By Adam Smith on May 22nd, 2012 at 7:00 pm.
The free to play FPS formerly known as Hedone is now the free to play FPS known as Bullet Run, or at least that seems to be the case. Either that or Acony have made two identical games with separate names and convinced Sony to put their logo at the beginning of one of them. It’s a shooty shooty gameshow which means I’m contractually obliged to mention SMASH TV and you can sign up for the beta now if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy. This trailer may help make up your mind one way or the other.
If I don’t sound very enthused, at least be pleased that I’m not pretending to be keerrrraazily excited when clearly rather bored like the voiceover man in the trailer. There are some things that cannot be convincingly faked and commentating on a violent future sport in which nobody actually dies is apparently one of those things. Add it to the list.
22/05/2012 at 19:17 Outright Villainy says:
Smash TV was rather wonderful, wasn’t it.
22/05/2012 at 19:34 tlarn says:
“I’d buy that for a dollar!”
I want to play Smash TV now.
22/05/2012 at 19:35 Didero says:
Did I miss something, or did the trailer show nothing that would set the game apart from other games in the genre?
22/05/2012 at 19:43 tlarn says:
Probably because it isn’t different, I’m guessing. It’s fine though, you’re not the only one thinking “Hah, this looks awfully familiar.”
22/05/2012 at 19:47 Jake Frisco says:
It’s like they’re not even trying anymore.
We’ve got some guns!
We’ve got some customization options!
We’ve got a (somewhat) wacky announcer?
This only “strategy” reminds me of two hobos rolling in the gutter over a cigarette butt…vaguely entertaining and yet so very sad.
I’m going to bed.
22/05/2012 at 19:56 mooken says:
I tried to play Hedone several times during the beta.
There were never any games available the times that I tried. It was rather frustrating, I couldn’t get past the lobby.
Something simple like a training room for solo play would have been wonderful.
Alas.
22/05/2012 at 20:11 Devec says:
I managed to get into the beta and play something of it on the pc when it was still called Hedone. I’m not sure how much it has changed but when I played it was kind of meh. Unlockable skills and items ala COD, weak poorly executed gunplay, no inspiring gameplay options other than the standard fps grab bag. Really the only reason I checked it out was because of the mildly interesting sci-fi-ish story, but once you get the background of that it really doesn’t seem to matter. I played it for about an afternoon but it just had nothing to keep me intrigued.
23/05/2012 at 00:10 Lagwolf says:
Meh works nicely.
22/05/2012 at 20:12 lowprices says:
I was going to make a comment on the trailer, but then I looked at the picture at the top of the and noticed that while the men are sensibly dressed (mohican aside), the woman is wearing a bikini top. Now I’m just depressed.
22/05/2012 at 20:19 TotalBiscuit says:
So here’s what’s actually different about Bulletrun. It has this gameshow thing going on with it and an emphasis on “stylish kills” which allow you to build up a fan rating which gets you extra experience. The cosmetic items you get have an effect by giving you style which helps you progress. You can also do things like in-game taunts after kills to get extra points.
The problem I had with the beta which I played a few months back is that they hadn’t gone far enough down that road yet. It needs to go completely all-out with it, Bulletstorm style, emphasize the way in which you get your kills and give you plenty of ways to do it. Aside from that it was a fairly fast paced and enjoyable shooter with some decent weapons and levels. The whole “oh it’s like CoD” thing is rather irksome because it’s not hard to be like the most generic shooter on the market if you have guns, progression and your character doesn’t run at 200mph.
22/05/2012 at 21:47 gaertner says:
Well if they would make it more crazy and stuff like bulletstorm it would totaly destroy competitive possibilities, what is why I play the game since a long time… it always had really challenging combat and an awesome but small community, but since they started to dumb down the combat down and too add skills it got more random. They should rather add more stuff around the combat…
23/05/2012 at 00:16 Hatsworth says:
Those references to experience and progress — unless they’re just pointlessly giving you a level number or something — already kills any competitive potential.
23/05/2012 at 09:13 gaertner says:
Yeah you are able to upgreade your skills / buy new weapons & mods with higher weapons, but most skills will be banned for competitive games anyway (aswell as alot of guns if they haven’t changed something by now) and high level guns aren’t better aswell as most mods allways have a bad side… but most players that would take part are at max or a high enough level anyway…
22/05/2012 at 20:38 Jake Albano says:
“Patented technology that lets players be reborn”
Pretty sure Liandri corp. is going to claim prior art.
22/05/2012 at 21:26 niqq says:
http://url7.me/c6i4
22/05/2012 at 21:56 ShowMeTheMonkey says:
Do people actually play stuff like this?
22/05/2012 at 22:22 rockman29 says:
I guess SOE cancelled The Agency for this.
I don’t understand either game. Good luck to them, but I’ll just wait for PlanetSide 2.
22/05/2012 at 22:24 LionsPhil says:
Hunh. I was wondering what happened to that the other day, and just assumed it had been released lacklustre and sunk like so many before it. (Moderately neat trailer, except for all the bits that showed gameplay…)
23/05/2012 at 07:00 Kollega says:
The game was canceled, yeah. On March 31, 2011.
Here’s a Wikipedia page for it.
22/05/2012 at 23:19 ScottHarrigan says:
I like fun shooters like this. With all the boring military shooters on the market, it is good to see games that can still have a sense of humor. It does not look like a fantastic game, but it looks like a bit of fun, and it is free to play. I also like how it dispenses with the story unlike games that pretend that they do have a narrative. This could be a fun game to tide me over until the next serious shooter I am looking forward to. Hopefully they can do something interesting with the narrative this time.
http://www.videodetective.com/games/tom-clancys-ghost-recon-future-soldier/543921#.T7wQluuWclc
23/05/2012 at 00:12 Hatsworth says:
Free to play. That phrase haunts me in my dreams.
23/05/2012 at 03:15 cassus says:
It doesn’t look half bad? Not really my type of game, but compared to a lot of the shitty free to play shooters out there… This looks pretty good. Battlefield Play 4 Free, as an example, is absolutely horrible. The only free to play titles that are playable are Tribes and SMNC, and SMNC is only playable if you turn off all chat, cause the crying, whining and abuse in there is a game breaker.
23/05/2012 at 03:23 adaning says:
I would not choose Apple, I would choose the more cost-effective, such as this: http://xtw.me/XaChFKX
23/05/2012 at 08:09 Grargh says:
Huh. That seems to be a reply stolen from somewhere other than this comment thread. Those bots are evolving fast! Soon they’re just going to use Cleverbot replies relevant to our actual conversation, and then who knows…
23/05/2012 at 07:42 Cytrom says:
So, this is basically Unreal Tournament without the skill or the fun. Ok…