"Uninhibited Alliance" review: not high, not low

Ubisoft's free first-person team PVP shooting game new "Bohemia Alliance", as early as the announcement was given by many players to "rewrite the FPS game market pattern" "COD killer" and other high expectations, and the reason is nothing more than because the main creator members of the IW studio was Activision veterans, responsible for the development of a number of "Call of Duty" series of works. At the same time, the game also breaks through the world view of multiple game IP owned by Ubisoft in the form of "Great Brawling", and has a character skill setting similar to "Overwatch" and "APEX Heroes". These unique labels, coupled with the fast-paced competitive experience of small maps, are indeed quite new in today's rarely innovative FPS game market.

But worryingly, the game after several rounds of testing, the player feedback can only be said to be mixed, coupled with the sudden delay of the jump ticket, resulting in the game until May this year officially launched with the player to meet. Aside from the fact that the game is obviously not as hot as the previous testing period, after a period of experience, I'm afraid I still have a huge question mark over whether the game can really shake the "Call of Duty" series in the hearts of FPS players.

And to be sure, "Uninhibited League" is indeed a good base game.

Considering that its positioning is a recreational competitive cool tour, I think that the excessive pursuit of the true sense of gun shooting in the "Uninhibited League" is not very reasonable. In actual play, the gun feel of the "Unrestrained Alliance" is indeed some "plastic", the sound effect of the shooting sounds like it is borrowed directly from the next door "Far Cry" series of game material library, the recoil of the gun and the ballistic diffusion of the gun when aiming, and it is not real enough to require the player to deliberately practice the operation of the gun, resulting in the player to get started. It's hard to feel the immersion of a real shootout.

But on the other hand, it also significantly reduces the difficulty of this game as a competitive tour. As long as you are not the kind of real FPS game white, if you have played "Call of Duty" or "Battlefield" series before, there is basically no threshold to get started with "Unruly Alliance". The game has not a short TTK, coupled with the body method choice such as sliding shovel jumping, the actual fault tolerance rate in the game is relatively considerable. Even in a one-to-many situation, with the proper use of body and character skills, the player is not without the possibility of a positive victory.

When it comes to character skills, this is one of the most obvious differences between Bohemian League and other fast-paced FPS games currently on the market. Ubisoft initially intended the game to be a team shooter based on the Tom Clancy IP series, but later decided to include more characters from the game's IP series. The result is an all-star brawl carnival.

In the current version of Uninhibited League, the game offers characters from five factions for players to use. It should be noted that although there are three unlockable characters in each faction, there is no ability difference between characters in the same faction - to put it bluntly, it is a character swap. The five factions are The Purifiers from The Division series, the Shadow Squad from the Ghost Recon series, the Freedom Forces from Far Cry 6, the Echelon from the Splinter Cell series, and DedSec from Watch Dogs 2. Of course, there will be more characters from Ubisoft games in the future to join this Brawl.

The characters in each camp have their own master and passive skills that fit the original setting. Before the start of each game, the player can choose one of the two active skills of the faction character to equip. In addition, there is a need to kill enemies and game time to accumulate a big move. Players who have played "Overwatch" should not be unfamiliar with this skill mechanism.

According to the actual effect of these skills, the five different camps in the game will also show the division of battlefield functions to a certain extent. For example, "Freedom armed" is a typical wet nurse role, her two skills are to give themselves and teammates blood, the big move is to throw a range of blood items, can allow players to instantly have double the amount of health, greatly improve the character's life. The skill setting of "Shadow Squad" is more inclined to the "shield position" in this type of team game, the active skill can set up a shield, and the big move is a large shield surrounded by 360 degrees, which can effectively help the team share the damage.

So, with a reasonably good shooting feel and the ability to divide different classes, "Uninhibited League" will really be a FPS that everyone can drive?

At least for the current version of the game, my answer is no.

Although the game's gun feel is fairly good, all the gun accessories are ready for the player, but the poor gun balance and basically no design sense of the game map, resulting in not every player can get the best gun experience in the game.

For example, in the current version of the game, the sniper rifle and the shooter rifle are basically version T0 level weapons. Although the game has not a short TTK, but the sniper gun a shot to the torso on the big disability, the shooter rifle high rate of fire is also fast, long distance two shots to take away a person's powerful power, resulting in once you are held by the enemy with these weapons, it is difficult to have any positive countermeasures and methods. Especially for me, almost in any FPS game, is the first start from the assault rifle players, "Unruly Alliance" in the initial assault rifle M4A1, is completely the most unpopular of all weapons that - not as long as the sniper, not as fast as the submachine gun, damage compared to the shotgun, the situation is particularly embarrassing.

