Was thinking about picking this up. Anyone got any impressions to share?

I'd really like to know too. Was thinking of trying to get a few of my friends into this.

Put in a couple hours so far and have been enjoying it quite a bit, it literally boils down to Metal Slug with a crafting system, want to use a plunger with ice damage for a knife? Go for it. Want a toilet on your gun? Absolutely.

@llamaegg: You make a compelling case!

The idea of early access games is really weird to me. While I'm super interested in this game in particular, I feel like I have so many other games to play right now. I'd rather just wait until it's done.

How do I use medkits for chrissake?

@weegieanawrench:

Assuming you're using s controller, hold L1, select the medkit, hit x

I bought this solely based on the trailer that was posted. Hopefully I will play it later this evening.

I hear a lot of good things about this game, but I sort of just want to wait until it's finished before I play it, to get the most polished and complete experience possible. If I played it now, I probably wouldn't go back to it once the finished version came out, which feels like it'd be sort of a waste.

I assume you mean Left Bumper? Xbox Controll S doesn't have L1's or R2's

@somedelicook: Yeah Left Bumper (LB) is what he means; I also used an Xbox Controller with Mercenary Kings.

That half hour I played so far is awesome! I can't wait to play more when I have more time tomorrow!

Man this game is freakin' awesome, so proud that it comes from Montreal.

The duders are brillant to mix Metal Slug and Monster Hunter.

I don't know guys *sneers and adjusts glasses* the female characters in this game perpetrate the male patriarchy and idolize unrealistic female body proportions..

Seriously though, it looks really great and from the positive word of mouth in this thread I might jump in early.

Played 4 person coop all night. Pretty fun, but need to be able to rebind controller buttons, and their controls are a little sticky (jumping)

You shouldnt have to press two buttons in a game like that to get to the gear-wheel, then to select healing items, too many steps.

It's amazing how much this game copied from Monster Hunter, about all it's missing is a cat buddy to follow you around and a timing based mini-game to cook meat (and I'm not that far in, so who's to say it doesn't). I mean, you can seriously weaken bosses then capture them with shock bombs.

Not that any of this is really a bad thing. Game's great, I've made it to the second set of missions and really had to tear myself away from it. The gun crafting is really fun (I'm saving up to see what happens when you mount a minigun barrel on a shotgun), and the whole active reload system actually works surprisingly well (and it's really forgiving too).

There are a few things I'm not a fan of. First, like Warxsnake pointed out, the inventory system blows. I think they could have done well to keep copying Monster Hunter here and let you cycle through your inventory and select something that you can use with another button. Having to put my gun away to use grenades pretty much ensures I'm not going to be using grenades. I'm not sure if other bosses work this way, but the first boss' habit of wandering away to other parts of the level really didn't seem to add much. It just means any tension from the fight is lost (and at least this boss is incredibly easy), and you simply have to open up your map to see where he went. To be fair, I wasn't a big fan of this in Monster Hunter either. Another complaint is that sometimes the mission objectives can be really obscure. I can think of two (the hostage rescue one and the treasure hunt) where it just was not at all clear where I needed to go. The treasure hunt one especially was annoying because the final gold coin was essentially hidden and I only found it by accident. Other missions do a good job marking what you're supposed to be doing though, so it's inconsistent.

Naturally though, the counterpoint to all this is that you can get a trombone that doubles as a shotgun.

The devs have said that's by design. It took me awhile to get used to as well but I'm now enjoying the level of precision you're able to jump with in MK.

Seems like a slow start in terms of level design and loot drops.

That's kinda why they're doing early access stuff, to get that kind of feed back. (Though I doubt they'll read what we have to say when we say it here. Lazy people and their trombone shotguns)
Include to that list stuff like, I dunno, ad more of the songs they probably have ready before releasing the game and all that.

But yeah, the inventory stuff is a little messy.

@ajkent: What do you mean?

My biggest complain about this game is that there's no text chat, I can understand on PS4... but on the PC there should be a way to chat in-game beside the awful pre-written messages on triggers.

It's hard to convey to other players that they should meet up where you are because the bosses are in a certain area or things like that.

@drakoji: As much as I appreciate not just moving from left to right, having a mission objective of "Gather 2 pelts" is a real drag.

I think the crafting system starts out as deceivingly simple at the beginning of the game. There is no recipe for trombone guns or a freezing laser knife. There needs to be a way to hint at the crazy upfront to entice people to continue playing.

All games should open like Saints Row III.

@ajkent: It's simply the game showing his Monster Hunter roots, quests like that are typical of MH games.

After seeing buzz start to build on the Internet today, I caved on my "no unfinished games" stance caved and got it. So far I'm really liking it but the gun crafting confused me. I tried to upgrade the magazine clip size so I wouldn't have to reload as often, but that dramatically lowered my damage per shot, so I'm not sure why I'd ever want to use something other than a pistol. Also I accidentally used C4 when I went to use a ration since those inventory slots aren't fixed, and I couldn't find a way to pick it back up without blowing it up, causing me to fail a mission. Those quirks aside, this looks like a game with a lot of promise.

@alanm26v5: The clip stuff seems a bit weird but I think it might be that each gun's power refers to the damage in a clip, so the individual bullet damage is something like power/clip size.

The number of bullets in a mag will apply a variable that diminish in proportion the gun POW.

They've said on the forums they're still trying to balance clip size/power ratios. I backed this game and I'm thrilled with it. I'm a huge fan of Metal Slug and seeing a game like this being developed with the help of my money is really making me a fan of Kickstarter. To put it another way, 'voting' for the type of game I'm into feels really awesome!

I've played it for about 9 hours so far. Really enjoying it. It is definitely like Metal Slug and Monster Hunter. These are not bad things. Multiplayer is solid, and works amazingly well, and consistently, for a relative beta.

The game has a very slow, boring start. After you get through the first wave of missions they throw at you, you'll begin learning the game's nuances, and will have more options for guns, both of which totally change your experience in playing the game.

The levels are not fantastically designed, though they could be worse. They're all very modular, which makes sense because you'll be returning to them over and over for different missions, which focus on different parts of the levels.

If you like 2-D platforming shooters in the vein of Metal Slug, there's absolutely no reason to not buy this game.

How feature complete is the current version? I'd like to check it out but if it's still pretty unfinished then I'll just wait until it's properly out.

@piratenipple: Not really sure how much they're adding besides more missions, but it's certainly a game now. There's been daily patches which are mostly bug fixes and balance tweaks. I got it since it's supposedly going to be $5 more at launch, but not sure how much more I'm going to play before it's out officially. Here's something from the forums from the developer that might help.

Should YOU buy this game??