The first thing I noticed about Ace of Spades is that it's pretty close to Roblox.
Really close. I mean, when I played Roblox, people made worlds where you would do exactly the same. Exactly. Except there was more freedom in creating the world. As long as you had sufficient knowledge of Perl, you could literally make anything. I'll be honest here- why didn't Roblox become this famous?
But this is not about AoS versus Roblox, so that discussion will be another blog post. Anyway, Ace of Spades isn't bad. So I'll start there.
First- it's a FPS (first person shooter). As a general rule, I am not good at first person shooters. Actually, horrible. It's because you're in first person. You can't see omnidirectional. That by itself is okay. (If it wasn't, I wouldn't be playing Minecraft.) But coupled with long-distance weapons (bows don't count, Minecraft is about more than that), I can't take it. I'm okay with third-person shooters (namely, Pawn Tactics), but FPS is another thing.
Second- you can build. It sounds like Minecraft right around here (this is why people say that AoS is a mix of Minecraft and Team Fortress), where you can build to your heart's content. For the game itself, this is what differs it from other FPSs, in my opinion. Of course, used correctly, this is a tactical advantage.
I'm waiting for PrizeRebel to process my custom order of the released game. But while I was waiting earlier today, I played the 0.75 Beta, which is free. I believe that this post will be more about the 0.75 Beta, because I actually have played it.
Right off the bat, I realized that I would have to get the hang of this quickly. There was no tutorial, which, in my opinion, is essential to (almost) every game. So, thumbs down in that category. In the Beta, they just throw a list of controls at you.
I didn't want to mess up early in my AoS playing, so I chose a random server and decided to spectate instead of fight. (To be honest, I didn't see the 'Spectate' option coming. It's like Clan Wars in RuneScape that way. I like it.) It served well to let me learn about the controls.
In Spectate mode, you are in a perpetual Fly mode (think Minecraft) of sorts. The default controls are the same (good old WASD). The only noticeable difference was the lack of a main use for the Shift key. Still, I liked that. Also, I'm still wondering whether or not one spectating can be sighted by those actually on the teams. (I ran into the line of fire more than once.)
The servers seemed normal enough. Just like Minecraft. I noticed, though, that there is no Single Player Mode. So there was no way for me to learn the ropes by myself.
I joined a server and luckily embarrassed no one on my team.
But that was the beta. I'm looking forward to the actual released game.
~ReconnaisX
