UC2 Demo: Yes, I've played it

[shadow_dragon]

Yah, plus doing the multiple dodges up those little areas is THROWING OFF ME GROOVE! I can't get used to it like the bots do!

The bots are mental at it, i tried getting the hang of it with the wall crawler mutator. (Though i'm not 100% of what it does) Anyway i just about go the hang of it, i can go up those little funnel bits now easily enough. DOn't need elevators anymore.

 

[spineblaZe]

BTW - if you happen to get the demo, look for the area where you can read the discription of each weapon. Read the discription of the sniper rifle. I'm not going to tell you exactly what it says. Let's just say it's a funny backhanded slap at another weapon.

Put it in spoiler tags.

 

[UncleThursday]

Renegade is right. The demo kicks all sorts of ass.

And yes, the demo is now out in the UK, at least, maybe the rest of Europe too. Plus the full version will be out in the UK only 14 days after the North American Release.

A few corrections/additions.

-The black button switches from first to third person in ranged weapon mode.

-The white button is your taunt menu, you hit it, then choose Taunt (Killer)p-where you killed someone; Taunt (Victim)- where you were killed; and Taunt (Other)- other taunts.

-You can freeze people for Coup de Grace moves in 2 ways. The first is to use the alt fire on your race wepon (pistols for Lauren and Anubis) to charge the weapon until it has begun to glow, then fire at your opponent (this can be reflected). The second is to hit your opponent 3-4 times really fast with your melee weapon. As a note, it is hard for Szalor (the Skaarj) to freeze people, because is charged race weapon poisons enemies, not freezes them, and his attacks do so much damage, he rarely can freeze someone before he simply slaughters them.

-Coup de Grace moves are performed Mortal Kombat Fatality style. Your opponent must be frozen, and you must be locked onto them while you have your melee weapon equiupped (and close to them). Lauren's Coup de Grace is X, Y, Left, Right (both on analog stick), R trigger. Anubis' is X, Y, Up (analog stick), A, R trigger. Szalor's is a bitch to do, though, it's X, Y, Up plus both triggers, Down plus both triggers (or the reverse of those directions, I forget, as I never use him). I can do Lauren's Coup de Grace in under a second, not allowing people to become unfrozen.

-Coup de Grace moves leave you EXTREMELY vunerable to attacks. A well placed rocket or two can kill you and your victim scoring someone else a double kill. However, they are good for building up adrenaline.

-Adrenaline is constantly building up, slowly, while you play. You can get pick ups to increase this, kill opponents (killing a lot in a row makes it go faster), reflect shots with your melee weapon, or perform Coup de Graces (worth 3 little bars) to increase the speed your adrenaline goes up. You have 2 bars of 4 smaller bars to work with. Most powers take one full bar of 4 smaller ones to use, but some do take both (8 small bars) to work.

-There are 3 DM/TDM maps and 2 CTF maps in the demo.

-The demo only supports 4 players per game, the full version will support 8 players per game.

-The level of detail in this demo is astounding. Little things like Anubis and Szalor having breath mist come out of his mouth (Szalor) or under his mask (Anubis) on the level with snow on the ground while Lauren, who is now an undead Necris, does not breathe, make me happy.

-The Ripjack and the rocket launcher have 3 firing modes. Regular fire, alt fire, and alt fire followed by regular fire. The ripjack can lay mines of exploding rippers by holding alt fire, then pressing regular fire; and the rocket launcher can fire 6 "drunken" rockets by holding the alt fire to fire three missiles, then continue holding the alt fire and hit the regular fire while they are in the air.

-Reflection kicks ass, but is not garaunteed. You must hit alt fire with your melee weapon when the projectile is about to hit you to reflect it. If the rocket or ripper blade is not directly hitting you when you reflect, it might not go directly back at the shooter. Sniper reflections are hard, because the projectile moves so fast you need to reflect at almost the exact same time that the sniper rifle fires. However, reflecting a sniper shot is very satisfying, as you get an auto-head shot on the sniper. Also reflecting the Stinger's (the mini-gun like weapon) primary fire is an exercise in futility, you'll freflect 1-2 shots for every 5-6 that hit you, the secondary fire is easier to reflect.

