Do you remember the missions in Call of Duty where you controlled a gunship with missiles and 20mm gatling guns? Well, now we have Drone Sector coming with this exact premise, but made into a full experience – with way less scripting and more to play around with. I always thought these missions were fun in the setting of Call of Duty, having the firepower for ultimate destruction from a God’s eye view. So, is the translation to a complete game any fun and worth the effort? Let’s find out.
Gatling gun fun
In a visual sense, it has less realistic graphics, and feels more arcade-like, which I think might undermine some grittiness of sitting comfy in the sky and blasting people apart to your heart’s content. Other than that, it feels pretty much on par with the old Call of Duty segments, however expanded with more gameplay mechanics, and less scripted. You see, beyond vaporizing humans, you also control infantry platoons by sending them to complete objectives. Your job, just like in Call of Duty, is to protect these fighting men by blasting everything gunning for them. They are crucial for destroying objectives, lowering protective shields and capturing areas. So if they die, it’s game over. They can defend themselves, and seem to make short work of enemy grunts, but any kind of armor will be an issue of a very deadly nature.
That leads me to my main problem with the game/playtest. The enemy have infinite spawning armored vehicles, which quickly becomes a pain in the behind for you and your men. It’s also a tad odd from the good old immersion perspective, as it takes the experience into the arcade. Having 50+ vehicles appear one after another just feels odd, while there is no chance you will have enough missiles to counter all of them. I understand why it was done this way, seeing as the game would be a little too easy otherwise. Yet, I’m not convinced this is the way to go to add challenge. It could also be made like this for the playtest, or maybe I missed something, because I noticed that you have to trigger the alarm for the vehicles to swarm you. Perhaps you need to be more stealthy? Unfortunately, I have not figured out how to do that, though.
Other than that, I had some light fun with the playtest. It’s clear more mechanics will go into the game, as you can equip different weapons, and there is also a research tab – which will probably lead to better and more destructive equipment. However, it’s not usable in the playtest. I have to be honest, it was not super engaging, but I had some fun, and it’s a game definitely worth checking out when it’s finished!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 