I am currently downloading the "new and improved" Huxley client as I type this. It weighs in just shy of 4GB for the installer.
Mind you, I wasn't part of CBT1, but my friend was. His impression was it essentially is nothing more than an MMO "lobby" front end to what basically amounts to a multiplayer "team death match" FPS game, where the incumbent players have a distinct advantage over the newbies.
Anyhow, I did get selected to join CBT2, and I will provide whatever information I can (I haven't inspected the EULA yet - but I also haven't seen any mention of NDA either).
CBT2 Day 1 Impressions:
Well... um... where to start. Let's see - the installer is a piece of shit. First, I tried the preload installer on thursday. It has it's own downloader, so I figured after a long night and what seemed to be an endlessly slow 4gb download, I could shut down my machine and pick back up the next day. WRONG.
So last night, I hop on again, to my dismay it downloads a NEW installer, different from the one on thursday and proceeds to redownload EVERYTHING. Not to mention the installer doesn't give you ANY options on where to put shit. Did I mention it's also partially web-based? Yeah, all authentication, including to log into the game, requires a web browser window. This gets problematic, as you'll read. Anyhow, the installer downloads the game (installer), and finally I get an option on where to actually install the software.
All seems well at this point, and we go BACK to the web page yet again to "log in", which then wants to install a plugin for the browser. Fine, whatever. Except AntiVir now flags one of the plugin DLL's as a Trojan. Great. A quick jaunt on the web has Kaspersky and Symantec both also flagging it, the assumption is it's a false positive. Whatever, I roll with it, get the game started all the while AntiVir is complaining about the DLL in the background.
Finally, the game starts, I'm at the menu screen - of course I have to go set the resolution and graphics options. The game didn't like Alt-Tabbing much when I got sick of AntiVir finally, but it came back. Set the rez, graphics options, and then something popped up and took the game into minimized. It refused to come back after that. Task manager was required to kill it.
Subsequently after that, I could not under any combination of voodoo bring the game back. Logging in through any browser would simply hang the browser, and the .EXE's were no use either (as they hook the browser). I'll try some more tonight, but let me tell you... for now it's looking like this one's a real keeper! (In the context of the whore you meet at the bar who's drunk off her ass and does meth)
CBT2 Day #I don't know but I'm finally able to play Impressions:
Alrighty, things are slowly falling into place with Huxley. I've managed to get some play time in. It's beta, so some things are still broken. All in all, it's not quite as bad as I was lead to believe.
First of - my disclaimer - I **SUCK** at FPS games, get I still come back for more. Huxley is no more an MMO than Guildwars is. It essentially took the Guildwars formula and applied it to ... um ... Unreal Tournament 3. Yep, the core gameplay of Huxley is essentially UT3, with some additional game modes I guess. Oh, you might as well tack on some generic "Unreal 1"-like single player instance content to that as well, as that's the primary way to level up your character.
The "quest" instances are pretty redundant - most using the same map over and over again. It gets to the point where you can dance your way through pretty easily and know where the mob spawns pretty much all are. Each quest might have some twist to it, but for the most part it's all the same. I should mention that you can do instances on one of three different difficulty levels - basically increasing the amount of spawns and somewhat their actual difficulty. You can also bring multiple people into an instance, giving you co-op play.
The "real" game behind Huxley is going to be the team deathmatch zones that essentially are the core of the game. Being that I suck against other FPS human players, I can say Huxley's FPS implementation is top notch - but I stress - other than slightly more limited weaponry, it for all intents IS Unreal Tournament 3. There's vehicles in which running over people is the preferred method of slaughter. The maps are huge, giving snipers a fairly distinct advantage.
All in all - it's fun - for a FPS. The graphics are top notch, but that's to be expected from UE3. They've done a great job with the models and textures, though I was hoping they would look more realistic/gritty like the trailer video than they actually are. There's MMO elements - you can craft, upgrade your weapons, learn new "skills", buy new weapons and armor. The one thing it really isn't though - it's not an MMO. As I said, it's "massively multiplayer" insofar as Guildwars was in the city zones where you're just doing maintenance or otherwise acting as a "lobby".
If it does indeed end up "free", then the price will be right and assuming they get all the peripheral bugs worked out (installer, login system, etc), it will be worthy of occupying 4GB of hard drive space for "a progressive FPS shooter with RPG elements".
Personally, I am more interested in Global Agenda, which by all rights appears to be more of a true MMOFPS than even Planetside was.
8/6/09 impressions:
Guess what... I finally managed to play some skirmishes! At first, it was laggy as all hell. I was basically unplayable, though I managed to get one kill by standing still long enough emptying my gun down a long hallway in the hopes that it hit something, anything. Finally, after two or three goes of insane lag (I was literally jumping around the map without even moving) someone suggested turning off PurpleBean (some ijji background app) which I knew about, but had forgotten to do. It was like magic... the game was actually 98% playable at this point, and I had some fun.