-You have a shield which will protect you from damage head on whith your melee weapons, done by holding down both triggers. The sheild is limited to time, and does not reflect shots. If you shiled yourself against someone trying to freeze you with melee weapons, though, and block all their melee attacks, their own freeze power freezes them instead.

-Necris pistol freezes shoot out Nano-Black to freeze eneimies. This Nano-Black done to a Necris, however, heals them instead of freezing them. Also the syphon attack from Lauren will not affect another Necris, because they have no life energy to syphon off. Szalor poisons enemies with his charged ranged weapon, but is immune to poison, himself.

-Each character has two stats, Health and Agility ranged 1-3. Lauren has low health (a freshly spawned Lauren can be killed in one heavy attack by Szalor), but high agility (H1, A3). Anubis has midlle of the road health and agility (H2, A2). Szalor has high health, but low agility (H3, A1).

-Killing sprees are: Killing Spree (5), Rampage (10), Massacre (15), Dominating (20), Unstoppable (25), Godlike (30). I am unsure if they go beyond godlike, since I had set the limit on that game to 30 frags. I did a test match up to 50 kills against novice bots, looks like Godlike is the highest it goes, I had 45 kills in a row and it never said anything at 35, 40, or 45.

-Kills go Double, Multi, Mega, Monster, Ultra, Unholy (don't know beyond that, Unholy is the highest I have gotten). Why they changed Ultra and Monster kill's placement is unkown to me. I also got this using swords and U Damage, no ranged weapons.

I'm sure Renegade, myself, or anyone else who has played it can answer more questions. I normally host my own room because my Xbox is a bit ****ed, so if you see the gamertag Uncle Thursday hosting a room, feel free to join in. Just be warned that it may tell you the game is no longer available when the round is over, it's my Xbox, just find the game again and re-join.

 

[Gnam]

I'm not so hot on the UC2 demo.

It seems like they nerfed all the ranged weapons to make melee weapons more usefull...The rockets have extremely small splash damage, and even on direct hits, it takes atleast 3-4 shots to kill. The sniper rifle takes 4-5 shots to kill (unless you get a headshot), and the fire rate is SUPER SLOW. Imagine the Quake 2 rail gun, but even slower, and instead of doing 120 damage, it does 20 damage. That's what the UC2 sniper rifle is like. I don't even know if headshots are an instant kill, or if they just do double (ie, 40) damage, but it anounces a headshot when you finish people with it.

I'm also not crazy about being stuck with the same 2 weapons the whole match; it gets rather repetative, and rescource control is much more difficult, as you're only picking up ammo and adrenaline most of the time. This means the only key point on each map is the Udamage, and occasionally the Keg o Health or the Super Adrenaline (basically an Arenaline Keg).

It doesn't help that the demo only had 4 weapons to choose from either. Also, the Stinger sucks, so it's basically just 3 weapons to choose from. BTW, the Stinger doesn't really act much like the Unreal 1 original. The primary fire is basically like a Minigun, and the secondary fire is like the Needler from Halo. The sidearm weapons every character spawns with aren't too hot either. If the rocket launcher is so weak takes 4-5 direct hits to kill with, you can imagine how weak the pistols are. Lauren's Enforcers are ok, because they are insta-hit, but they are still really weak. The other 2 are plasma pistols, so they are hard to hit with and weak. The skarjj guy's pistols in particular are really bad; they follow of the UT2004 Link Gun's example of terribly slow rate of fire, and the damage doesn't really make up for it.

All of this nerfing, is done to put an emphasis on melee combat, but the melee combat really doesn't seem that great. There are a few different melee moves...first there's the stand primary fire, which is a fast spin attack. Then there's the alt fire for reflecting enemy fire, and the shield which is put up by pressing alt fire and primary fire (it's a lot like the shield alt fire). Then you have have the melee button (same as Halo) which does a "fierce attack". The fierce attack looks cool and does a little more damage, but it's slow, hard to hit with, and after you do it you have to stand still for a second, which is the equivalent of eternity in Unreal. Basically, it's useless because it doesn't do enough damage to offset the terrible delay afterward. Often, even if you find an opportunty to use it, and you actually land it, your opponent will just survive and hit you back 3 times with the spin attack while you're standing there doing nothing. It will kill pretty reliably if your opponent has allready been hit 3-4 times, but then so will spamming the spin attack, which is a lot safer. Furthermore, even if it does kill your opponent, someone else is likely to kill you while you're stuck in the wind down pose.

