Repulse is a free-to-play FPS published by Aeria Games. The game entered its open beta on January 23, 2012. It focuses primarily on team-based combat. With strong free-to-play FPS competitors already established, will Repulse bring enough to the table to secure a corner of the market?
Repulse’s story is a science fiction staple. The Earth is doomed, so humanity looks to the stars for salvation. On a distant planet, a new element is discovered that will radically shape the future of the human race. However, there’s an alien race that desperately wants to eliminate the human invasion. Instead of uniting against this new enemy, two corporations fight with one another for control of the element harvesting to secure their financial future.
The story itself is of no real consequence in Repulse. In fact, it’s not even hinted at while playing the game. The only information that explains the story or the characters that inhabit this virtual battleground is found on the game’s site. The characters themselves are meaningless as they are never seen in-game and have no impact of the bare bones story. They appear to be eye candy and nothing more at this point. In the shop, there is an option to purchase Heroes. These Heroes will have unique stats and perks. Though currently unavailable, it may be likely that Heroes can be purchased once the game is released in its final version.
One thing still irks me though. When exploring a new planet and fighting a rival corporation’s mercenaries and the hostile native species one would think some type of protective suit would be necessary. The men seem to have this firm understanding of logic, but the women would rather reveal as much as they can. Because why focus on realism when a character can look so good in stock pictures? When a game is focused solely on shooting others in the face, is this bit of sexuality really necessary? The bits of digital flesh may be tantalizing, but the costume design borders on ridiculous.
Graphically speaking, Repulse is quite average looking. The overall design is very generic. There are large men in suits of armor or decked out in tactical gear shooting guns at one another. The maps are just as bland and lifeless. There are plenty of nondescript warehouses, factories, and laboratories that players will spend their time running around. It’s not that the map layouts themselves are terrible. It’s the lifelessness that gets to me. This isn’t a living breathing world. It’s simply an environment where my character, whom I have no real emotional investment in, can shoot other soulless, digital men. It’s not terrible by any means, but it’s nothing that will cause a double take.
When it comes to gameplay, there isn’t anything that makes Repulse stand out. There’s the ability to perform wall jumps and quick dashes for all three classes. While this sounds great in theory and looks good in some of the promotional videos, it leaves much to be desired when actually playing. Instead of leaping from wall to wall like some sort of feral Spider-Man, I found myself using the wall jump to propel myself over slightly higher than average walls. When I would fail to hurdle said walls, I ended up looking like a fool who usually took a bullet to the head. The dash is also finicky as it involves quickly double tapping one of the directional keys. More often than not, I’ll repeatedly tap the direction I want to go with no result. Again, I usually look like a fool and end up with a bullet in my head.
Fortunately, there is the option to turn off those silly maneuvers by selecting the Classic FPS game mode. There are two channel types: Action, which incorporates the special moves, and Classic which is straight forward FPS action. The channels are further divided between Rookie and Pro. Players below the rank of Staff Sergeant Class 1 or those with a kill/death ratio under 30% can play in the Rookie channels.
There are three classes to choose from, each with something unique. Each class can carry three weapons: a primary, a secondary handgun, and a melee weapon. Each player also carries a single grenade. Classes can be changed after a player dies in a match, so long as the host has the option enabled.
The Assault class can use either a machine gun or shotgun. It serves as the stereotypical soldier class.
The Sniper class exclusively uses sniper rifles. They also can activate a cloak that will allow them to turn invisible for a short period of time.
Engineers can use submachine guns or plasma cannons. These plasma cannons can either function as a grenade launcher against enemies or will heal friendly targets.
Players can purchase additional weapons, gear, and mods in the store either with credits won in matches or by purchasing Aeria Points with real currency. One great feature was the option to choose how long you wanted the item. No item purchased will last forever. At some point, it will disappear. If you want an item longer, simply pay more for it. In contrast, if you only want to test a new weapon or piece of gear, pay the minimum to only use it for 24 hours. It’s a model that will keep players playing to keep the gear they want, but offers incentives to try new things as credits are earned easily and items are relatively cheap. Add to that is that each item can be purchased by anyone and isn’t locked by level. It creates an even playing field with everyone having access to everything.
There are a multitude of game types, but they all focus on team work in one form or another. Match rules can be customized by the host. They can change options like the map, how long the match will run, the number of players on each team, and the number of rounds won required to win the match. Most of the time, I felt that matches took too long. Some would last upwards of half an hour and I found myself getting very tired of playing, very quickly. There simply isn’t anything that stood out or made Repulse special to warrant spending that much time in one match. No matter what game type I played, each match devolved into shooting enemies in the face over and over again. While this may work for some, it simply wasn’t my cup of tea. Come to think of it, I don’t even like tea.
The game has the typical Death Match and Capture the Flag modes. There’s also sniper only and melee only game types. There’s a few modes lifted straight from games like Call of Duty, which involve planting bombs and defending points and a zombie mode called Invasion which is nearly identical to Halo’s Infection game type.
The sounds of Repulse also left me wanting. Every gun sounds like a plastic toy. From reloading to firing, it’s almost comical. While I’m sure this wasn’t intentional, there is some genuine comic gold to be found here. Each time a player dies, his or her character will emit a death cry. There’s only a handful and they’re generally along the lines of something corny like “I’m too handsome to die!” It was funny the first three or four times I heard it, but hearing it ad nauseam quickly wore my patience thin. Eventually, I found myself muting the game entirely or playing with Zune running in the background.
Despite everything I’ve said against Repulse, it isn’t a technically flawed game. It’s just so incredibly bland. It is very generic and brings nothing new or different to the FPS genre. It’s a shooter, plain and simple. There was a brief period where I found myself enjoying the Engineer class running flags in Capture the flag, but that quickly evaporated as the match ran into minute 27. It’s not terrible for a free-to-play game, but the price shouldn’t be a selling point for any game. As it stands, there’s much better shooters out there, some of which are free-to-play. For those only casually interested, I would avoid Repulse. The die-hard FPS fans may enjoy it, but if they live for shooting in the first person perspective, odds are that they’re already playing much better games.
GamingClimax.com Writer and Author of ZeroAnd09 Blog
