The first thing I did upon rolling out of bed was power on the PS3 to start the downloads for the Starhawk beta and the demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I know how downloading, installing, and updating can be for the PSN so I thought that getting a jump start on the process would ease its passing. While not terrible, here is what I experienced before jumping into Starhawk multiplayer goodness:
1.) 30 minutes to download and install. "Great! I'm ready, let's do this!"
2.) 8 minutes to update. "Really? Well, I guess I should've seen that coming...."
3.) Installed the update. "Okay, NOW I'm ready! Woo!"
4.) Terms of beta agreement. "Yes, yes! Let's get to the shooting!"
5.) Restart game. "Huh? Why do I have to restart?! I said that I agree!"
6.) Second terms of beta agreement. "What, was the first time a warm-up?"
7.) Intro screen. "Finally...."
The intro screen to Starhawk starts off with some old west reminiscent music that eventually melds into a "final frontier" style rhythm. After a few chords of the aforementioned track the camera opens on a blue sky and pans down onto a desert canyon with an interesting-looking man tossing a crystal up into the air and catching it. If you have seen any of the advertisements for this game, that is the man I mention here. If you haven't seen any ads for this game, check out the game's homepage here!
After pressing start the man puts the crystal in his pocket and pulls out an iPad... or maybe a Samsung Galaxy Tab... ohhhh, the game calls it the "Uplink." Snazzy, apparently tablet PCs are the future. Anyways, this "Uplink" serves as your in-game menu. The menu is neatly organized and intuitive enough. However opening up the options menu presents you with adjustments for controlling everything except for your room temperature. This is a great thing because, as you may not know, Starhawk boasts a bevy of ways to kill your enemy and it allows you to tell it how they should all control.
My fist inclination as a gamer, however, is not to get lost in the options menu but to get into a match. There are two choices for this beta: capture the flag and team death match. Again, going with my most basic instinct as a gamer I chose TDM. My thoughts were such, "I wanna kill some fools, who cares about their flag? I'll capture it when their dead!" Then I joined a game....
And won. "Woo hoo! Now THAT'S motivating! Move this to the "must buy" category!" After the next match started I was brought back to the Uplink device which asked me where within a green swatch of land on the map I wanted to deploy. I picked a spot and the screen was filled with the back-end of a pod plummeting towards the surface of the playing field. "Now THIS is awesome!" I thought to myself and my pod and avatar where hurtled into a strange new land, quite literally. Upon landing I was given the option to wait or deploy immediately by pressing the square button. "DEPLOY! Lerooooyyyy...." As soon as I left my pod a giant mech/transformer thing landed on my head and killed me. "That sucked. Move this back into the "maybe buy" category."
When I finally landed off of what was apparently my enemies new personal runway, I noticed that the controls felt pretty good. It was pretty standard fair for your third-person shooters. There are some interesting elements that make this game stand out a bit. For example: holding the triangle button pulls up a radial menu with a bunch of silhouettes. As you gather resources (by killing enemies or, apparently, chilling back at your base) these fill-in to reveal buildings such as a vehicle bay, a couple turrets, walls, and a launch pad for a Hawk. A Hawk is the mech/trasformer thing that landed on my head. So after gathering enough resources you can select one of these buildings and the game then allows you to place it on the map. As soon as you pick a space you can "deploy" it as well, but watch out! These constructs will be deployed in the same manner as you and you don't want to be under them when they come. Trust me.
The first thing I built was the launch pad. After it fell from the sky and constructed itself in front of my eyes, I climbed the ladder up to the platform. There it was: the Hawk. Essentially when you first climb into this puppy it looks and functions like a walking mech. However, while in it, if you jump and press the circle button it transforms into a fighter jet and off you go into the skies! It's a great (if not borrowed) concept and the controls for both land and air are tight. For those of you who are less able to control your airborne craft: I didn't take any collision damage. So, really, all you have to watch out for are other pilots and turrets on the ground. I found that when I was being outmatched in the air, I would quickly find a spot on the ground and transform back to the mech. It won't stop any missile lock-on, but it will disorient pilots who aren't thinking about it. After the danger has passed, there are aerial "refuel" sections placed on the maps that you can fly through to replace your health and ammunition. According to some reports, these are going to be fully customizable in the full game when it launches on May 8, 2012.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my short time in Starhawk. I plan on spending a few more hours in the beta in the next week or two. If I experience anything else worth sharing, I'll make sure to throw it up on the blog. Meanwhile, if you get a chance to try Starhawk, make sure that you leave your impressions in the comments section below!
(Photo from Just Push Start.)
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