SALvation
04-09-2004, 03:55 AM
After about 90 minutes of multiplayer gaming with PK, I figured I'd offer up my opinions about how the MP stacks up.
There are a fantastic amount of options available for multiplayer. You can control everything from your normal key bindings, to what is the primary/secondary of your weapon, the importance order, bind phrases to keys...a ton of stuff. I can see quite a few discussions over what configs are the best. I'll post some screens of the configs.
The speed of multiplayer is very fast. Feels just like Q3 or Serious Sam when you have a knife. As you bunnyhop (a method of timing and repeating your jumps over and over) you get going faster and faster, and you can get across entire levels in just a handful of seconds. Bunnyhopping is easy to do but hard to master. It does feel good though to be bunnyhopping across the map, whip around and slam a rocket into your prey's face.
The maps are quite small and there isn't a huge variety out of the box. People were wondering why CTF isn't in the game and its obvious that there isn't a map that would come close to being big enough to handle it. Most of the maps seem good for 3v3 or maybe 4v4 on some of the biggest ones. It would have been nice to have larger maps but hopefully the community can deliver.
The netcode. This is probably what everyone wants to know about. In the beta we received 3 builds, the netcode was decent, but far from perfect and fluctuated with each one. Some players had it great and for some it was unplayable. In the retail release, it seems like that is still the case. I played with pings from 30-90, and for the lowest pings the game would be smooth, but if it got over 50 it started to get choppy. This is somewhat disappointing since there was a span of 2 months from the time we received our last beta build to the time it went gold. That's not to say the game is unplayable, but most of the times the game would run smooth, and then have a split second hiccup, and then run smooth again. It's not enough to ruin the gameplay experience but it can get noticeable with higher pings. These hiccups are accentuated because the maps are small, the weapons are required to be precise, and the speed is very fast, so when you go to fire that rocket or stake, the smallest hiccup at the wrong time could throw you off.
The weapons are fun, have up to three different modes each, but the game feels limited because there are only 5 different weapons. You spawn with the stake gun and painkiller, so that just leaves the rocket, shotgun, and the electro gun to grab in a map. You also have to grab ammo for the different modes for each gun which makes it more interesting, but to the new player you only see 3 possible weapons to grab on the map and it could become boring if you don't realize the depth behind each one.
The different game types are cool, but need some tweaking. Only FFA was available in the beta and it seems like if these additional modes were available for us to test, they would be much more polished out of the box. Team deathmatch is just what it says, FFA with 2 teams. However, its hard to tell what team you're on when you first join a map or when using the HUD. People Can Fly is a fun mode, but the maps are all similar (one big room with a super high ceiling). It was fun but became a spam fest and kind of boring after 30 minutes. Voosh is a ton of fun as each person on the map has the same weapon and the weapon switches as time passes. The problem, however, is that everyone gets unlimited ammo, so again it can be a spam fest. The good news is that these are all server features that can be changed, but since the game just came out, they are all official PK servers with little to no variationin their settings.
Overall the MP in Painkiller is fun, but the netcode out of the box may discourage some players. The different modes are fun and offer good replay value, but the developers are relying on the community to make it more fun. There are only 4 models and there should of been more maps out of the box. Also I wish the maps given were bigger.
The developers are already working on a patch that should be out soon and they promise to tweak some of the gameplay and the netcode. Don't get me started on games that have patches within a week...but at least they're working on it.
If I had to give the MP a score right now, I would say 8.0/10. I had huge expectations for it and came away a liitle disappointed, but its still a fun game and is good enough to jump into if you're currently playing Sam or Q3 and like that style. If they get the netcode perfect that score probably jumps .7 or .8 points, so lets see what happens with the patch.
There are a fantastic amount of options available for multiplayer. You can control everything from your normal key bindings, to what is the primary/secondary of your weapon, the importance order, bind phrases to keys...a ton of stuff. I can see quite a few discussions over what configs are the best. I'll post some screens of the configs.
The speed of multiplayer is very fast. Feels just like Q3 or Serious Sam when you have a knife. As you bunnyhop (a method of timing and repeating your jumps over and over) you get going faster and faster, and you can get across entire levels in just a handful of seconds. Bunnyhopping is easy to do but hard to master. It does feel good though to be bunnyhopping across the map, whip around and slam a rocket into your prey's face.
The maps are quite small and there isn't a huge variety out of the box. People were wondering why CTF isn't in the game and its obvious that there isn't a map that would come close to being big enough to handle it. Most of the maps seem good for 3v3 or maybe 4v4 on some of the biggest ones. It would have been nice to have larger maps but hopefully the community can deliver.
The netcode. This is probably what everyone wants to know about. In the beta we received 3 builds, the netcode was decent, but far from perfect and fluctuated with each one. Some players had it great and for some it was unplayable. In the retail release, it seems like that is still the case. I played with pings from 30-90, and for the lowest pings the game would be smooth, but if it got over 50 it started to get choppy. This is somewhat disappointing since there was a span of 2 months from the time we received our last beta build to the time it went gold. That's not to say the game is unplayable, but most of the times the game would run smooth, and then have a split second hiccup, and then run smooth again. It's not enough to ruin the gameplay experience but it can get noticeable with higher pings. These hiccups are accentuated because the maps are small, the weapons are required to be precise, and the speed is very fast, so when you go to fire that rocket or stake, the smallest hiccup at the wrong time could throw you off.
The weapons are fun, have up to three different modes each, but the game feels limited because there are only 5 different weapons. You spawn with the stake gun and painkiller, so that just leaves the rocket, shotgun, and the electro gun to grab in a map. You also have to grab ammo for the different modes for each gun which makes it more interesting, but to the new player you only see 3 possible weapons to grab on the map and it could become boring if you don't realize the depth behind each one.
The different game types are cool, but need some tweaking. Only FFA was available in the beta and it seems like if these additional modes were available for us to test, they would be much more polished out of the box. Team deathmatch is just what it says, FFA with 2 teams. However, its hard to tell what team you're on when you first join a map or when using the HUD. People Can Fly is a fun mode, but the maps are all similar (one big room with a super high ceiling). It was fun but became a spam fest and kind of boring after 30 minutes. Voosh is a ton of fun as each person on the map has the same weapon and the weapon switches as time passes. The problem, however, is that everyone gets unlimited ammo, so again it can be a spam fest. The good news is that these are all server features that can be changed, but since the game just came out, they are all official PK servers with little to no variationin their settings.
Overall the MP in Painkiller is fun, but the netcode out of the box may discourage some players. The different modes are fun and offer good replay value, but the developers are relying on the community to make it more fun. There are only 4 models and there should of been more maps out of the box. Also I wish the maps given were bigger.
The developers are already working on a patch that should be out soon and they promise to tweak some of the gameplay and the netcode. Don't get me started on games that have patches within a week...but at least they're working on it.
If I had to give the MP a score right now, I would say 8.0/10. I had huge expectations for it and came away a liitle disappointed, but its still a fun game and is good enough to jump into if you're currently playing Sam or Q3 and like that style. If they get the netcode perfect that score probably jumps .7 or .8 points, so lets see what happens with the patch.