Then, there are the jumping attacks. If you use primary fire while in mid air, you will do the dash attack. The dash attack is cool because it zips you across the air really fast really far, and does good damage, but it is preceeded by being frozen in mid air for atleast 1 second. Then there is the other dash attack which is done by pressing the melee button in mid-air. It's basically the same, but you're only frozen in the air for about half a second and you don't go as far. The problem with this set up is that:

1) You can't do a regular attack, like the quick spining attack you do on the ground, while jumping. So basically, when in mid air, you're rather defenseless.
2) Because the slow dash attack is the primary fire, you constantly press in instinctively trying to do a regular attack, and **** yourself over being frozen in midair for an eternity.
3) The quick dash attack would have been much more practical for the primary fire, because it is faster, more natural, and more practical. Furthermore, it is akward to use because it is on the face button, which forces you to take your thumb off the control stick to press it, so basically you can't aim the attack.
4) You can still reflect attacks with the alt fire in mid air, but since much of the time you're jumping you're using the jump to evade an attack, there isn't a lot of use for it. It would have been worth ditching to make control of the other attacks more natural. It would have made more sense to retain the spin attack for primary fire in mid air, and make the dash attack the alt fire. Furthermore, I don't see why there needs to be two dash attacks since the primary difference is speed vs power, since the main dash attack is controlled by holding the button down and charging up the power anyway. They could have just made it the alt fire and made it so you can release the button and attack sooner, and it would have worked out better.

Overall, melee combat is not terribly satisfying, because like everything else, it takes 4-5 hits to kill. There is not a single decisive attack which will somehow make a quick kill if you can pull it off, which is primarily a failing of the running "fierce" melee button attack. There are the "coup de gras" fatality moves, but you have to freeze your opponent with the pistols first, and you need adrenaline, and the coup de grass probably leaves you vulnerable to all the other players while you're doing it, cause it's really slow, even though your opponent is frozen so it doesn't matter to him.

Most of the time, it seems like melee combat just consists of using the air dash to get close, then chasing your opponent and spamming the spin attack till he/she's dead. Occasionally, you will have to spam the shield if your opponent is hitting you back. If you opponent is using a ranged weapon, you can spam the reflect move, which can often kill your opponent faster than actually attacking him (if your opponent charges a triple rocket volley, and you reflect it back, it may not always be an instant kill, but it'll do a hell of a lot more damage than your melee attacks).

All in all, UC2 feels very watered down. Nothing you do does very much damage and it takes forever to kill. When you have more than two people in a skirmish (in DM), it feels like a random toss up as to who will get the kill. Getting in the first shot means nothing. There is almost no way to finish off your opponent quickly before someone else joins in, so other people are constantly jumping in in the middle of the fight and getting in the last shot on your opponent. Meanwhile, most of your kills will be from single stray shots you fired in a group of people who had been wearing each other down, not from your own work.

This nerfing effect might not have as much effect on one on one, but I can't tell from the demo. All of the maps in the demo seem too big for one on one, and since there are no weapon pickups to go after, you spend most of your time jwandering around aimlessly looking for the other guy. What's worse, when you do find eachother, with the nerfed weapons, you will probably only chip off a little health before you lose eachother and spend another 4-5 minutes wandering around. The movement speed seems slower than UT2004 too, which makes it even worse.

Coming from Quake III, I had a bit of a hard time accepting UT2004's nerfing, such as rockets only doing 90 damage, but in UC2, 90 damage would be a luxury as it seems like rocket damage is closer to 30 or 40. In the end I understood the reasons for UT2004's nerfing and accepted them, but UC2 is just too much.

And finally, my ISP is giving me 400-500 pings right now, so I can't try it online, so overall my experience with the demo has been a disapointment in almost every aspect.

 

[shadow_dragon]

I'm also not crazy about being stuck with the same 2 weapons the whole match; it gets rather repetative, and rescource control is much more difficult, as you're only picking up ammo and adrenaline most of the time. This means the only key point on each map is the Udamage, and occasionally the Keg o Health or the Super Adrenaline (basically an Arenaline Keg).

