Loadout-PAX Prime Preview

By Nick on

About Nick

Founder and co-host of Cast of Thrones. Say hello on twitter. @rbristow

 

Free to play has come a long way in the past couple of years. Free to play used to mean low quality, money grubbing, and facebook. Loadout is the complete opposite, it is extremely polished, fair priced, and most importantly fun.

The main hook of the game is the “Loadout” you pick. It is a class based shooter, but the classes aren’t pre-defined. Your class is based on the weapon you make. You customize all the parts of your gun, building the playstyle you want. I made a rocket launcher, that had six barrels, a mini rocket magazine, full auto trigger, and a laser guided sight. This turned out to be extremely effective. I was able to laucnh missles into the air and guide them to the target with ease. And with my team mate shooting me with healing bullets, I was able to dominate the match.

The classes really come down to the type of ammunition you put on the gun. You can choose health, and then no matter which projectile you choose (rockets, bullets, plasma, etc) it will heal. So you can load up a remote control heal missle gun. Shoot it up in the air and guided it to a buddy across the map to heal him in a fire fight.

In the demo I played, all the parts for the guns were unlocked from the start, but in the final product you’ll have to put in the time to get them all. I was assured, that if you play long enough you can get all the parts without spending a dime. This is a F2P title however, so spending a little cash will speed things along.

This does not look like  a F2P game, it is very reminicsent in style to Team Fortess 2. Graphics are bright and colorful, and the blood fountains that sho0t out of a missing limb or head are just beautiful. The game apparently scales well only requiring a DX9 card and a Pentium 4 proccessor, but it still supports all the bells and wistles of DX11.

I honestly can’t beleive this game is free to play. I would pay good money for this, and I intend to. You can sign up for the closed beta right now, and they are looking to release sometime this year.

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