More like a dirge, and a beta.
Do you like loading screens? Cause there's a lot of time to look at those lovely concept art stills. With the eerily common flogging of how to buy vanity stuff plastered on them for even more. They like to creep up and ambush you with the loading screen too. There's probably some trigger for it like a team mate changing zones or a disconnect (and boy are there lots of those), but the mission end is the only one that bothers informing you of the imminent jerking away of controls (and even those leave you little time to do so much as collect your loot from a boss).
Topping off the loading screen pie, they quite often like to freeze up. Which necessitates closing the app and restarting. And eventually that caused my PS4 to abruptly shut off and require a safe mode reboot. So if my impressions are somewhat brief, that would be why I stopped early on.
The narrow sliver of what passed for plot there was (other NPCs do have a talk prompt, but it tells you "No no no, thats not for demo" was some dude spouting technobabble about why you have to go find some alien thing before the other aliens(?) do. Perhaps put it down to the demo presentation (though for a demo, you should be putting some impressive feet forward), but the town feels tiny, basically a single street (where captain exposition lives) and the launchpad courtyard. The "Forge" where you upgrade your Javelin is relegated to being a tiny terminal next to it even.
The meat of our experience in a shooter-looter(?) is of course the missions though, thats the stuff you'll be running on end grinding your way to some sort of godhood. And that is.... very not good. I'd struggle to call it to average. The jetpack gimmick is the cool highlight, but you get some incredibly limited use of that before the overheat meter kicks you out of the air. Trying to fly around in actual combat is just a perilous exercise as you try and monitor shields, cooldowns, and the jetpack meter all at once.
Cooldowns of course, are for your abilities. Again, it could be the demo, and again, its a bad demo if you lock all the actual cool things out of it. But abilities are pretty lackluster and dull. You have your shoulder rocket/grenade launcher which is ... a grenade, effectively. Big AoE boom. Melee is a cooldown based ability (to use at all, not just for a bonus effect a la Destiny), so thats already one potential avenue chucked away. The demo "Super" (cause hell, if they're going to use the exact Destiny setup why not call it that, and I forget what they called it) is a shield dome. Not exactly beating down the door of engaging ideas here.
As that probably covered, your main combat is down to third-person shooting. And I will rescind my common criticism of Warframe for having indistinct smaller enemy models. Because boy howdy does Anthem have the monopoly on that one. The enemy dudes heads were at moderate range, smaller then the aiming dot for the UI. And headshots rather do matter, the pistol I picked out immediately did 32 on a regular and 300 on a headshot. Tiny enemies, who often just warp in with barely any fanfare, and you can quickly find yourself wondering where you're even being shot from.
Oh yeah, the whole game (on PS4 anyways) feels like you're swimming. Cutscenes, movement in town and out, trying to aim. Maybe you could fix that last one with the sensitivity settings but its pretty omnipresent. Which is likely inconsistent framerates.
As the gear goes, as mentioned, the demo doesn't go into any effort to show off anything special. Assault Rifle, heavy pistol, shotgun, scout rifle, LMG, SMG. All your standard favorites. Guns come in the usual coloured variants, with Uncommons appearing to have various random stat boosts. Stat boosts that would be more intuitive if there was any apparent way to actually view your overall stats and not just what a singular piece of gear is giving you. You can customize up your colour scheme, in one of the games better points, with a variety of finishes/textures, and full colour customization (not locked behind Coins, shockingly enough). New shoulder pads and similar model switches weren't available in the demo other then the premium versions.
Putting the technical issues aside (which I wouldn't, hard crashing a console is a pretty big deal), its at best a terrible demo that presents nothing unique, and potentially a game that presents nothing unique. Its main signature gimmick is horrifically fleeting. And the moment to moment combat gameplay is a step down from Andromeda. The environments are pretty enough, but otherwise there's free-to-play MMOs that offer the same level of action gameplay (and I don't mean Warframe, I mean full on MMOs).
