Mittwoch, 3. März 2021

Hit N'Rush (PC) Review

 

Hit N'Rush is a newly released Battle Royale game, that is in a really early 'Early Access' stadium. The game has been open for public between 18-23.2.2021 and after that been put back into a test-status. This means that the game is playable only for 2 hours every week, in which all players can login and review the updates of the developers. Hit N'Rush is supposed to re-release in April 2021 with a big update. The question now is, what makes Hit N'Rush interesting and worth writing about? (Critics would simply claim, that I am reviewing every BR game in existence, but that is provably wrong. It is at most 99% of them).

Hit N'Rush brings some interesting new concepts to the BR genre. There is for one the Jetpack with which every player starts into a match. This is a really cool feature and it seems to work well. It is neither too overpowered, since you always need to balance the direction you want to jump in and how much of the Jetpack energy you want to use, but it is useful for traversing the map and positioning in combat encounters (The Jetpacks also have a forward boost, that reminded me a lot of the exo suits from COD Advanced Warfare). I definitely like this gameplay element.

The other big unique element are the domes (save points). After some time there will be a 2 mins warning timer, that signals the players to get into the domes to survive an attack. There are usually 3-5 different domes to choose from and all players outside of the domes will get killed. After that the match will continue as normal. There is no circle/ reduction of the playable areas outside of these dome moments. The domes also have a second function. They can bring back killed teammates. An eliminated team member will become a ghost, as long as his mate is still alive obviously, and can follow his teammate around the map. If the alive player and the ghost are together in a dome during the attack, than the ghost will be revived.

As I mentioned Hit N'Rush is still in a very early status, so most areas still need a lot of polish. The gameplay foundation and concept however are very solid. Gunplay and movement already work pretty well and the dome concept really offers something new to the genre. That is much better than the other way around, because it is easier to polish a fun game, than make a polished game fun.

The weapon selection is decent. The default weapon is an automatic pistol, which probably stands out in comparison to most other games, where you either start with a weak single shot pistol or no weapon at all. I like the automatic pistol however. The other weapons are Shotguns, Snipers, SMGs, ARs and a LMG (aka the usual stuff). The game could definitely require some special weapon to stand out more, but the weapons in the game all seem to work well.

Some of the areas, that still need polish, are the visuals, the sound and the map. The graphics engine is okay, but the Devs definitely still need to improve the texture quality to prevent the finished game from looking under average. The map looks good and I like the layout of the island and the different environmental elements (Desert part, forest part and mountainous areas) and POIs. It is however still important to fill these POIs with more life. At the moment they feel very empty, since most buildings have no elements in them and there are no objects or weapons to be found.

Weapons and Healing objects need to instead be collected from alien treasure containers, which are protected by PVE monsters. These monsters as a PVE element are a nice addition, but at the moment they are a bit too weak. You obviously don't want them to be too strong either, but at the moment it was, in my opinion, too easy to dodge all their incoming attacks.

Sound effects for weapons are pretty decent. You should probably still improve them a bit, but I would likely be satisfied enough with the status quo. I would consider replacing or improving the sound effect of the Jetpack, since players are going to hear it a lot during the matches and it sounds a bit like a leaf vacuum. At the moment there also some flickering sound effects (especially at the beginning of the match, but sometimes also later on), they are not pleasant for the ears and should be eliminated. The main menu soundtrack is pretty good.

The main menu in general is pretty well done already. It gives you a good overview where everything is and the customizability options are also pretty good (Only annoying thing is that you can not move your mouse while changing the controls or you will have to reconfigure the camera to the mouse... I would suggest to simply remove the option to rebutton the camera movement).

The lobby size is currently 24 players and there is only a Duo mode playable. The map would certainly be big enough to increase the amount of players to something between 30 and 50, but I understand why they wanted to start with a small size and it also works well enough with 24. What they however should definitely improve is the queue. At the moment there is no indication how many players are searching and how long it is gonna take to get into a lobby (The queue also seems to cancel itself after around 10 minutes). Many players will probably lose patience after not finding a lobby for a while, but the situation could obviously change if the game gets a full release. I would however suggest letting players into the pregame lobby much earlier than currently is the case (where you need a nearly full lobby to enter the pregame lobby), because it is a better way to kill time than looking at the main menu screen. The pregame lobby is also still very rough and consists only of coloured blocks, which look rather hideous and unfinished. This is probably not a priority, but should also not be too difficult to improve.

There are obviously still a good amount of glitches and technical issues in the game (like clipping through objects; the mentioned sound bugs; self-canceling queues; I also had a glitch, where my weapon wouldn't stop shooting till I switched to a different weapon, but than I couldn't shoot at all anymore...), but I am optimistic that most of them should get ironed out in a couple of months. 

 

Result:

Overall I liked Hit N'Rush. The dome concept really changes the way this Battle Royale game is being played and the Jetpacks are also a cool idea. Movement and Gunplay already work pretty well and the map shows promise, but most other things in the game are still pretty rough. If they would release the game like this right now without any further improvements, than I would probably rate it 5.75/10. I am however very optimistic, that they will keep polishing and improving the game, so that this game definitely has the potential to get into the 6-8/10 category.

5.75/10

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