The missions in the game are fairly standard and are broken down into the usual goals such as escort a target, destroy a target, obtain said information or object, and defend. The weapons in the game are very basic as they consist of shotgun pistol and various machine guns. As you go through your missions you gain experience points for completing objectives, helping teammates, and dispatching enemy players. My early efforts with the games weaponry was frustrating as I found the play balance to be way off. I would riddle an opposing player with bullets only to see them continue to come at me. Thankfully around Level V and after some patching enemy players are now going down in a manner to which I’ve become accustomed to after many years of supplying 3-D shooters.
Initially there were numerous server issues when I attempted to play the game. I was unable to get into campaign games and free play games often had high lag, random crashes, and other bugs. Thankfully two weeks after release the game has been connecting and running smoothly whenever I played.
The look of the game is solid, the graphics are good, but I cannot get too excited about them as much of the game strikes me as been-there-seen-that and fails to draw me into the story and action. As I played the game I was surprised at how retro much of the gameplay felt and looked. Because with all the hype surrounding the game I had at least expected some dynamic graphics and features to accompany the action.
The gameplay, while fun, became stale very quickly as the missions were very bland and lacked any real sense of immersion or urgency. While I was trying to complete the objectives it did not matter as much to me whether we were successful because so much of the gameplay and outcome of the mission was in the hands of other players which often required me to adopt a take-charge mentality in order to successfully complete a level.
This is not to say there were not some epic firefights and the ability to change class in mission was a huge advantage as there were times when being a soldier or infiltrator suited the situation better.