Personally i've always hated the idea of resource control in an FPS game, i want tos hoot people not camp super items or collect guns. This way you already hav eyour weapons adn just need the ammo, it's a level playing field and i think a very good move. personally.

Then, there are the jumping attacks. If you use primary fire while in mid air, you will do the dash attack. The dash attack is cool because it zips you across the air really fast really far, and does good damage, but it is preceeded by being frozen in mid air for atleast 1 second. Then there is the other dash attack which is done by pressing the melee button in mid-air. It's basically the same, but you're only frozen in the air for about half a second and you don't go as far. The problem with this set up is that:

Switch to the gun it's one button. Or, just hit them with the charge, press down on your joystick, lock on, smack 'em in the face. The disadvantage of sitting still for a second is balanced by the fact that your sent halfway across the map in an isntant. (Thus out of harms way)

Most of the time, it seems like melee combat just consists of using the air dash to get close, then chasing your opponent and spamming the spin attack till he/she's dead. Occasionally, you will have to spam the shield if your opponent is hitting you back. If you opponent is using a ranged weapon, you can spam the reflect move, which can often kill your opponent faster than actually attacking him (if your opponent charges a triple rocket volley, and you reflect it back, it may not always be an instant kill, but it'll do a hell of a lot more damage than your melee attacks).

That's worse than using the translocator to get to you opponent and chasing them around how?
Persoanlly i charge at them and if i'mn to near enough i use my guns untill i am. Switching stance is quite easy and quick.

All in all, UC2 feels very watered down. Nothing you do does very much damage and it takes forever to kill. When you have more than two people in a skirmish (in DM), it feels like a random toss up as to who will get the kill. Getting in the first shot means nothing. There is almost no way to finish off your opponent quickly before someone else joins in, so other people are constantly jumping in in the middle of the fight and getting in the last shot on your opponent. Meanwhile, most of your kills will be from single stray shots you fired in a group of people who had been wearing each other down, not from your own work.

Most of that doesn't sound bad, getting in the first shot doesn't mean you get the kill? It's always been hard tog et the frag, i doubt most of teh kills would be from stray shots though.

This nerfing effect might not have as much effect on one on one, but I can't tell from the demo. All of the maps in the demo seem too big for one on one, and since there are no weapon pickups to go after, you spend most of your time jwandering around aimlessly looking for the other guy. What's worse, when you do find eachother, with the nerfed weapons, you will probably only chip off a little health before you lose eachother and spend another 4-5 minutes wandering around. The movement speed seems slower than UT2004 too, which makes it even worse.

Suggested player counts were 4 and they clearly included these larger maps for full four player live matches!
It's unfair to judge it by 1v1 standards when they're not 1v1 maps!

Coming from Quake III, I had a bit of a hard time accepting UT2004's nerfing, such as rockets only doing 90 damage, but in UC2, 90 damage would be a luxury as it seems like rocket damage is closer to 30 or 40. In the end I understood the reasons for UT2004's nerfing and accepted them, but UC2 is just too much.

This explains most of what you've said very well to me. Coming from Quake 3? Where almost every weapon is essentially an instagib or a flak cannon?
UT games have always felt nerfec in contrast to Quake games. It has always taken some amount of effort to kill someone in a UT game.

Personally i didn't have any more difficulty with the weapons than with the melee. I mean i was taking Szalor down with the rocket launcher and he's the most defensive player on there so as far as i'm concerned that weapon is fine, maybe your not using all of your adrenaline combos and weapons efficiently. As for your opinions on the stinger, remember reflecting it is a painfull and futile affair, i think that's fairly balanced.

Have a quick read through uncle thursdays list and give the game another chance eh? It took me two turns to really get the hang of it, there is so much more to this demo than there is in other UT titles i've still not worked everything out.

One of my biggest concerns is the seeming "lack" of characters in it. No where near as mnay as usual. Though i understand they're properly made characters now and they're made far better. Must say the recreated old characters. (Gorge, Arclite, Malcolm, etc) look excellent though and i guess you don't need THAT many........... still!

