Eliminate Community Day Impressions Ngmoco recently held a community day for Eliminate, inviting members of smaller scale gaming press sites and communities to participate in a play test of a build of the game, and in several other fun activities with some of the Ngmoco team. These will probably be gone over elsewhere in embarrassingly public detail during a future Ngmoshow. I was invited because I held the most points on Plus+ at the time of the event, not as a journalist. However, I wanted to do a write up of my experiences with the game, and I was given permission to write down my thoughts on the game. I must emphasize that these thoughts are completely my own, and there was no expectation of either a positive or a negative reaction when I got permission to write it up. I'm very grateful that Ngmoco gave me the opportunity to take part in this experience and play the game for myself, and also gave me a free hand to write my impressions of the game. It goes to show how much they truly do believe in the quality of the game they're making, that they were willing to sit down a bunch of gamers from different publications, some of who had never played an iPhone game before, and let them jump right in and play. I think this gamble paid off, because my overall opinion of the game is very positive, and I think everyone else who had the chance to play it feels the same. Gameplay Each match in Eliminate is a 3 minute long 4 player free-for-all. There are no teams, game modes, or co-op. This is strictly a classic 90's-style deathmatch shooter, and the goal is simple: get more kills than your opponents before the clock runs out. There are a standard host of weapons to help you accomplish this goal: The genre-staple machine gun, shot gun, and rocket launcher style weapons are here, but a couple of interesting new weapons make an appearance, including a grappling hook that enables you to rapidly transverse the arena. You purchase and upgrade weapons using credits. Credits are given to you in proportion to how well you do in a match, and also "dropped" by fallen opponents (they don't actually lose credits, those are just bonus ones). Credits exist entirely as virtual currency, and cannot be accumulated by any means other than playing the game. You can also customize your character with different armor classes to suit different play styles and aesthetic preferences, which also uses credits. The better you play, the more credits you get. Playing well also allows you to level up your character, though I'm not entirely clear on what effect this has other than for bragging rights. Your basic weapons and armor are also augmented by powerups which are dispersed across each level. You can collect several power ups including jet packs, damage modifiers, and an invulnerability / instant kill power-up. This last power-up provides the most interesting gameplay addition, as it makes your character temporarily invulnerable, and gives him an instant kill against any enemy you happen to touch while powered up. This completely changes the dynamic of the game, as you'll find yourself scrambling to get in close for an easy melee kill before the timer runs out. In my brief experience with the game, I found that it played very well, although still needed a bit of fine-tuning. Matches were fast-paced but not overwhelming, levels were well designed and unique, and the upgrade system was simple and deep at the same time. I was only able to test out the machine gun and the shotgun, but I found the shotgun to be overly weak. They're still tuning and balancing all of the weapons though, so this should hopefully be improved before launch. The power ups worked well, and the invulnerability/fast kill power up made for a very fun melee element. Controls The controls function basically the same as they did in Dropship, with a few slight modifications. It is a dual-stick shooter, where the sticks appear wherever you place your thumbs. In Eliminate, the sticks themselves become invisible after a few seconds of use. The sticks control very well, and although the default sensitivity was way too low, it was easy to fix. You can zoom in on an enemy by tapping the crosshair, which allows for more precise control. The amount of the zoom is determined by what equipment you're using, and how you've upgraded it. Weapon switching is handled by tapping an icon on the upper right of the screen. Swiping your finger across the screen quickly allows you to rapidly look in another direction. There is a jump button on the bottom of the screen, although I don't think I ever used it. A reload button is not included at this time, although they said they're considering adding one. Shooting is handled in one of several ways. A "fire" button is located on the bottom right corner of the screen, and tapping this button once fires your gun. Tapping it twice locks the fire button on until you tap the button again. The auto-aim function keeps you aiming at your opponent while you reach away from the right stick to fire, so there is minimal interruption. More interestingly than this mode, however, is the "auto-fire" option. This option fires your gun as soon as an enemy is detected between the crosshairs. With this option checked, the game plays significantly better because you never have to remove your thumbs from the virtual sticks - just aim your best, and the game takes care of pulling the trigger. This mode worked very well for the shotgun and the machine gun, but I could