Line of Sight – Early Access BETA Review

Line of Sight is an online Multiplayer FPS that seems to have a decent grounding. However, I was less than impressed with some of the features of this game. Before you turn away thinking that this is a waste of time, let me explain. It is still in Early Access. That much should tell you that the developers, Blackspot Entertainment, are still working on it. They are also a relatively small developer group, so I have to at least give them their dues. So, grab your guns and let’s jump into this one.

Storyline

There is very little in terms of story line. In fact, there really isn’t one. From what I could discern from the little information I was given, every character is a mercenary. Why they are fighting we will never know but let’s move on. Each character seems to have a small amount of backstory and aside from a large amount of spelling and grammatical errors, they seem fairly straight forward. And, that’s about it for the story. There is no plot told to you when you start the game you just, play, fight and hope you win.

Gameplay

Baring in mind that this is still an Early Access game, I realise there are probably features they will add later. Regardless, when you start up the game for the first time, you are immediately thrown into a tutorial. You can’t skip this either. You have to play through it. Once you complete the tasks that the rather patronising voice over gives you. You can begin.

I spent the best part of forty minutes trying to figure out how to join a game only to realise there were none. Granted, that I was playing this in Beta and probably very few people picked this game up. So, to pass the time, I played an AI game that I created. Now, I understand the point of playing against AI is to practice. However, the AI in Line of Sight seems to be very basic. They stand in one area of the map, block doors and don’t understand how to take cover. In the entirety of the game I played. I spent more time trying to manoeuvre around my team than actually killing anything.

The customisation options are not too bad. There seems to be a lot that you can do with your characters once you level up. I am unsure if you need to always purchase upgrades but at least this is done with in game money. You can even buy more characters at higher levels. Some characters are only available for s limited time. It seems that this is something that will appeal to a lot of people. That and the ‘magic’ powers that you can use.

These powers are very handy in a pinch. You can use abilities once you have charged them up. They do have a slow recharge time so be careful when you use the. Your best bet is to try and use them on larger groups of enemies. This is one of the features that I quite enjoyed and would like to see what else they can do with it. Other than that, this game played very much like Call of Duty.

Graphics

One of the better features of Line of Sight. It uses the Unreal engine and does look superb. You can really tell a lot of love went into the look of the game. The characters even have a lot of flare to them and with the customisation options, there are some interesting looks you can create.

Sound

I was rather disappointed with the sound in Line of Sight. Mostly, the sound effects are of a poor quality. When you kill several people in a row, much like in Unreal Tournament, you get a voice over telling you how epic you are. However, the rest of the sound was rather difficult to deal with. The guns didn’t sound like guns and the explosions has so much distortion I couldn’t tell what was going on. It was upsetting considering how great the graphics look. Hopefully, this will be something they can improve at a later date.

Replayability

Since this is an online multiplayer game there is a lot of opportunity for replayability. I may return to this once the full game is released but, for me, the beta left much to be desired. It is not unplayable by any means and I think once more people start to play, it will be so much better and I will definitely want to go back to this one. Just not yet.