Question
Has anyone here gotten the privilege to try out the GW2 demo from the expo that was hosted a while back? I'm specifically interested in what the actual gameplay was like. How does it compare to the gameplay from GW1?
Answer
I played at GamesCom 2010 and it was brilliant.
Visually it's as good as the first game after the dx9 update. Although with the new illustrative style, most of the UI and menus and other interface elements are more painted.
The world map is now HUGE. With a moderate zoom out you experience what is akin to the regular mini-map (u) ingame. But it also plots your course, so you can see where you have been. Although teleporting now costs a small amount of gold.
The skillbar, now being a 10 slot bar is fantastic, even with the static set of skills in place. The only down side to this is the loss of auto attack, but you can CTRL+Click a skill and it will auto cast, which is meh, well I don't like it personally, but there you go.
Many of the old classic skills are back and or have been reimagined for the new game.
As for the characters, environment and other world elements, they are all fabulous as you'd expect and live up to the hype totally.
The demo that I played was brilliant fun and felt like a really polished and finished game, so I can only imagine that they are just building the rest of the content before they go gold with it, which I'm praying will be in 2011/12 sometime.
Gameplay specifically, feels very similar to GW1, although the loss of the auto attack as I said feels odd. The ability to jump now is great, giving characters more manouverability. The actual combat feels very similar again, with any experienced GW1 played able to just jump in right away. One minor change that I found is the ability to combo quicker. There seems to be more of a focus on quicker more action orientated gameplay in the demo I played.
Although many reviews have said that you are able switch weapons only outside of combat, I found it possible, as a ranger, to shoot some arrows, use a bow attack, swap to dagger, dash in for a dagger attack, use a dagger escape to roll away, and swap back to bow for a finishing attack. Perhaps it was a bug/unfinished thing, but it made for some great combos and really fun encounters.
Battling mobs in the world is great, as you do see other people about, and I ran across a game dev who was dead, ressed him and then we went on a little revenge rampage! Was great fun.
The other new, and much publicised gameplay mechanic is the dynamic event, which works brilliantly. You get a notification pop up and bingo, your right there, so why not? You find loads of other players there are doing the same thing, healing each other, ressing and calling targets and all that jazz. It instantly feels like you are in a group of 10 players doing something cool, which effects the game world.
So there you are, I know it's not an official line, but I've played GW1 for 68 months so far, and couldn't let this question slide ;)
My Pics, http://picasaweb.google.com/neon1024/GamesCom201002#
Check more discussion of this question.
No comments:
Post a Comment