see it having significant problems with bigger weapons, so it is best to toggle this option based on what weapons you'll be using. My experience with the controls was mixed, but overall positive. Shooting and aiming are the two most important parts of any FPS, and I'm happy to say that Eliminate handles them flawlessly. All control modes feel natural, and the whole thing is very easy to pick up and play. The other controls were more inconsistent. Having a jump button in a deathmatch FPS seems somewhat superfluous, but that could be because the controls aren't implemented optimally - all I know is that I never found myself using the jump feature, and I don't think any of my opponents did either. The lack of a Reload button was unfortunate - even though the guns never run out of ammo, they do need to reload. Currently the only way to do that is to use up a clip, which is time consuming. I never used the swipe-to-change-direction feature either. If your look sensitivity is really low, this could potentially help to change direction quickly, but I found that simply increasing the sensitivity provided a better solution to the problem. Even with these caveats, the controls work very well overall, and should be natural to anyone who has played any dual-stick shooters before. Even though several people who were playtesting the game today had never played anything like this on the iPhone, everyone was able to get the hang of the game almost immediately - there is virtually no learning curve, which is exactly how a game like this should be. Graphics And Presentation Eliminate forgoes any sort of realistic feel, and instead goes for a vividly colored futuristic look that is perfectly suited for the low resolution screen on the iPhone. The art style is consistent throughout the game, well designed, and stylized enough to not look like just another generic shooter. The various armor graphics are unique looking and stylish, and were designed by some of the people who did graphics work on the original Halo game. Lighting and shadows, while not always dynamically generated, are beautifully rendered. Textures are simple and unobtrusive, without any obvious seams. The game seems to use a higher than usual level of anisotropic filtering, which means that it doesn't exhibit the "staggered" texture smoothing levels common to some 3D iPhone games. We tested the game on the 2nd-gen iPod Touch hardware, and it ran at a consistent 30fps. 3GS-style hardware will include mandatory enhanced graphics and shaders. At this time, there is no option to disable these shaders and get a higher framerate. Although the game is certainly playable at 30fps, a 60fps option would be very welcome. There was no pop-in at all in my experience with the game - enemies were visible at all times and at all distances. The menu system is clean and unobtrusive. The version I played still needed a little bit of polish here, but it felt like something that would be easy to tighten up before release, and I have no doubt that the interface will feel as close to perfect as you're going to find on an iPhone game. Buttons and lists behave exactly as they should on an iPhone app, and you won't find any of Gameloft or Taito's random and nonnative double-tapping.
Eliminate Community Day Impressions, Part 2 Online Multiplayer Much of what this game is about lies in the Matchmaking Engine, which has received considerably less attention than it deserves from the people covering this game. Briefly stated, the game automatically, quickly, and accurately matches you up with people who are approximately as likely to win as you are. This means that any match may include a combination of higher-level players with better weapons and armor who may only play with a mediocre skill, and lower-level players who play excellently, even with weaker weapons. In this way, it is impossible for players to simply buy their way into crushing their opponents - the opponents they'll find themselves up against are always going to be evenly matched. I was obviously not able to fully test this system since there were only 10 or so of us playing at any given time, but what I saw functioned reasonably well for a development build. I was consistently in a game about 5 seconds after pressing the "join" button, and the games were almost always at capacity. The game plays over Wifi and 3G, but not over Edge. We played using Wifi, and lag was almost nonexistent, only appearing in bursts that were probably due more to unfinished code than to inherent problems with network latency. Offline Botmatch Eliminate includes a feature-lite offline mode, unfortunately relegated as "Practice Mode". It is possible to play around here against a few AI enemies to get a feel for the levels, but no energy or points can be achieved here, and there is no emphasis or promotion for this gametype. To me, this seems to be a mistake. There are too many places where iPod Touches and first-gen iPhones without 3G cannot get decent internet, and this game is exceedingly limited in those conditions. I would have liked to see this game ship with a robust offline component, with its own set of achievements and unique enemies, similar to the way the so-called "story mode" in computer Deathmatch games like Unreal Tournament works. In my (admittedly limited) experience with the game, this seems like the only oversight that isn't potentially planned to be addressed before the game launches. Price and Release Date Little was discussed