 

[UncleThursday]

It seems like they nerfed all the ranged weapons to make melee weapons more usefull...The rockets have extremely small splash damage, and even on direct hits, it takes atleast 3-4 shots to kill. The sniper rifle takes 4-5 shots to kill (unless you get a headshot), and the fire rate is SUPER SLOW. Imagine the Quake 2 rail gun, but even slower, and instead of doing 120 damage, it does 20 damage. That's what the UC2 sniper rifle is like. I don't even know if headshots are an instant kill, or if they just do double (ie, 40) damage, but it anounces a headshot when you finish people with it.

Head shots from sniper rifles are instant kills (the ripjack can also do this). The rocket launcher has varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the character. Lauren can't take a direct hit from a rocket launcher, Szalor can take 2 if he is freshly spawned, 3 if he has extra health beyond the spawned health. He can also sometimes take a reflected rocket hit without dying if he has extra health (reflected shots have more power than the initial shot). Most of the time, Anubis will die from a direct rocket hit, too.

I'm also not crazy about being stuck with the same 2 weapons the whole match; it gets rather repetative, and rescource control is much more difficult, as you're only picking up ammo and adrenaline most of the time. This means the only key point on each map is the Udamage, and occasionally the Keg o Health or the Super Adrenaline (basically an Arenaline Keg).

It's all about choice and thinking what weapons will work best. In the final game you'll have to worry about people laying mines with the grenade launcher, or laying poison gas clouds with the bio rifle, or shock combo traps with the shock rifle, as opposed to just rockets, stingers, rippers, or sniper shots. So each player will have to play a llittle differently depending on how the other players are playing.

It doesn't help that the demo only had 4 weapons to choose from either.

It is just a demo, you know. Next you'll complain that the demo doesn't have all 14 characters available. Maybe they should have just put the full game on there for you, so you didn't have to buy it later if you wanted.

Also, the Stinger sucks, so it's basically just 3 weapons to choose from. BTW, the Stinger doesn't really act much like the Unreal 1 original. The primary fire is basically like a Minigun, and the secondary fire is like the Needler from Halo. The sidearm weapons every character spawns with aren't too hot either. If the rocket launcher is so weak takes 4-5 direct hits to kill with, you can imagine how weak the pistols are. Lauren's Enforcers are ok, because they are insta-hit, but they are still really weak. The other 2 are plasma pistols, so they are hard to hit with and weak. The skarjj guy's pistols in particular are really bad; they follow of the UT2004 Link Gun's example of terribly slow rate of fire, and the damage doesn't really make up for it.

Again, it all depends on how you like to play. I, for example, have been using my melee weapons almost exclusively. I'm learning timing for reflections, learning how to hit and get away real quick against Szalor, and when to hold in my attack button for the more powerful combo attacks from my melee weapons.

And now you're exagerating with the rocket launcher's damage.. earlier you said 2-3 hits, now it's up to 4-5? Why not just completely change it and say you need to hit with 10 rockets to kill someone? That'll make it sound nerfed.

The truth of the matter is that it all depends on the character being shot at, and how well the person shooting the rocket launcher is with it. Yeah the Skaarj in the demo can take 2-3 direct hits depending on his health, but unless you're constantly playing against no other character, you're full of ****. I play as Lauren most of the time, and I have to watch out for rockets, because I know she can't take a direct hit most times from a rocket launcher.

All of this nerfing, is done to put an emphasis on melee combat, but the melee combat really doesn't seem that great. There are a few different melee moves...first there's the stand primary fire, which is a fast spin attack. Then there's the alt fire for reflecting enemy fire, and the shield which is put up by pressing alt fire and primary fire (it's a lot like the shield alt fire). Then you have have the melee button (same as Halo) which does a "fierce attack". The fierce attack looks cool and does a little more damage, but it's slow, hard to hit with, and after you do it you have to stand still for a second, which is the equivalent of eternity in Unreal. Basically, it's useless because it doesn't do enough damage to offset the terrible delay afterward. Often, even if you find an opportunty to use it, and you actually land it, your opponent will just survive and hit you back 3 times with the spin attack while you're standing there doing nothing. It will kill pretty reliably if your opponent has allready been hit 3-4 times, but then so will spamming the spin attack, which is a lot safer. Furthermore, even if it does kill your opponent, someone else is likely to kill you while you're stuck in the wind down pose.

You actually have a three hit combo with the primary fire of the melee weapons, done by holding down the primary attack instead of releasing it while on the ground. The second and third hits do more damage than the first, but are leaving you vulnerable to counterattacks.

