Loadout

I think I like Loadout. It’s one of those delights you don’t expect from a game where you play as an action-movie stereotype from the 80’s. The point of the game is not only to turn Rambo into a messy puddle of blood, pus, skin and childhood memories, well, that’s a pretty important and hilarious part of the game, but another equally important part is your complete freedom to customize the performance of your personal arsenal to your very choosing. You can choose between different gun types ranging from bullet rifles to rocket launchers, beam rifles and so on. Then you can switch between different types of barrels, ammo clips, sights, stocks, triggers and bullets to alter the range, accuracy, damage, capacity, fire rate of your gun and including additional abilities. For instance, I built a plasma shotgun that releases bursts of fireballs per shot, incinerating anything within range. But your weapons don’t always have to cause harm; you can even design a gun to create a stream of healing energies or steroids to aid your teammates in battle. You can even test and experiment your custom weapons on fixed obstacle courses filled with robots. But the effect your weapon has on the obstacle course may not be the same when in a multiplayer match, where the things you have to kill are actually shooting back. For instance, I built a rocket launcher that shot three remote detonated land mines per shot, each mine designed to electrocute anyone in range before exploding and sending off dozens of miniature bombs in several frantic directions, it proved to be very useful on the course, but when I went to war with it I discovered that it lacked in real situations when you’re against real people who are smart enough to dodge and steer clear of any land mines. So that means that no matter how you build your weapon it can only be useful for very specific situations, because with any weapon part that adds a positive attribute it will also add a negative effect. Such as the bigger the ammo clip is the less damage the gun will do, or the faster your gun can fire will decrease its accuracy. Another thing I discovered was that I had limited parts to attach to my weapons, so I guess I can’t create twenty different guns with sniper rifle barrels. It is possible to restock your inventory by buying more weapon parts, but the only way to gain money is by playing Spin-The-Buzzsaw after every multiplayer match and there’s a big chance you’ll win anything other than money. Of course you can use real world money to buy the parts, but if I was that desperate to get rid of money I would just burn it. There are several matches you can play and I have to say, that the creators of this game did a good job of recreating the cliché gameplay types other multiplayer shooters use. In capture the flag you can do the usual “grab their flag and bring it to your base” if you’re boring or you gain more points by killing enemies with their own flag before capturing it for your team, and for death matches, everyone who gets killed drops a strange, glowing vial and the only way you can gain points for your team is by capturing the vials dropped by the bad guys and confirming the kills, you can even capture the vials dropped by your friends to deny the enemy team of their kills. Loadout is still very much in the Beta phase, there are few gameplay types to play with, some of the levels haven’t even been textured yet and it feels like they can add more to the weapon customizing mechanic, such as paint jobs and such, because you know, I want to feel pretty when I’m killing an army of Arnold Schwarzeneggers. Loadout’s still fun even if it is unfinished and I can only wonder what they’ll do with it once it officially releases.