|
Multiplayer
Ubi Soft includes with Sum of All Fears their own multiplayer matching tool, the key to playing matches online using ubi.com's hosting service. It's not a bad service, but I found it to be quite a bit slow, and the majority of what I saw when I first logged in to the lobby on two separate occasions was a group of nobodys flooding messages. Not fun.
Since there weren't any dedicated servers listed in the hosting service, I joined in a couple of games hosted by some other players on Ubi. For the most part, it was fun, but in Sum of All Fears, unlike most FPS titles, the twitch factor literally *is* life and death. Whereas lag *can* kill you in Quake, or at least cause you a great inconvenience, it *will* kill you in Sum of All Fears, since you can die in two bullets or less, easily. The biggest victim of the latency problem was door opening, however. I'd pop one open, and then wait as long as ten seconds before it'd finally open.
Also, unless you're playing a team battle, there's little reason to differentiate your weapons in a match. All that's really important is to have a gun that you can aim quickly, and preferably one with an automatic mode. Shotguns are useless in free-for-all (you'll never get that close to anyone), as are sniper rifles in most cases. The game just devolves into a bunch of guys running around with rifles - Little to no strategy required, just luck.
Join in a *real* team game, however, and you should definitely find something that floats your boat. That is, of course, provided that you have good players with you that really feel like playing the game. Sum of All Fears is, after all, much better suited as a team-squad game. Since you can individually select your weaponry before starting the game match, you can talk strategy over with your teammates and agree on roles for each player to fill.
Of course, you'll have a hard time finding people to fill those teammate slots. At different points during my testing, Ghost Recon players outnumbered Sum of All Fears players by an average of seven to one. It could be a lot worse, of course…and don't let the ratio fool you. There were still always at least 100 people on Ubi.com in the SoAF lobby, so there are still people wanting to play you.
Hardware
Reviews, Articles, News, All Reviews...
|
Gaming
Reviews, Articles, The News...
|
|
|
|
Regular Sections
A Guru's World, CPU/Memory Watch, SLDeals...
|
|
SLBoards
Forums, Register(Free), Todays Discussions...
|
Site Info
Search, About Us, Advertise...
|
|
|