Do you like loading screens? Cause there's a lot of time to look at those lovely concept art stills. With the eerily common flogging of how to buy vanity stuff plastered on them for even more. They like to creep up and ambush you with the loading screen too. There's probably some trigger for it like a team mate changing zones or a disconnect (and boy are there lots of those), but the mission end is the only one that bothers informing you of the imminent jerking away of controls (and even those leave you little time to do so much as collect your loot from a boss).
Topping off the loading screen pie, they quite often like to freeze up. Which necessitates closing the app and restarting. And eventually that caused my PS4 to abruptly shut off and require a safe mode reboot. So if my impressions are somewhat brief, that would be why I stopped early on.
The narrow sliver of what passed for plot there was (other NPCs do have a talk prompt, but it tells you "No no no, thats not for demo" was some dude spouting technobabble about why you have to go find some alien thing before the other aliens(?) do. Perhaps put it down to the demo presentation (though for a demo, you should be putting some impressive feet forward), but the town feels tiny, basically a single street (where captain exposition lives) and the launchpad courtyard. The "Forge" where you upgrade your Javelin is relegated to being a tiny terminal next to it even.
The meat of our experience in a shooter-looter(?) is of course the missions though, thats the stuff you'll be running on end grinding your way to some sort of godhood. And that is.... very not good. I'd struggle to call it to average. The jetpack gimmick is the cool highlight, but you get some incredibly limited use of that before the overheat meter kicks you out of the air. Trying to fly around in actual combat is just a perilous exercise as you try and monitor shields, cooldowns, and the jetpack meter all at once.
Cooldowns of course, are for your abilities. Again, it could be the demo, and again, its a bad demo if you lock all the actual cool things out of it. But abilities are pretty lackluster and dull. You have your shoulder rocket/grenade launcher which is ... a grenade, effectively. Big AoE boom. Melee is a cooldown based ability (to use at all, not just for a bonus effect a la Destiny), so thats already one potential avenue chucked away. The demo "Super" (cause hell, if they're going to use the exact Destiny setup why not call it that, and I forget what they called it) is a shield dome. Not exactly beating down the door of engaging ideas here.
As that probably covered, your main combat is down to third-person shooting. And I will rescind my common criticism of Warframe for having indistinct smaller enemy models. Because boy howdy does Anthem have the monopoly on that one. The enemy dudes heads were at moderate range, smaller then the aiming dot for the UI. And headshots rather do matter, the pistol I picked out immediately did 32 on a regular and 300 on a headshot. Tiny enemies, who often just warp in with barely any fanfare, and you can quickly find yourself wondering where you're even being shot from.
Oh yeah, the whole game (on PS4 anyways) feels like you're swimming. Cutscenes, movement in town and out, trying to aim. Maybe you could fix that last one with the sensitivity settings but its pretty omnipresent. Which is likely inconsistent framerates.
As the gear goes, as mentioned, the demo doesn't go into any effort to show off anything special. Assault Rifle, heavy pistol, shotgun, scout rifle, LMG, SMG. All your standard favorites. Guns come in the usual coloured variants, with Uncommons appearing to have various random stat boosts. Stat boosts that would be more intuitive if there was any apparent way to actually view your overall stats and not just what a singular piece of gear is giving you. You can customize up your colour scheme, in one of the games better points, with a variety of finishes/textures, and full colour customization (not locked behind Coins, shockingly enough). New shoulder pads and similar model switches weren't available in the demo other then the premium versions.
Putting the technical issues aside (which I wouldn't, hard crashing a console is a pretty big deal), its at best a terrible demo that presents nothing unique, and potentially a game that presents nothing unique. Its main signature gimmick is horrifically fleeting. And the moment to moment combat gameplay is a step down from Andromeda. The environments are pretty enough, but otherwise there's free-to-play MMOs that offer the same level of action gameplay (and I don't mean Warframe, I mean full on MMOs).