I'm quite adept at using just melee attacks to win matches. And I barely use my feirce attacks. I do, however, use my Coup de Grace to kill people at least 5 times a match (when someone diesn't kill me in the middle of it or spam me and my victim with rockets to kill us both). My kill to death ratio often isn't great, because I have to get in close, but I am quite adept at melee so far. 3-4 hits with my swords will freeze my opponent, and I Coup de Grace them. While it leaves me vunerable, it is satisfying to kill the Skaarj like that, knowing if he it me once, maybe twice during that time I'd have been dead.

Then, there are the jumping attacks. If you use primary fire while in mid air, you will do the dash attack. The dash attack is cool because it zips you across the air really fast really far, and does good damage, but it is preceeded by being frozen in mid air for atleast 1 second. Then there is the other dash attack which is done by pressing the melee button in mid-air. It's basically the same, but you're only frozen in the air for about half a second and you don't go as far. The problem with this set up is that:

1) You can't do a regular attack, like the quick spining attack you do on the ground, while jumping. So basically, when in mid air, you're rather defenseless.
2) Because the slow dash attack is the primary fire, you constantly press in instinctively trying to do a regular attack, and **** yourself over being frozen in midair for an eternity.
3) The quick dash attack would have been much more practical for the primary fire, because it is faster, more natural, and more practical. Furthermore, it is akward to use because it is on the face button, which forces you to take your thumb off the control stick to press it, so basically you can't aim the attack.
4) You can still reflect attacks with the alt fire in mid air, but since much of the time you're jumping you're using the jump to evade an attack, there isn't a lot of use for it. It would have been worth ditching to make control of the other attacks more natural. It would have made more sense to retain the spin attack for primary fire in mid air, and make the dash attack the alt fire. Furthermore, I don't see why there needs to be two dash attacks since the primary difference is speed vs power, since the main dash attack is controlled by holding the button down and charging up the power anyway. They could have just made it the alt fire and made it so you can release the button and attack sooner, and it would have worked out better.

As for the jump attack, you can also end it before you go flying off (primary fire jump attack, not B button) by hitting the alt fire while in the air. The primary jump attack should be used to get away from others or to get to other areas of the map, not as a means of attack, really.

Still, I do agree that I'd prefer you to have to charge up to do the flying primary fire attack instead of it auto happening. However, you obviously have forgotten about the lock on (click the right analog stick), which makes hitting with either attack from the air easier. Locking on in melee is a must if you expect to be able to hit and defend against counter attacks, and this is the same for being in the air.

Overall, melee combat is not terribly satisfying, because like everything else, it takes 4-5 hits to kill. There is not a single decisive attack which will somehow make a quick kill if you can pull it off, which is primarily a failing of the running "fierce" melee button attack. There are the "coup de gras" fatality moves, but you have to freeze your opponent with the pistols first, and you need adrenaline, and the coup de grass probably leaves you vulnerable to all the other players while you're doing it, cause it's really slow, even though your opponent is frozen so it doesn't matter to him.

You also have to guage what you will do in a given situation. This isn't just run and gun anymore, this takes some strategy. When you lock onto your opponents, you actually know how much health they have (it's above the scoreboard), so you can know if you can kill them quickly or not. Locking on makes you more vulnerable to attacks from the flank and rear, but you're always in danger of those anyway. And freezing opponents is easy WITHOUT the pistols, just hit someone 3-4 times in a quick succession with your melee attack. And when you know how to do the Coup de Grace, it can be done real quick... people have been asking me if I have a macro controller because I do it so fast (it's almost instant from me when they are frozen). The problem then is just waiting through the animation and hoping you aren't killed from behind. If done at the right times, though, I can do them almost every time I kill someone.

Most of the time, it seems like melee combat just consists of using the air dash to get close, then chasing your opponent and spamming the spin attack till he/she's dead. Occasionally, you will have to spam the shield if your opponent is hitting you back. If you opponent is using a ranged weapon, you can spam the reflect move, which can often kill your opponent faster than actually attacking him (if your opponent charges a triple rocket volley, and you reflect it back, it may not always be an instant kill, but it'll do a hell of a lot more damage than your melee attacks).