On this basis, the current version of the game map, basically there is no clever design ideas. The development team seems to think that the trick to making a map for a fast-paced FPS game is to frantically add paths and cover to the map, so much so that most of the maps in the game today feel a little cluttered and lacking in design when played. This in the cart play can also be accepted, after all, the attack and defense sides are mainly concentrated on a route to the gun, but once you match to the game, the scene will immediately become chaotic out of control. At this point, if you want to hide behind a bunker with a gun, I advise you to give up this idea as soon as possible, because you don't know if an enemy will suddenly appear next to you during the shooting process, and you can't react to the situation, quickly take your head.

In addition, as one of the features of the game, the performance of the character skills in actual combat is not as prominent as I expected.

I originally thought that I could experience team tactical cooperation similar to "Overwatch" in "Unruly Alliance", but in actual play, in addition to the cart mode, occasionally both sides will lose skills around the transportation target, and open the shield top to damage the cart, in the occupy mode and battle, most players are playing each other. There are few opportunities to complete the match. In addition, Ubisoft does not know why in the official version of the game, greatly extended the cooling time of the character's skills, and even the charging speed of the big move slowed down a lot more than before, resulting in the presence of these character skills in the game, which was further reduced.

It's a classic case of playing whoever's best

At this time, if a player wants to say that he wants to play "Bohemian League" as a fast-paced FPS game with pure guns, is there a problem? My answer is no. Because at this stage of the "Uninhibited Alliance", there are also some places in the game operation that are easy to make players feel disgusted.

First, the game is not a stable server state. Although players have long teased Ubisoft's "potato server" for countless times, the "Untaguered Alliance" currently does have some problems with match matching time and "swallowing bullets" - because of network delays, it appears that the player is clearly hitting the enemy bullet, but actually did not hit the target. In addition, I have not encountered less in the game, the enemy stood in place to take the initiative to be beaten, and he was inexplicably killed after hiding in the bunker. I hope Ubisoft can improve the online quality of the game as soon as possible, otherwise many players may not even know what the game looks like, and be persuaded by the poor Internet environment.

In addition, as a free game, the current version of "Uninhibited Alliance" is somewhat excessive in liver degree.

Weapons and accessories in the game, players need to complete challenges and weapon upgrades to obtain. The difficulty of the former is generally uneven, and the unlocking requirements of some weapons and equipment are purely to require players to accumulate damage by constantly brushing against the game. The latter upgrade is more wasteful, if you do not use the game's special weapon experience bonus items, even if you perform well in a match, but may be after a game, the weapon upgrade slot is only increased by half, or even lower. Considering that the accessory unlocking of each weapon in the game is completely independent, it is inevitable that players will spend a lot of time in the game if they want to liver all the accessories of the weapons they are good at.

This is also the case, as well as the unlocking speed of the game's first season battle pass content - it is also highlighted that after the completion of a game, the progress bar seems to have risen, but the actual increase is not much confusion. In addition, the design aesthetic of the gift skin in the current pass is generally criticized by players, which obviously does not play a good role in the long-term operation of the game.

And behind these problems exposed, in fact, is the current version of the "Uninhibited Alliance", there is a huge shortage of internal capacity.

Compared to the previous test, the official version of the "Uninhibited Alliance" in the number of characters, the number of weapons, the number of maps growth, is extremely limited. The official reason for "delaying the launch in order to optimize the experience" proved to be almost unconvincing in the official version - the network problems still exist, the gun feel is still not as comfortable as the first test, and the feedback of players before those comments, some of which were taken seriously by the official, but some were not at all. In the end, after the game was officially launched, the reputation of the player group was mixed.

But as I said at the beginning, as a free game, the foundation of "Bohemian League" is good, and Ubisoft has invested enough ambition in it, otherwise it would not let so many game IP appear in a free game at the same time, but also specifically designed different classes and skills for them.

At present, the main problem of the "Unbriated Alliance" is that it has little content and lacks the driving force of long-term play - but after all, it is completely free, and the subsequent official has a stable update plan, so it is too biased to give it a death sentence too early. Moreover, compared with the "Super Hunt City" that has been closed before, and the "Rainbow Six: Dissimilar" that has not made much waves, the "Unruly Alliance" that uses fast-paced team competition as the core gameplay also has more room for rotation in development. As long as Ubisoft can pay more attention to this work, reversing the word of mouth is not impossible.

Until then, all we can do is wait.