Skirmishes are important because playing them you get combat medals. And you need combat medals to buy some of the better gear and more importantly the abilities that you can slot into your gear. Once I got the lag monster under control, my 1337 FPS skills (yeah, I never even got 1:1 k2d) were running.
First thing I can say - the "stealth/sniper" class is way too powerful. They can literally cloak anywhere, and just wait for someone to come by and one shot you. It's annoying to get shot by a camping stealther out of the middle of nowhere.
Second thing - the respawn system sucks. Sure in deathmatches, you should respawn just about anywhere to prevent camping, but what I found was that the respawn mechanism generally ends up respawning you right in front of a bad guy, pointing you away from him so he can mow you down from behind as soon as you spawn. There is no respawn invincibility or anything, and as I said it often spawns you in the WORST possible location and the most inappropriate time.
As far as "XP" (known as BP) goes, skirmishes are generally far superior to the RPG-FPS portion of the game. Only thing you don't get from skirmishes are money, which you also need to buy items and skills along with the combat medals.
All in all, it's fun enough of a distraction to keep you entertained. There's not much "story" to the game at all, at least not in terms of gameplay. It's an FPS with a glorified lobby, much like Guildwars is an Diablo-like RPG with a glorified lobby, with the exception that Guildwars actually has far more of a story to progress through as you play. Huxley is pure shooter, with little regard for story.
Where Huxley does succeed though is mixing single player and co-op play in terms of the RPG "mode". You're more than welcome to go do missions solo or take a team against NPC opponents. It is pretty damn cool in this regard, except that you run the same map over and over and over again, with each quest needing just a different objective. There are some storyline quests, sortof (shallow story). These generally take you deeper into the maps, but still, you already know 70% of the instance just from the generic quests.
Right now I have a difficult time deciding which is more interesting. Huxley or CrimeCraft. They're essentially two different games coming out of the same mold. Huxley is visually stunning - UE3 engine powering it. But it also looks very similar to UE3 in terms of models and textures. CrimeCraft on the other hand looks something across Grand Theft Auto and The Matrix Online. It looks sort of dated, and the UI is a royal pain in the ass, but the gameplay is smooth. Huxley has something to offer, but I don't know if I could be convinced to pay actual money for this game.
Postmortem:
I have decided Huxley is no more than any other FPS. You're better off playing UT3 or TF2, which in my opinion are simply more fun in terms of game play.
Huxley feels like a cheap clone of UT3 in fact. So much so that a lot of the concepts seemed to have come directly from UT3. I noticed this from the first "ammo pod" I came across. Models, even textures are very similar. This was to be expected since it's based on Unreal Engine 3 as previously mentioned. That not withstanding, Huxley does have a bit more to offer than a traditional FPS, but not terribly much.
What Huxley does that attempts to be different from the FPS is a persistent MMO world. Unfortunately, it's not really much of a world. What you get is a "city zone", as mentioned before which acts similar to a lobby. You have a persistent character which levels up as you kill things, similar to the Battlefield games. You can buy weapons and armor, and "craft" modifications to your weapons and armor. And finally, you can buy socket skills, which are basically akin to your MMO "spells". There is a persistent "global battle" in Huxley, where each race competes on a series of maps during the course of the game. This is probably the closest it gets to being a true MMO style game, instead of just some mind numbing shooter.
What Huxley seriously fails at though, as I provided to ijji in their post-beta survey, it is not by ANY means an MMO. At least not anymore than Guildwars was. Skirmish maps were fairly limited to usually 16 players, and the global maps I think were around 32. Typical numbers for a FPS. Huxley does do one thing though, it provides multiplayer content as well as single player and co-op content that serves as the PvE in the game to help you level up along the way and find some loot drops. Unfortunately, this seemed to be all but ignored in the beta as you get just as much if not more "XP" from fighting in skirmishes or the global battles, as well as them being the ONLY way to get combat medals (which are important if you have any desire to buy better weapons, armor and skills).
The credit I can give Huxley is that it gives FPS gamers some variety. It's like rolling the original Unreal, Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 2 all into one game. The execution isn't great, but I have to give them credit - Huxley is one of the better in this upcoming breed of hybrid FPS games. But that's not saying much, since this new "MMOFPS" genre is promising the MMO part, but fails miserably to deliver it.
The final stab for me ends up being this - the devs didn't care to solicit feedback from the beta testers apparently. A great many people and I all started with promise of access to a beta test forum, which for the bulk of us never happened. Despite following the procedures and repeatedly asking for access, we only had the public forum available. Worse, we were threatened that if we were discussing game issues in the public forum we would have our beta access revoked. That lead me to believe this beta test was more for advertising purposes rather than actual developer feedback. Being said, should Huxley release as I expect - with little change from the beta - it will be a very miserable experience for most people.
