Metalheart demo!

Odin

Odin

Carbon Dated and Proud
Admin
Briosafreak informed me that the Metalheart demo has arrived, here are some download links:The download is 163MB, I'm currently downloading and are going to upload it to our server.
Edit: uploaded to our server.
 
At last! Downloading now. This should wash the taint of the Restricted Access demo away. Oh goody its in Russian too.

Akella, please, I've been so loyal to you, don't break my heart again.
 
I Wouldn't hold my hopes up, just tried it. It has potential, but the dialoge was aweful and there are numerous other problems with it, I'll summarize later when I've tried it some more.
 
My intial reaction I just posted at rpgcodex (played the tutorial and a bit of the game)

NMA posted a quick link, I got it DLed and played through it a bit.

The first think you will notice is all the dialogue is text....and is rather poorly translated into English. While not horrible you get things along the lines of:

Crud! We shouldn't have crashed our shuttle!

and after killing an enemy:

You made the enemy dial 555-Dead

.........


The interface is simple enough, you can crouch and such like FO:T, and the inventory is pretty straight forward. I forgot to look to see if there is a weight limit, but I don't recall any.


........

Combat seems to be the bright spot. Pretty much FO-style TB, except you start combat by shooting at what you want to fight, but you can't see your % hit on that first shot which is annoying. The combat will also lag a bit for what seems like no reason, but I assume it;s a off screen NPC, a la FO.

You control both people in the party and you can target anything.

YOu actaully start out fighting what seems like a radscorpion.

...............

The music takes a bit of getting used too, but it's not bad.
Click to expand...
 
"You made the enemy dial 555-Dead."

My god. Unless that's satirical, that is just... wow. I can't imagine anyone sitting down and typing that out in all seriousness, it's idiocy to the level of the Scientologists.
 
Downloaded, installed, here are my thoughts about it:

+

1.) Metalheart is a very beautiful game. possibly, one of the most beautiful isometric view games I have played in a long time. You could build Fallout 3 on this graphical engine, I think no one would complain. High detail and the cool cyberpunk post-apocalyptic look.
2.) The combat system exactly copies Fallout. And in this case it's rather positive - we have the well known way of showing our AP's (the green dots, that change into red dots), we have the same targeting system as Fallout had. Sum it all up and the fights are rather nice.
3.) It looks like the story will be non-linear. Also the setting is kind of original - empire battling against clones, but this time the clones are the good guys. Or bad guys if you join the imperials.

-

1.) Absolutely no dialogue. Maybe it's just in the demo, but all the conversations are computer-controlled and don't include even the primitive "Yes!", "No" and "Fuck off!". I hope that the final version will feature if not Fallout type conversations, than at least something like those seen in icewind dale.
2.) The sound effects were absolutely disgusting. I started the demo win tutorial mode, and when I heard, that the character walking on sand gives out "step dancer Jene Kelly" type of sound, I felt an disturbing urge to switch off my speakers.
3.) The main character is too macho. I don't like this character at all. This is an RPG - maybe I want to play as the geek-type intellectual from the intergalactic Homosexual planet, but nobody gives me the chance to do it. That's kind of sad - no character creation in demo.

Overall - the game has future, but only if they fix some major problems until the release.
 
does the gold version have character creation? The homepage just talks about detailed character development.
 
I agree with Gamemaster on the good points, however, I have more bad points:
-Unless I am just stupid and cannot figure it out, the only weapons that work are the two guns, not the crowbar (as melee or throwable, despite saying quite clearly that is can be thrown) and not the grenade (why give one of your characters a grenade if it doesn't work?).

-the game crashed (at least for me anyhow) when I killed the "Observer" (or was it "watcher"?) that was patrolling the wall. Fair enough, it may not be an enemy, but the game shouldn't crash if I kill it!

-Enemy sometimes has two turns at start of combat.

-Bug during combat: Enemy had turn during my turn. One character had full AP, other had fired weapon once and had taken no action otherwise.

-Both the guns use the same ammo. A fairly minor point, especially seeing as it's a demo, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

-The ammo is used directly from pile in inventory, not loaded into a magazine in the weapon.

-The item transfer for multiple quantities does not appear to work well. When trying to transfer ammo from one character to the other, a "quantity" box appeared, but the quantity would not change. Also, it seems that you would have to change it by clicking an arrow for up, or another for down. That would be fine for small quantities, but not for larger ones. There needs to be a keypad, and/or the option to type in the correct quantity.

-Another item bug, this time with an item on the floor. Placed some ammo on the floor with one character, picked up with the other. Quantity found to have decreased to 1.

-Looting corpses: can only do it once (as in: can only "open" body once), only appear to be able to take one item, as box then closes down.

-Another minor point: When in combat, you can only walk to the exact limit (or less, obviously) of your AP. You can't just click "far away" and move as far as possible.

Sorry to appear negative (for any Akella devs reading this), but feedback should be useful for you guys.
I also cannot emphasise enough just how much the English needs fixing. Did anybody else read though any of the explanations for stats (when you click on them in your character screen)? They make, essentially, not one bit of sense.
 
