I finally managed to play this game last night - unfortunately due to the testing times which is 22:00 - 0600 GMT, the only opportunity one can really sink his hooks in is in the middle of the night.
The login system is really peculiar - you have to start the game by going into Internet Explorer and heading to the Huxley game page and clicking on the 'Play Game' button there. Google Chrome and Firefox doesn't seem to load this page at all - it's just a blank screen. The 'Play Game' button is grayed out outside of testing times. I hit my first snag of the night here when the game opened and then totally froze the whole system for several minutes as the Windows Firewall prompt came up - they really don't like each other! I had to restart the system and manually add Huxley.exe to allowed programs on the Windows Firewall settings.
That is one small thing to note - much to the detriment of this kind of game, you can't alt-tab out or it will freeze the entire computer. That's not very good for an MMO, where players often alt-tab out during long trips, or to take a quick look at guides or such. Many MMO players regularly alt-tab out during menial times and this game really should improve its tabbing performance.
When the title screen finally came up, you pick from two available servers for the test - US and EU. Then you can create a character. There's two factions, humans and slightly-less-human. The interesting thing I noted was that the humans were white and the slightly-less-humans were black. I'm not implying anything here but I do find it interesting how the two factions are portrayed as absolute opposites of each other. The humans are squeeky clean, with tidy armor and modern weapons, while the other side are savage black people with dirty armor and brutalistic looking gear. Oh, and dreadlocks. The genders have their own benefits and disadvantages too, so unlike a lot of other MMOs, it isn't purely cosmetic and you might even find an even number of both due to their differing play styles. I went for the humans.
There's three distinct 'classes' - but they're generally separated by their effective fighting range - one's for close quarters combat with shotguns and grenade launchers and such, the other is for medium-range combat with rocket launchers and machine guns, and the final third is a sniper class, which starts off with two rifles. I went for the sniper class.
You start the game in a linear and enclosed tutorial zone - you learn the basics to begin with, such as movement and firing, as well as using your abilities. For the sniper class, my first ability was 'acceleration', where you can speed up your movement dramatically for several seconds. It shows your cooldown for this ability on the bottom right of the screen and is initially assigned to Q, so it's easy to use, and easy to track when it's ready or not.
Once the basic training is done, you're taken to what seems to be a central hub, along with some quests marked on your minimap. The perspective also shifts from first to third person, presumably to give it that MMO-like feel. I saw a few other players running around here too, but I didn't know how to chat at this point so I just carried on. There's a few quests to begin with in this small hub, largely focused on teaching you how to use the interface, equipping items, starting skirmish matches (PvP matches and the equivalent of battlegrounds in WoW) and so on.
My first quest here was to kill ten monsters - so the game directed me to a gateway that loaded into a separate linear area with an NPC standing nearby. The interesting thing to note was that it said I was the host, which implies that these quests, which are instanced into their own little areas, are hosted by the party leader and not ran off the game's servers. This could potentially mean a little lag especially for players with poor connections.
The combat is very responsive, with lots of feedback - if you're one of those guys who get a buzz from seeing +exp off headshots in Call of Duty and relishing the kill, this will be right up your alley. Kills are followed by a satisfying +BP number, which means Battle Points which is akin to experience. You do level up in this game (it even comes with a satisfying DING! and a brief golden glow) but I haven't fully grasped how the system of character development works yet. It does appear to be highly in-depth though - there's a license board for example, which is similair to the talents system you get in World of Warcraft for example. You get one license point every time you level up, and you can spend those on improving your character. Some will give you the ability to use certain kinds of weapons and abilities, some will give you better shields, better movements, and so on.
The game clearly isn't open-world or sandboxed like World of Warcraft is. It's more akin to the classic Phantasy Star Online, or Guild Wars, where there are central hubs branching out into separately loaded instances just for your party. This is probably because it's still just the newbie starting zone, and maybe the game really does get open - I've seen footage of massive sprawling environments, but there isn't any of that from what I've seen yet.
I'm still trying to get around the menu systems - so far I've managed to equip a hat I received as a quest reward, and sold some junk that dropped off the monsters (such as their teeth which somehow has more value than my boots - this kind of thing is endemic in MMOs
). The method of navigation is unusual but fairly intuitive at the same time. As you use the mouse for aiming and looking around, you have to hold left-alt to use an arrow cursor to navigate around your inventory and menus and such. It's very quick and easy to use once you start remembering where everything is. Naturally, all the different sub-menus are hotkeyed - K for your character and inventory system, H to go into the skirmish menu, and so on. You can re-assign these via the control options menu, for those who want to replicate the World of Warcraft controls and hotkeys as closely as they can.
Unfortunately, it is around this time I hit another snag, and a game-stopping one at that. Once you've done the initial familiarization quests, you get another one to participate in the Skirmish matches - as I said earlier, they are the equivalent of the PvP battlegrounds in World of Warcraft. You press H to go to a skirmish menu, where you can pick from Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and so on. The lobby, server and menu systems are very well designed here (in fact, the presentation of Huxley in general is absolutely fantastic, and other games should take a leaf out of its book). I finally managed to get into a match, but just like before, it is hosted off players' connections and the few matches I've had has been horrible 2000ms+ latency nightmares. The quest is literally impossible to do as you need to participate in a match from start to finish to get it marked off as done. Most matches drop out half-way through, and killing anything isn't even possible. You fire your weapon and nothing happens until a few seconds later when the projectile finally materializes, but neither you or your target are anywhere near to be found.
With no possible way of going further as this quest was the last of the initial line, that was the end of the night's beta for me. I found it, up until that point, to be a fairly good game with lots of potential and promise should the developers invest their time and money into it over its lifetime. It should be noted that all the serious shortcomings so far are down to technical and server issues and not actual gameplay or design ones. It is a beta after all, and those willing to try the game should keep this in mind. The graphics and performance are top-notch, the presentation is slick, and the overall feeling of the game is that the developers have put an insane amount of effort into it. It does feel a hell of a lot like Unreal Tournament, but in a MMO setting it gels together fairly well, even in the initial claustrophobic opening stages of the game.
I will definitely be watching this game's development as it progresses - if they do it right, this could be a prime example of the MMO genre.
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