I've received a few messages on PSN in regards to my standing comment message and decided to set down my thoughts on it rather than send individual messages (award for most uses of the word "message" goes to...). I wrote a lot and then threw most of it out to cut it down to just the issues that bothered me. I like the gameplay, the sound is amazing and the graphics are fine—no awards will be given out, but I don't sit and wonder how they thought this was a current-gen game. The scale of the game is huge. Going on about the things I like neither explains the message nor makes for a concise blog.



My message: 194Shit. To the point and unambiguous. Not three, shit. I feel that, in spite of enjoying many things about it, it fails in the aspect I hold most important in multiplayer gaming: being able to play with my friends.

I bought the game so I could play it in Friday Night Fights, but sadly, it seems to actively discourage trying to play with your friends. Private matches can't be started unless they are completely full. We didn't actually get to play for FNF because we were three people short. After bullshitting in the lobby for a while, we finally gave up and went to play a different game from a better developer. BlazBlue, for the record, lets you start a game whenever you damn well please. WOAH. Maybe if we ask really nice the Japanese will share this super-advanced “start the game button” technology with us! I'd swear this is narcissism, like everyone on every online service will be playing it so clearly there are always people to invite. How could your game ever not be full?!

Compounding the issue with starting a match is the fact that, even if you do, you will only ever be able to talk with three of your teammates a a time. Good luck telling someone to join you in a landing boat or coordinate at fucking all with other squads. If you and three friends just want to play, that would be great except for the part where you can't select which squad you'll join, so even if you get into the same game and onto the same team, it's still completely up in the air if you'll really be able to play with someone from your friends list or just in the same game as them. Since most of the vehicles don't seat four, you generally get split up as the game goes on, negating the point of even trying to team up in the first place. Four man squad, three man jeep; peachy keen, DICE.

Hypothetically, even if I do what I have not done at all yet and get onto the same game, team and squad as three of them, and manage to stick with them for the match so we can actually act as a team, it gets reset at the end of the match. I've had enemies shuffled onto my team fairly regularly.



Seriously, do you know how to do these things? Can you, in a reasonably reliable way, join games and teams and specific squads with people you actually know and play with them? Tell me! I would love to have this information so that I can derive the same kind of enjoyment from this game as I do from others like Killzone 2, COD4, and Warhawk that don't give me such a fucking runaround. DICE, just open up the damn chat so we don't have to deal with this bullshit and can really work as a team.

[Edit:Rather than hide this sentiment in the comments, I'll tack it on the end. I really do enjoy playing this game. It's uncomplicated fun. I guess the planes are kind of tricky, but beyond that all you have to do is hop on and shoot guys. I know what I'm in for every time I start the game, and it's fun. I'm a fan of evaluating games as unique entities, but other games have such similar styles or squad systems and DICE just didn't get that aspect of it right. In fact, they got it very, very wrong and it makes for a hefty blight on an otherwise great experience.]