Demo Discussion Topic: What's your impression, likes, and dislikes, etc?

Yeah that fury mode is OP, my only complaint. Oh and respawn times are too long imo

Played the game with a friend for about two or three hours straight.

The game is ridiculously fun and I really enjoy it. There's a nice circular system with how defense and offense work. Grabs beat out a lot of approaches and long delay from charging, charged moves deal with guarding, 360 moves deal with combos, and block canceling deals with 360 moves. Leveling up adds a lot to the game too.

The variety of things that happen on the map so far has been excellent. We've had poison gas, bomb raids, flamethrower attacks, exploding planes, a giant monster called Cthulhu, etc.. Keeps you on your toes.

Surprisingly the netcoding is quite strong actually. The game runs fairly well outside of during the bomb raids and there wasn't teleporting like I expected.

My problem is the Rampage mode though. I feel it is especially unneeded in the normal four player deathmatch. It's just too powerful and I don't think it really adds much to the game. At the very least you shouldn't be fully invincible. What would have been better would be a super attack unique to each character.

Speaking of which I enjoy the character uniqueness. So far I have just used Mathilda and Garuda, but I love how unique they both play. Garuda is slow to start but has great overall mobility. He can get your teammate around quickly and you can even shoot him when riding on top. He also has an excellent grab, of which can eat normal attacks and can be held for a lunge throw. It's really cool too since his grab can get two people at once.

The items are great too. Powerups and weapons add a lot to the game as do being able to pick up and throw things. It's really fun.

I am fully confident the game will be terrific now. It's just an absolute blast to play.

Also I really enjoy the cooperative aspect of team deathmatch. Honestly, just jumping in and fighting won't get you far. Working together closely at least with one other partner helps a lot especially since you can get ganged up on really easily in this game and when that happens, you're doomed.

Alright, someone tell me how to tech throws.

To tech throw just hit circle have to be quick though.

Thanks, guess my timing was just off.

Rampage mode kind of sucks, that's about it. Just gotta keep yours in pocket when someone pops theirs.

It's pretty much the X-factor of this game.

Jesus christ. I just got a chain of six kills with Rampage. This is literally stupid. But fun.

zero829 posted...

Played the game with a friend for about two or three hours straight.

The game is ridiculously fun and I really enjoy it. There's a nice circular system with how defense and offense work. Grabs beat out a lot of approaches and long delay from charging, charged moves deal with guarding, 360 moves deal with combos, and block canceling deals with 360 moves. Leveling up adds a lot to the game too.

The variety of things that happen on the map so far has been excellent. We've had poison gas, bomb raids, flamethrower attacks, exploding planes, a giant monster called Cthulhu, etc.. Keeps you on your toes.

Surprisingly the netcoding is quite strong actually. The game runs fairly well outside of during the bomb raids and there wasn't teleporting like I expected.

My problem is the Rampage mode though. I feel it is especially unneeded in the normal four player deathmatch. It's just too powerful and I don't think it really adds much to the game. At the very least you shouldn't be fully invincible. What would have been better would be a super attack unique to each character.

Speaking of which I enjoy the character uniqueness. So far I have just used Mathilda and Garuda, but I love how unique they both play. Garuda is slow to start but has great overall mobility. He can get your teammate around quickly and you can even shoot him when riding on top. He also has an excellent grab, of which can eat normal attacks and can be held for a lunge throw. It's really cool too since his grab can get two people at once.

The items are great too. Powerups and weapons add a lot to the game as do being able to pick up and throw things. It's really fun.

I am fully confident the game will be terrific now. It's just an absolute blast to play.

Also I really enjoy the cooperative aspect of team deathmatch. Honestly, just jumping in and fighting won't get you far. Working together closely at least with one other partner helps a lot especially since you can get ganged up on really easily in this game and when that happens, you're doomed.

SUPER SEXY FISTS OF FIRE BABY!!!

This is an entertaining, gorgeous game with immense potential, but it's bogged down by severe flaws that hamper enjoyment.

Things that shouldn't be there:

- Throws. It's confusing as hell to see two characters performing an elaborate animation in the middle of a brawl during which both are invulnerable to outside interference. It's also annoying to watch those same long animations over and over. The game would be fine without them.

- Hazards. Nothing in this game is more pathetic than getting killed by a microwave shower two seconds after you respawn. They're as annoying as hell and severely marginalize skill moreso than any stage with enviro hazards in Smash Brothers. I really hope you can disable them. If there's one thing no multiplayer game needs, it's random elements outside of the players' control.

- Items. In one match I got 4 free kills with the satellite laser and 2 with the sniper rifle. They're overpowered, plain and simple.

- Rampage mode: Severely overpowered, lasts about three times too long, and the button-mashy minigame that activates when two Rampaging characters clash is an extremely artificial way of balancing it. It's just a free kill against a non-powered character. Hopefully it can be disabled.

Other problems:

- As has been mentioned, it's far too easy to get ankle biter kills. Too often I didn't get the credit I deserved for chipping off 90% of a player's lifebar, because some other team member took the last 10%.

- Rankings being shifted around postgame due to bonuses like longest combos and most damage. What is this, Mario Party? Total kills and deaths should be the only thing that decides the victor.

- Nine seconds to respawn is simply too long. I remember an earlier gameplay video where you could move around your spawn points while waiting--too bad they scrapped that.

- STOP LOCKING ONTO A CHARACTER 50 FEET AWAY INSTEAD OF THE ONE RIGHT NEXT TO ME THAT'S TRYING TO KILL ME!

- The camera isn't bad but it gets very easily blocked by scenery and debris, especially after getting knocked around.

- Platinum says that members of their staff had difficulty fighting the bots, but I think they're way too easy. Hopefully there are difficulty settings with tangible effects.

- The soundtrack is great and fits the game perfectly, but the lyrics really aren't something I want to hear over and over again.

- A lot of the characters feel like their differences are mostly cosmetic. Max and Sasha play very similarly, for instance. None of them have terribly deep movesets, and it feels like a lot of combos would work with almost every character.

- Garuda is too damn slow. He's useless in the large map.

- The large map in the demo makes camping very easy. Charge up a Killer Weapon move next to an elevator or warp point, and wait for some unlucky goon to show up.

I hate to say this, but there might be no possible way to make this kind of game balanced and competitively viable. Platinum made a valiant effort, but they just weren't able to make something that would completely hold together. It's the Call of Duty of beatemups. AR is a good game and I'd recommend it, but it's never going to be held up as an enduring classic. Hopefully Platinum's learned their lesson, and they'll stick to single-player from now on.

Played it for a bit, got my fun out of it. Awesome game.

Need to play it some more!