You must not be playing the same game I am, then. Reflected shots don't always kill your opponent, but normally only if the attack wasn't hitting you head on when you reflected it (I've reflected rockets to the side of me because they just barely hit my reflection and would have otherwise landed next to me and hit me with splash damage). And returning 2 or 3 rockets in a reflection that was otherwise hitting you dead on WILL kill the shooter if all of them hit him (they'll even track him somewhat to hit him if he was moving), reflected shots do more damage than the initial shot. Plus, if you are U Damaged when you reflect, the reflected shot gets the reflection power PLUS the U Damage as well.

Hell, we've played games of tennis with rockets in some matches to see what happens... we can get 5 reflects, then the damn thing moves too fast to reflect, and is glowing so brightly it can kill 3 people if they are too close to the reflected shot.

All in all, UC2 feels very watered down. Nothing you do does very much damage and it takes forever to kill. When you have more than two people in a skirmish (in DM), it feels like a random toss up as to who will get the kill. Getting in the first shot means nothing. There is almost no way to finish off your opponent quickly before someone else joins in, so other people are constantly jumping in in the middle of the fight and getting in the last shot on your opponent. Meanwhile, most of your kills will be from single stray shots you fired in a group of people who had been wearing each other down, not from your own work.

Sounds to me like you're just more upset that you can't get quick kills. You're just not playing the right way. Fight a bunch of people playing Lauren and see if you can't kill them quickly by spamming rockets, because you will. Firght a bunch of Szalors and see if they can't kill you when you are Lauren or Anubis in 2-3 hits with thier regular melee attacks right quick, because they can.

I constantly kill people, by myself, using Lauren and just her melee weapons. You just have decided that since this isn't exactly like UT2004, that it isn't working right. It isn't meant to be UT2004 on the Xbox. It's meant to be something made for consoles, and it's meant to be different from UT in ways that help it to work on consoles.

This nerfing effect might not have as much effect on one on one, but I can't tell from the demo. All of the maps in the demo seem too big for one on one, and since there are no weapon pickups to go after, you spend most of your time jwandering around aimlessly looking for the other guy. What's worse, when you do find eachother, with the nerfed weapons, you will probably only chip off a little health before you lose eachother and spend another 4-5 minutes wandering around. The movement speed seems slower than UT2004 too, which makes it even worse.

Again, you just aren't learning how to play the game the way it should be played. I know one guy who uses the sniper rifle in ways I could never imagine, getting head shots while jumping around like it was nothing. If I can't get close to him, I just try and reflect his sniper shot back at him, and I do about once in every 5-6 hits he hits me with. But he knows damn well that if I get next to him, I am deadly with my swords.

And I never "lose" my opponent when we are melee fighting... I lock on and follow them around, freezing them and Coup de Gracing them in a matter of seconds. If I "lose" him or her, it is because either I had to get away because someone started shooting rockets at us and I need health, or he flew away to get health in areas he could jump and get away before I could hit him.

And movement speed is quite fast, as long as you aren't Szalor all the time. Lauren is quick, and Anubis is quick too, just not as fast as Lauren. Just be sure to not always play the Skaarj and maybe you'd see this, and play in third person for some weapons and you'll see the difference. I know I play in third person for almost every weapon right now, except the sniper rifle. But, since I play melee only for most of the games, it is a moot point, since that is always third person (I don't set up the games as melee only games, though, I like the challenge of winning against rockets and other weapons with just my swords).

You should see how fast Lauren is when she has U Damage (which speeds you up slightly) and her speed adrenaline power on, it's so damn fast it's nearly blinding.

Coming from Quake III, I had a bit of a hard time accepting UT2004's nerfing, such as rockets only doing 90 damage, but in UC2, 90 damage would be a luxury as it seems like rocket damage is closer to 30 or 40. In the end I understood the reasons for UT2004's nerfing and accepted them, but UC2 is just too much.

Again, what you see as nerfing is actually just the difference in characters and their powers. Rockets aren't nerfed, some characters just have more health than others, and some characters can jump out of the way of things faster than others. You did also notice that different characters have different timing for reflections and melee attacks, right? Faster characters can melee attack and reflect faster than slower characters. When you actually learn the game, even if it is just the demo, you'll notice this.

