have to be enticed into caring about other players perception of me within the game. Eliminate's shonky frame rate and awkward controls take me so far out of the experience that paying money and investing in upgrades are the last thing on my agenda. Evidently I'm in the minority though as Eliminate climbs up the Top Grossing charts. And good for them! They have taken a risk and it is paying off, I just wish I could get into it and enjoy it the way everyone else seems to be. I shall perservere...
Oh one more thing, if I want to play against Bots offline why can't I set the number of bots? Why can't I set the difficulty level? Why can't I shoot this fricking barn door?!*le sigh*
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