I received my beta key for Shootmania. I didn't know what it was going to be like as I have only seen videos and read previews for the thing. I wasn't prepared for what occured when I booted up. I am inclined to say the game is total dog shit, but a game like this is reliant on mods and things of the sort to really flesh it out, but unlike trackmania which is a fun game before the mods and crazy server stuff, shootmania sucks out of the gate. I wasn't sure how many duders got into the shootmania beta but I was interested to see what your opinions were. From the start you only have the ability to shoot (left mouse button) and jump/sprint (right mouse button for both...yeah). There are no weapons but the starting one (which sucks) and the only game mode I've seen is a sort of territory control. Highly disappointed but I figured I should stop playing for about 2-4 weeks and then come back and see what the game is like then.

I think the game sucks to be honest. Its ugly and not very interesting. I appreciate the effort to make a real skill based shooter but I think quake 3 live and the UT are still way better games than shootmania. It just seems like an attempt to cash in on the market by making a very shoddy version of quake 3 team arena and then ruining it with microtransactions.

I got an email about the beta, but I'm waiting until the last possible moment to join the beta. According to the email you only get 7 days from the day you register and then they email you details of how to continue playing (which I assume is going to be to preorder the game). And this game is going to live or die by the community created stuff, so starting on day 1 of the beta is not going to be the best experience.

Not very good. The UI is beyond awful and the sprint/jump dynamic is clunky.

It looks uglier and feels worse than a game that came out in 1999. That is just bad.

I think it's going to take the same route that trackmania took. It will ship as a lack luster title with minimal features and the community will shape it into something awesome.

The core mechanics remind me of the speed and pin point accuracy of UT2K4, which is a good thing.

Is that the horrible thing that got shown "live" at E3 and made no goddamn sense to anyone watching?

I'm confused over the negative reception this game has got so far, jumped in for a few games earlier and the maps were good, controls didn't feel perfect I'll admit but this isn't made to be some big dolphin diving through windows whilst 720 noscoping headshot experience.

I can see this being a game that'll put people off if they are more used to CoD or BF style shooters, this is closer to Tribes. Lots of prediction, lots of speed, very little 'control'

Dog shit? That's a bit of a stretch. It's a competitive shooter, so if that's not your game, then so be it. I'm a UT guy and think the game has a ton of potential. The game mode you were playing, Royale, is really interesting and great fun with a group of friends. There are two other gametypes that can be installed from the Mania Store - Elite and Joust. Elite is the 3v3 mode that was shown off at E3. One person with an IG rifle attacks and 3 people with rockets defend a cap point.

I'm mostly waiting for iCTF at this point. The sprint mechanic is dumb but you get accustomed to it quickly.

As been said already, they pretty much made quake. However, I don't think that's a bad thing. It will take sometime for the community to come together on this but I have a feeling once that happens, it will have its own little nitch in the world. at the moment it's enjoyable but it really in small bursts.

They had a long showing of Shootmania during Ubisoft's conference at E3 2012. That's the only time I saw it. But from what I saw, I was not impressed. They are trying to go back to the old school competitive shooter like Quake. The thing is the game didn't look all that amazing or had any sort of innovation in terms of gameplay. It seems like it's doing what Quake did years ago with almost nothing new except some new game modes and a sprint mechanic.

I got a beta key. Ehhhhhh It's a shooter. It reminds me of bland FPS with the only weapon being the quake rocket launcher. Maybe I'll like it more when better maps come out. But right now it seems fairly average.

Yeah I have mostly the same feeling as most of you. I'll be waiting to see what the community does with it before I buy

I played it for like half an hour and have no idea what I played.

From the quicklook nothing about the game stood out. On top of that I hate how you can't see your weapon.

Yeah, it looks like it should be in alpha or even pre-alpha with a lot of new content that needs to be added. I'd be fine with one weapon and the controls and stuff. But there probably needs to be more important modifiers (like that instagib map from the quicklook).

I'll keep an eye on the game, but I don't have much hope for it.

I love it. My kind of shooter.

The controls aren't great and I don't really like the "stamina" bars work.

It's fairly bland looking, but that is something the community will change I'm sure, it does annoy me that you can't see your weapon though...

The cool part I guess is the extreme flexibility, like an UT where people can make their own maps and even complete gametypes instead of just being able to select a couple of mutators. But if it doesn't control well, this will all be for naught.