Another bug:

1. When instructing one character to do something and click on another character, you'd get "errors" due to the selected character. ie I tried to open the grate using the female character (who had the crowbar) and clicked on the male, then got the error that he didn't have the crowbar.. DOH!
 
I really do hope that this demo is heavily limited both gameplay and location/NPC wise.
Firstly, the presentation.
Graphic aren't great. They lack smoothness and aren't even a match for BG2 or FOT. They would rather be comparable to Jagged Alliance 2 or Arcanum only more detailed. Animations are poor by today's standarts too. Anyway, this isn't what we're most concerned of, are we?
The music is ok. It fits the setting quite well and doesn't annoy. However it's may be too simplistic. Some low quality midi ambience isn't what we expect of game which is released in year 2004. Even from RPG, especially recalling the great soundtracks of Fallout, Arcanum, BG. Although I like that every location including indoor ones has some specific sound sequences. Got to love that mutant trio band performed background music in the ''bar''. :wink: Maybe there'll be lots of different music that will compensate the lack artificial value of it.
Sound effects? They are awfull. How is it even possible to make it this bad now days? Contra on SNES consoles had better gunfire sounds, not to mention completely retarded banging sound of footsteps GameMaster mentioned. The same on every surface.
What makes me most dissapointed is the holowness of the locations/NPCs and totall lack of dialog choices.
There are lots of useless buildings that you cannot enter and objects you cannot interact. It's rather annoying that you should cross a large area with buildings, entrances and other random objects all of which are just a generic decoration to make the location larger.
Considering the presence of quite clumsy pathfinding of characters it's even most irritating. Sometimes they stuck somewhere without obvious reasons. They can't enter a lot of areas which should be ''enterable'', such as bushes etc. One of the chars usually delay he's movement after the mouse click and has to catch up which is bad if you want to make quick corporate attack on an enemy.
NPCs has almost no dialog options. Only talkative NPC I came up was priest in the ''church'' building, but to the 5 of not too inspiring questions I was able to ask he answered only with some nonsensless praising of their god or leader. All the other NPCs had only some generic phrases or you could observe their conversation with your char without any participation from your side.
I though Akella guys ment something different when they promised a dialog threes. I want to climb those threes not to take a nap under them.
The quest we were offered to do suffers the lack of imagination: find the neckless, kill the rats; get some shitty shovel sharpened; kill the mutant, earn the respect of locals. Blah :zzz:
And yes, english translation is awfull. I'm expecting a russian version (it had the option at instalation, but it isn't in there) which I hope will be more decent in terms of ''language''. I can only feel sorry for those stuck with the half arsed english conversion. I think they should've find some russian speaking american/briton to translate the game instead of using an english speaking russian which I'm sure they did.
I think the combat could be quite entertaining, but we will be able to rate it only in full version with all the gunns and other stuff. The ability to determine how many action points you can spend on shot thus increasing the accuracy is very much like JA2. Ability to make precision shots and change stances almost makes it perfect although I'm not sure about efectiveness of cover. I though there weren't many places to take it.
According to available shop items seems there will be lots of ''stuff'' in the game which could be only good.
Despite all the critticism, this seems to be a game with potential as Odin said. I like the setting, the feeling. The plot may turn out to be quite exciting and the world they builded seems to be a result of a hard work, but as said at the beginning I sure hope that at least 50% of the mentioned flaws are consequence of demo restrictions.
 
This game needs a lot of polish.

There are dialogue trees with some NPCs though.

I crashed 5 to 6 times all ready.

Running and moving around is a pain in the ass. So many little things that make this game a pain in the ass. I hope they hold off on release until this game is smooth and makes a lot of money and more devs will make TB games.

The badley translated dialogue is pretty entertaining. I hope it doesn't get fixed. Talk to the scientist in the NE of the worker zone. What the fuck is that conversation about? I only know my party thinks he's a freak and he might want to save the world causing him to be a freak? Figuring out what the hell everyone is trying to say gives this game a certain charm only found in the incestuous hills of kentucky.
 
Ok...Can't get it to run. Installed the files. Installed WMV9 files. No Runnie. I do have XP SR2. Anyone else not get it running?

Thanks
 
Awwwwwwwwwwww crap. I was actually looking forward to this game...hopefully the demo will show me enough promise to hold my attention any longer. I'll post back my experience as well after I have played. 51% downloaded right now.

Edit: Grrr.......F***ing Internet Explorer error at 99% after I finished posting in another thread........back to 2%

Update: Alright, I installed the game, tinkered around for a few minutes, and got extremely bored. I think it was awful. I understand this being just a demo, but I cant see this as being a justifiable excuse for the crap that it is. I have many disagreements with the movement controls and screen scrolling. Translation is insulting, take a gander at the description for Perception in the character statistic interface. Combat is poorly initiated, being spotted and having to furiously follow the damned creature with the mouse to get the first shot. The maps are too large for the amount of useless scenary involved that you should be able to interact with. In my opinion, they need someone to seriously clean house before releasing the final version.
 
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