Okay, so I'm pretty new at this... New as in I've never tested a game before in my life. But, so far, the prototype build thing for a new futuristic racer (with weapons), Protoxide, is fantastic. I'll try and explain all that I can, and hopefully it'll do it some justice. Okay, so first of all, I gotta say that this is a prototype of the game, and they'll most certainly add in alot of features; what we got so far is what they have done so far. It's fairly rough, without any tutorials, campaign or anything, but what's there is still amazingly fun to play. So when you start it up, you're asked to make a profile. There's four different slots you can make, like save games. There isn't much need for it at this point, since I don't see any records or anything, but it'll be helpful later if you don't want your game messed up by pesky other people. The menu isn't anything special, and kind of dark, but it serves it's purpose, and hopefully it'll get a little upgrade later. Once you make a profile and such, you can select Quick Race, Settings, or Change Profile. When you select Quick Race, you're presented with a list of the five different ships, and they have a range of the well-armored and slowest to least armored and fastest. After you pick a ship, then you move to the zone select, which there are four of, like promised. There's the Seaport, Factory, Waterworld, and WorldSynTown. Each are fairly different, and have four tracks in each zone. Once you select a track, you're thrown into a race. It was a bit confusing and most likely will take a little while to learn (so far) when you play the game, but it's deffinitely worth it. I managed to figure out most of the functions in the game, and they all work very well as far as I can tell. So, when you start your race, it'll count down and then you'll be pushed along with some auto-accelerate. There's two buttons on the left of the screen, a blue arrow pointing up and a red one pointing down. The blue arrow is for your nitro boost, and the red is for brake. As you go along, you will quickly find many upgrades. One thing I love about this is you actually see the weapons mounted on your ship; this is a neat touch, and also lets you see what weapons you have equipped. There's an automatic lock-on system, and once you have a weapon equipped, you just need to have an opponent a certain distance away from you, as well as pointed in their general direction. I personally like it a whole lot, it makes it a lot easier to focus on where you're going, and doesn't make you need to have a button to fire. There are around four or five different weapons as well as an upgrade, the Nuke, for your weapons that makes them a crapload stronger. There's also heath and speed upgrades. There's Sling, which is like... A really fast burst of speed, but immediate, firing you forward when you get it, rather than saving it. There's also Nitro and Extra Nitro, Nitro giving you some nitro, and Extra Nitro giving you a full bar of it. There's also an Extra Sheild, which, as you may be able to imagine, gives some extra sheild. There's also Power, which is like your main health, and you get upgrades similar to nitro, Power and Extra Power. (I can't beleive how repetitive that paragraph felt). So I would have to say that, even if they released the prototype right now, I would buy it and say that I got my money's worth, even though it's not done yet. And when it is done, it'll be fantastic, I'm sure. I've sent some suggestions, and hopefully I'll get to test it out more, to make sure it's good. So... My final thoughts. Hmmm. I'm a huge fan of Wipeout, so my thoughts could be biased a bit, so anyone who likes that kind of game, the futuristic-firing-weapons-while-flying-through a course should like this, when it does, in fact, come out. I have a ton of hope for this game, it's amazing as is, and it should have Multiplayer, a Career mode, and many other things to make it much better of a game. I would keep an eye on it, it could possibly be the Wipeout-type game I've been waiting for. There's also a blog-thing that they'll most likely put out information on there. http://www.protoxide.mobi/ should have yer news updates and such. I hope that wasn't too terrible :O
To be honest, I'm not sure o.o They offered for me to try it after I sent an email with suggestions for the game that was similar in length to my first post. Maybe they thought I'd be enthusiastic enough about it to help em out ._.