Nothing has been nerfed, what has happened is this game simply isn't Q3A or UT2004. If you can't accept changes, then simply don't play it... don't bitch that it's been nerfed because you simply can't grasp it.

And finally, my ISP is giving me 400-500 pings right now, so I can't try it online, so overall my experience with the demo has been a disapointment in almost every aspect.

Well, if it does let you play online, look for my games, gamer tag Uncle Thursday. I'll show you just how fast it moves, and just how deadly all the weapons can be.

 

[BulletProof]

Just got it. $10 for OXM. Steep

 

[UncleThursday]

I've gotten more than my $10 worth out of it, Bulletproof. My first night I played for around 8 hours straight, and didn't even notice the time go by. I've played around 4-6 hours a day since last Saturday as well.

$10 for the POS magazine that is OXM is a bit much, but that demo alone is worth it this month. Add in the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory demo, and some of the UC 2 extras (always nice to see that Midway Gamers Day video on a nice big screen, and the character bios for Selket, Anubis and Arclite are cool, as well as the story mode cinematic preview when you get into the demo itself), and the Conker's demo isn't bad once you get the hang of it. The Worms 3D demo, well, I was never a huge fan of Womrs, so meh.

Plus there's a nice long preview for Pariah on there.

The magazine licks, true, but this demo disk is well worth it.

 

[Renegade Retard]

Just got it. $10 for OXM. Steep

Just think, for $30 (I think $25 for new subscribers), you can get a full year's worth of mags/demo disks.

 

[BulletProof]

Just think, for $30 (I think $25 for new subscribers), you can get a full year's worth of mags/demo disks.

Yeah, I had seen that price, so I was expecting it to ring up less.

I've played for a couple of hours and it looks like it'll be worth the price. Hard to get the hang of, but quite fun.

 

[Shadow71]

Im liking it so far, but I hate how it doesnt let you customize your control scheme, that could honestly ruin the game for me. The melee weapons are cool, but I hope in the final version they arent so "one dimensional".

 

[Sir_Brizz]

That's because it's a demo. The regular game will have all that.

 

[Shadow71]

That's because it's a demo. The regular game will have all that.

Well, the Halo demo originally didnt have the customize controller option either, but the part that worries me is this is just the joystick, and they DID have an option..but it was to switch the analog sticks, which im scared will be the only option for joysticks in the actual game.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I severely doubt it. When I played at GDC last year they were at least as customizable as UC1 controls if not Halo.

 

[Shadow71]

I severely doubt it. When I played at GDC last year they were at least as customizable as UC1 controls if not Halo.

Please understand I REALLY hope your right, because like I said...if I cant set my own custom joystick settings it will likely ruin the online mode completely for me. Usually I can deal with it in a single player game like Riddick, but it lowers my effiency way too much when I try to play a game like SoF2, or Killzone.

 

[Gnam]

OK, I'm getting a little more used to UC2 now...It's not so bad once you get in the swing of things. I went from losing to the 'experienced' bots (I know, it's embarassing) to placing first consistently on the against the adept bots. Considering I normally play UT2004 and UT99 on Masterfull that's not so bad. I think with the rest of the weapons, characters, and maps, it will be worth the purchase. It will still need some getting used to though.

 

[BulletProof]

Im liking it so far, but I hate how it doesnt let you customize your control scheme, that could honestly ruin the game for me. The melee weapons are cool, but I hope in the final version they arent so "one dimensional".

Most likely that's due in part to the fact the because of microsoft xbox regulations, demos are not allowed to write to the HD i.e. save anything.

 

[SnoochyBoochy]

The game is definately sick. The demo is riddled with n00bs (of course). 25 kills 0 deaths games are pretty common, at least for me...

The sniper rifle is like a railgun with a scope. Once you learn to manage it, it's a totally sick gun. Absolutely sickening.

Anubus is easily the best character in the demo. He's perfectly balanced if you ask me. Not too slow and he can take a beating.

 

[Shadow71]

The demo is riddled with n00bs (of course). 25 kills 0 deaths games are pretty common, at least for me...

Wow...I bet girls must totally want to have sex with you for being that good

 

[SnoochyBoochy]

Wow...I bet girls must totally want to have sex with you for being that good

yeah but i dont give them the time of day cause i'm so uber l33t.