regarding price and release date. Exact details regarding the pricing structure have either not been decided yet, or at least not shared with us. Company founder Neil Young specifically told us that the game would be priced "competitively". Then after a slight pause: "REALLY competitively". Even less was mentioned regarding release date information. Neil Young somewhat unhappily acknowledged that the game had been in development "a long ****ing time", but in my opinion that long development time does seem to have payed off. The game is very well made and legitimately fun, and is only missing some balancing, polish, and stability improvements. Rest assured that the game is NOT finished and sitting on a disk somewhere while the company builds up marketing, as some feared. The game is still very much under active development by a team of very committed people who are putting long hours into development. The entire morning before our group showed up to play the game was spent doing last-minute fixes and tweaks to make sure we received the best build of the game possible, and all that hard work really seems to be paying off. One thing I took away from this experience is the absolute conviction that the team is putting a huge amount of work and effort in to the game. Plus+ Eliminate uses the Plus+ network to store save data and character attributes, to facilitate matchmaking between friends, and to track awards and leaderboards. Push multiplayer is supported, so you can invite your friends to join you online, and they can launch the game directly into the match at the press of a single button. All user-associated data is stored on the Plus+ server, so stats and skills associated with your character will hopefully be immune from the type of user tampering that afflicted Rolando 2. The version of Plus+ that was included in the build of Eliminate seemed outwardly identical to the latest builds in iBlast Moki and Skeeball. That means that Push challenges will probably have the same inherent flaws that they do in these other games. Namely, if you don't accept immediately, there is no other way to access the challenges later. Several very interesting and ambitious plans were discussed regarding the more distant future of Plus+, but nothing significantly new is scheduled to be included in Eliminate. Overall Impressions and Afterthoughts I walked away from this experience very impressed with what I saw, both from Ngmoco and from Eliminate. Everyone I met there was committed to the iPhone as a platform, both as developers and as gamers. Everyone I met legitimately cared about providing a great game, and about building it to fully exploit the strengths of the iPhone platform. The game itself was a lot of fun, even unfinished. It feels like one of the classic deathwatch shooters from the '90s, and is really successful at bringing that fast-paced action to the mobile space. If anyone has any questions about how the game actually plays, I'll be happy to do my best to answer them. Also, I think it is important to point out that many people from Ngmoco regularly monitor this forum, and actually do read your criticisms and questions - just because we don't always get a response, it doesn't mean that our words are falling on deaf ears. After playing the game for about an hour, I'm absolutely convinced that the game is going to be one of the flagship games for the iPhone, in terms of success and in terms of quality, and I'll be buying it the second it goes on sale.
Great insight. This is a insta purchase for me so I cant wait. I have pretty much held off on getting other 3ps mostly because of this game. I love the graphics and it looks and sounds very promising and full of action.I like that its straight to the point so I pretty much know what to expect. I do hope they have more offline modes (campaign?) for us iTouch users with limited access to wifi and ESPECIALLY a co-op deathmatch mode with 2v2, 4v4, etc...
So wait, they showed that you could call in a friend with Push for help. If there's no team play, how is that possible?
Did you even read the impressions? It says in the FIRST paragraph that it's only deathmatch/free-for-all.
It isn't for help, it is for competition There is currently no team play, but this was defitiely talked about as something worth considering for a future update. They said that if this game is a success, they will be adding many things to it. I don't think so; if there is, it wasn't included in the build I played
Maybe ngmoco should considering adding 'skills' or 'power-ups' in a future update. Skills could be unlocked as you level, and these could include 'Reflect', where you can reflect a shot from an opposition and instead of receiving damage, the person receives damage instead. Power ups could be found in the fighting arena (or whatever its called) and each one has a special effect. For example, there coud be one that makes you invinsible for 10 seconds, and this allows you to sneak up on an opponent.
Power ups are there! There is one that gives you a combination of invincibility and instant melee-kill that I'm particularly fond of.
Is that really something we want in an iphone game? Not to mention it would segment the competition between iphone users and ipod touch users.
Probably yes, since Apple can't control what would be said. They could get around it by selling voice chat as DLC, I think. Ahh, never got a chance to use the jet back - something to look forward to when the game is released