Mind you, I wasn't part of CBT1, but my friend was. His impression was it essentially is nothing more than an MMO "lobby" front end to what basically amounts to a multiplayer "team death match" FPS game, where the incumbent players have a distinct advantage over the newbies.
Anyhow, I did get selected to join CBT2, and I will provide whatever information I can (I haven't inspected the EULA yet - but I also haven't seen any mention of NDA either).
CBT2 Day 1 Impressions:
Well... um... where to start. Let's see - the installer is a piece of shit. First, I tried the preload installer on thursday. It has it's own downloader, so I figured after a long night and what seemed to be an endlessly slow 4gb download, I could shut down my machine and pick back up the next day. WRONG.
So last night, I hop on again, to my dismay it downloads a NEW installer, different from the one on thursday and proceeds to redownload EVERYTHING. Not to mention the installer doesn't give you ANY options on where to put shit. Did I mention it's also partially web-based? Yeah, all authentication, including to log into the game, requires a web browser window. This gets problematic, as you'll read. Anyhow, the installer downloads the game (installer), and finally I get an option on where to actually install the software.
All seems well at this point, and we go BACK to the web page yet again to "log in", which then wants to install a plugin for the browser. Fine, whatever. Except AntiVir now flags one of the plugin DLL's as a Trojan. Great. A quick jaunt on the web has Kaspersky and Symantec both also flagging it, the assumption is it's a false positive. Whatever, I roll with it, get the game started all the while AntiVir is complaining about the DLL in the background.
Finally, the game starts, I'm at the menu screen - of course I have to go set the resolution and graphics options. The game didn't like Alt-Tabbing much when I got sick of AntiVir finally, but it came back. Set the rez, graphics options, and then something popped up and took the game into minimized. It refused to come back after that. Task manager was required to kill it.
Subsequently after that, I could not under any combination of voodoo bring the game back. Logging in through any browser would simply hang the browser, and the .EXE's were no use either (as they hook the browser). I'll try some more tonight, but let me tell you... for now it's looking like this one's a real keeper! (In the context of the whore you meet at the bar who's drunk off her ass and does meth)
CBT2 Day #I don't know but I'm finally able to play Impressions:
Alrighty, things are slowly falling into place with Huxley. I've managed to get some play time in. It's beta, so some things are still broken. All in all, it's not quite as bad as I was lead to believe.
First of - my disclaimer - I **SUCK** at FPS games, get I still come back for more. Huxley is no more an MMO than Guildwars is. It essentially took the Guildwars formula and applied it to ... um ... Unreal Tournament 3. Yep, the core gameplay of Huxley is essentially UT3, with some additional game modes I guess. Oh, you might as well tack on some generic "Unreal 1"-like single player instance content to that as well, as that's the primary way to level up your character.
The "quest" instances are pretty redundant - most using the same map over and over again. It gets to the point where you can dance your way through pretty easily and know where the mob spawns pretty much all are. Each quest might have some twist to it, but for the most part it's all the same. I should mention that you can do instances on one of three different difficulty levels - basically increasing the amount of spawns and somewhat their actual difficulty. You can also bring multiple people into an instance, giving you co-op play.
The "real" game behind Huxley is going to be the team deathmatch zones that essentially are the core of the game. Being that I suck against other FPS human players, I can say Huxley's FPS implementation is top notch - but I stress - other than slightly more limited weaponry, it for all intents IS Unreal Tournament 3. There's vehicles in which running over people is the preferred method of slaughter. The maps are huge, giving snipers a fairly distinct advantage.
All in all - it's fun - for a FPS. The graphics are top notch, but that's to be expected from UE3. They've done a great job with the models and textures, though I was hoping they would look more realistic/gritty like the trailer video than they actually are. There's MMO elements - you can craft, upgrade your weapons, learn new "skills", buy new weapons and armor. The one thing it really isn't though - it's not an MMO. As I said, it's "massively multiplayer" insofar as Guildwars was in the city zones where you're just doing maintenance or otherwise acting as a "lobby".
If it does indeed end up "free", then the price will be right and assuming they get all the peripheral bugs worked out (installer, login system, etc), it will be worthy of occupying 4GB of hard drive space for "a progressive FPS shooter with RPG elements".
Personally, I am more interested in Global Agenda, which by all rights appears to be more of a true MMOFPS than even Planetside was.
8/6/09 impressions:
Guess what... I finally managed to play some skirmishes! At first, it was laggy as all hell. I was basically unplayable, though I managed to get one kill by standing still long enough emptying my gun down a long hallway in the hopes that it hit something, anything. Finally, after two or three goes of insane lag (I was literally jumping around the map without even moving) someone suggested turning off PurpleBean (some ijji background app) which I knew about, but had forgotten to do. It was like magic... the game was actually 98% playable at this point, and I had some fun.