@MysteriousFawx: Closer to tribes? How do you figure that? Controls suck, combat sucks, maps suck...doesn't sound like any version of Tribes I've ever played. If there was even more than just 1 really really terrible weapon it would be a start.

@Sammo21: The fact that the default weapon is like a spinfusor and on the right maps you spend 90% of the time flying around at insane speeds

@MysteriousFawx: If that is your qualifier for "like tribes" then your ability to perform reductionism is brilliantly flawed.

@Sammo21: I think you need to relax over someone trying to qualify their beta experience on a forum, its an opinion, if you don't share it fair enough, but I'm not putting you down for simply calling the game 'rubbish'.

Speaking of reductionism, I think the game looks interesting due to the way it distills the online shooter down to a small subset of specific skills. So many games are adding as much as they can, but this one seems to have reduced it down as far as it could, leaving the rest up to the user base. I don't know whether this will lead to a game that is fun to play though.

I've really enjoyed what I've played so far. There's something about the feel that's not quite there yet (I feel like it's a mix of the rockets not reloading as fast as I'd like, the stamina system being kind of strange and the collision system being kind of odd in letting you get hung up on other players and environment), but the core mechanics seem well-formed and I really enjoy the reductionism of one weapon plus whatever you can get from special areas. Plus it's a Nadeo game, so of course the community has already started making the best dumb shit imaginable.

For something that looked insanely fast paced, I was disappointed when it was slow as balls and very mediocre.

Played a few rounds... thoroughly unimpressed and will remove from my hard drive soon.

I love the fact that it's got an inbuilt editor and I'm sure that the community will create some amazing stuff.

But as it stands right now, it feels incredibly simple and I find it impossible to play any of the game modes for more than 10 minutes because I get so bored. And it's not like it's even a mystery as to why. Three weapons total, of which the starting weapon is the only one you're really able to run around with, plus incredibly low health, with no way to recover it or boost it with powerups.

It really is a shame because I like how the game looks and I get excited when I see one of the countless maps I haven't played before, not to mention spending hours creating my own maps which will surely never get played. But when it comes down to it I'm just not having fun playing the actual game.

When I play Trackmania, it's typically for short periods of time. Mostly I'm there to goof around because I don't really have time to boot up a longer, more involved experience. I'll hop into the GB server, fail spectacularly at a few tracks, maybe do a few of the single-player maps and then move on with my day.

I usually get up early in the morning, grab a coffee and fuck around for a bit before getting ready for work. Shootmania fills that niche perfectly as a sort of goofy, low-impact kind of shooter. If, say, there were a constantly-populated Quake 1 server, fuck yeah, I'd be playing that instead. Though, in Shootmania, even if I'm sucking (which isn't as frequent as I figured) - I'm still improving my overall score. If I only get a few points in a round, no biggie, it still boosted me up 100 or so spots on the global rankings.

It's definitely a weird take on the FPS genre, and I can see people who are looking for actual pro-gaming madness being a little put off by it. For me, it scratches a weird itch I didn't realize I had.

I primarily play PC shooters when the Internet starts to bore me... It has the same crack type addiction trackmania has to me in that I'll do the same mindless thing for so long and then look up and see an hour has passed worth the 16 bucks... But if ur expecting something great you might be dissappointed... Also kinda hoping for some good things from the community with the sandbox you get....

I keep hearing "The community will gear up, and make it a better game, just like with trackmania" What is that supposed to mean? Making maps? Trackmania community didn't really impact the game directly with mods or changes to the gameplay. How can you think the community will use some magic and change the game? There are some "maniascript" stuff that will be integrated into the game, but I really doubt that the community will be large/competent enough to make an impact.

Tribes Ascend is obviously light years ahead.

This is however the first environment of multiple. But I do very much agree, the game disappoints.

@devastator510 said:

I primarily play PC shooters when the Internet starts to bore me... It has the same crack type addiction trackmania has to me in that I'll do the same mindless thing for so long and then look up and see an hour has passed worth the 16 bucks... But if ur expecting something great you might be dissappointed... Also kinda hoping for some good things from the community with the sandbox you get....

Agreed. I'll bite for $16 and see what happens in the long run...

All the people in here who say the game disappoints. I have to disagree, this game has a lot of Quake players on it. And Elite is the best game mode there is. What you guys are missing is the game aims to be simplistic. But I know you CoD fanboys when I see it. Graphics and UI mean everything!