Just on the brink of success, but not quite...at least not yet.
I played RTCW and ET, which are still among my favorite games, so I gave SplashDamage a chance on this one, but its just not that fun. I hated the art style from the beginning, but tried to overlook it, thinking it would have a fun element of silly kills, but that is missing. I skipped TF2 for this reason, because it looked silly/cartoony, but friends liked it.
The guns are a joke....they do little damage. The grenades and mines are pathetic and don't kill. I'm just not sure what SD was thinking with this. There are no bazookas to clear out the many choke points. The leveling system is over complex, considering this is aiming to help console players learn objective based games and the guns are not varied enough and kills are unsatisfying. No flamethrower either. The whole bodytype thing is just a stupid gimmick. They should have just made fixed classes....can you really imagine being a heavy medic? Medic Sniper? Heavy operative? NO.
IF you like COD, you will mostly not like this. I like most FPS games and not a fanboy, but COD is just more satisfying, but I wish they had some of the class elements of Brink/ET. The classes are not that different either. Everything feels forced to make you work as a team....compulsory buffing gets old and you can switch classes at any time, but you can't switch characters or body types.
It takes a clip to kill anyone, but often you seem to get killed with 2-3 shots. Headshots are not one shot kills. Sniping is not really a part of the game and there is no true sniper rifle.
DO NOT buy this for the SP. Its terrible AI. Its nothing more than a learning curve for MP or to play offline with friends, but the friendly bots are useless (literally had a medic finish a match with ZERO xp). Its not your typical campaign and I didn't care, I only bought it for the MP, but you have to complete some challenges to unlock items. Its ok for a warmup and to familarize yourself with the controls, but the story is irrelevant and you have to watch the annoying cutscenes over and over in MP, which makes no sense. Its not fun if you are not playing with friends...you will just get frustrated with the lack of teamwork and VOIP doesn't work in game (yet?).
At least in Black ops you can almost single handedly carry a team. Rambos need not apply.
I hope they fix the game, but honestly there might be too much to fix. And only 8 maps is piss poor. The Parkour system is mostly useless or the maps just don't offer enough use for it. Overhyped for sure. They screwed with this delicate formula that worked on RTCW/ET and it just doesn't work in the current state, but it has potential. I am just not sure I am willing to invest my time in this game, when I can play so many other good games instead. I'd probably rather play ET, which is FREE.