Skirmishes are important because playing them you get combat medals. And you need combat medals to buy some of the better gear and more importantly the abilities that you can slot into your gear. Once I got the lag monster under control, my 1337 FPS skills (yeah, I never even got 1:1 k2d) were running.
First thing I can say - the "stealth/sniper" class is way too powerful. They can literally cloak anywhere, and just wait for someone to come by and one shot you. It's annoying to get shot by a camping stealther out of the middle of nowhere.
Second thing - the respawn system sucks. Sure in deathmatches, you should respawn just about anywhere to prevent camping, but what I found was that the respawn mechanism generally ends up respawning you right in front of a bad guy, pointing you away from him so he can mow you down from behind as soon as you spawn. There is no respawn invincibility or anything, and as I said it often spawns you in the WORST possible location and the most inappropriate time.
As far as "XP" (known as BP) goes, skirmishes are generally far superior to the RPG-FPS portion of the game. Only thing you don't get from skirmishes are money, which you also need to buy items and skills along with the combat medals.
All in all, it's fun enough of a distraction to keep you entertained. There's not much "story" to the game at all, at least not in terms of gameplay. It's an FPS with a glorified lobby, much like Guildwars is an Diablo-like RPG with a glorified lobby, with the exception that Guildwars actually has far more of a story to progress through as you play. Huxley is pure shooter, with little regard for story.
Where Huxley does succeed though is mixing single player and co-op play in terms of the RPG "mode". You're more than welcome to go do missions solo or take a team against NPC opponents. It is pretty damn cool in this regard, except that you run the same map over and over and over again, with each quest needing just a different objective. There are some storyline quests, sortof (shallow story). These generally take you deeper into the maps, but still, you already know 70% of the instance just from the generic quests.
Right now I have a difficult time deciding which is more interesting. Huxley or CrimeCraft. They're essentially two different games coming out of the same mold. Huxley is visually stunning - UE3 engine powering it. But it also looks very similar to UE3 in terms of models and textures. CrimeCraft on the other hand looks something across Grand Theft Auto and The Matrix Online. It looks sort of dated, and the UI is a royal pain in the ass, but the gameplay is smooth. Huxley has something to offer, but I don't know if I could be convinced to pay actual money for this game.
Postmortem:
I have decided Huxley is no more than any other FPS. You're better off playing UT3 or TF2, which in my opinion are simply more fun in terms of game play.
Huxley feels like a cheap clone of UT3 in fact. So much so that a lot of the concepts seemed to have come directly from UT3. I noticed this from the first "ammo pod" I came across. Models, even textures are very similar. This was to be expected since it's based on Unreal Engine 3 as previously mentioned. That not withstanding, Huxley does have a bit more to offer than a traditional FPS, but not terribly much.
What Huxley does that attempts to be different from the FPS is a persistent MMO world. Unfortunately, it's not really much of a world. What you get is a "city zone", as mentioned before which acts similar to a lobby. You have a persistent character which levels up as you kill things, similar to the Battlefield games. You can buy weapons and armor, and "craft" modifications to your weapons and armor. And finally, you can buy socket skills, which are basically akin to your MMO "spells". There is a persistent "global battle" in Huxley, where each race competes on a series of maps during the course of the game. This is probably the closest it gets to being a true MMO style game, instead of just some mind numbing shooter.
What Huxley seriously fails at though, as I provided to ijji in their post-beta survey, it is not by ANY means an MMO. At least not anymore than Guildwars was. Skirmish maps were fairly limited to usually 16 players, and the global maps I think were around 32. Typical numbers for a FPS. Huxley does do one thing though, it provides multiplayer content as well as single player and co-op content that serves as the PvE in the game to help you level up along the way and find some loot drops. Unfortunately, this seemed to be all but ignored in the beta as you get just as much if not more "XP" from fighting in skirmishes or the global battles, as well as them being the ONLY way to get combat medals (which are important if you have any desire to buy better weapons, armor and skills).
The credit I can give Huxley is that it gives FPS gamers some variety. It's like rolling the original Unreal, Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 2 all into one game. The execution isn't great, but I have to give them credit - Huxley is one of the better in this upcoming breed of hybrid FPS games. But that's not saying much, since this new "MMOFPS" genre is promising the MMO part, but fails miserably to deliver it.
The final stab for me ends up being this - the devs didn't care to solicit feedback from the beta testers apparently. A great many people and I all started with promise of access to a beta test forum, which for the bulk of us never happened. Despite following the procedures and repeatedly asking for access, we only had the public forum available. Worse, we were threatened that if we were discussing game issues in the public forum we would have our beta access revoked. That lead me to believe this beta test was more for advertising purposes rather than actual developer feedback. Being said, should Huxley release as I expect - with little change from the beta - it will be a very miserable experience for most people.
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