Minimum

[clyde]

So I've been curious about Minimum because it looks vaguely similar to Super Monday Night Combat in its game-mechanics. It's on sale so I just said "fuck it" and paid the two fifty. These are initial impressions based off of an hour or so of play on a day when it's likely populated with noobs.
The main mode and appeal is called "Titan Mode". What happens is that both teams have a single giant that progresses in a single lane towards each other to do battle. You can do damage to their giant in order to give yours an advantage. One giant defeats the other and then moves toward a goal that it will try to destroy. Once that giant is destroyed a "creep phase" begins where harmless loot-goblins spawn in various parts of the map. The loot allows you to upgrade armor (which is kinda like a class-system) and give your giant an advantage during the next titan-battle. So the titans spawn and repeat the process until one of the titans destroys an enemy base.
During all of this you will be shooting enemy players and getting shot, the also have swords. When a player is killed they drop a weapon power-up (I think).
Oh, you also have grenades that are on a cool-down system. The movement is in third-person and movement speeds feel maybe like Halo?

My first impressions on how this works in practice:
Not knowing the maps, if I run around alone, I die and power up other players, so I try to stick with my team. When the titans meet in the middle of the map, I try to take cover on our side and lob grenades at the titans. I've been assuming that there is no friendly-fire, this may not be the case because every once in a while the words "Sabaooge" appear on the screen. As I'm shooting the titan, someone will inevitably flank me with a sword, kill me, and go through highlander-convulsions.
During the creep-phase, it appears that your melee sword is the best bet because you have to pick up the loot and if you shoot the creeps at a distance, the enemy might eat your lunch. I kinda feel like the titans and the creeps in this game are things that distract you so that you will get flanked. I do not feel that Super Monday Night Combat is like that. In Super Monday Night Combat, I'm pushing my lane. Even when I'm damaging the enemy titan in Minimum, I don't feel like I'm hitting it (maybe I'm not), it doesn't feel like a push, it's more similar to an air-drop in Rust, it's bait.
There are a few other major differences from SMNC. There doesn't appear to be a grappling mechanic which is a huge part of how SMNC encourages teamwork. Comparatively, Minimum has zero personality; the featureless, glowing low-poly environments are pleasant, but they don't encourage me to imagine the world and there are no characters. Of the abilities/weapons I've seen, it's more of a customizable loadout than a balanced class. Maybe it's because I don't realize how much damage I'm doing by feeding because I'm new, but the intensity of this game appears much more relaxing than SMNC.
Like I said, I haven't played much so subtle reads of the match-state are beyond me but so far I really have little concept of which team is winning or what I should be focusing on. Should I be killing players to keep them nerfed since the weapon-leveling resets on death? Or should be be trying to control the middle of the map to give our titan an advantage. I don't even know if there is friendly fire. But as my first impression goes, Minimum's phases in titan-mode feel orthogonal.

I'm not at all unhappy with my purchase though. I can see myself playing this game every once in a while after the inital high of discovering the systems. There is meta-leveling with weapon, armor, and gadget unlocks that are completely unattached from the leveling in the matches. It'll take a while to figure out how to use the weapons and armor I have available because they change during the match. I enjoy spending a little bit of time testing the small amount of weapons.
Just finding out what the maps are like and how different people play the game is worth $2.50 for me. It takes a good amount of hits to kill someone with the assault rifle so I've had some fun Halo-style stand-offs at mid-range and had teammates back me up. I just don't know enough yet; I wonder if there are more effective ways to influence the titan-battle, I don't know where the creeps spawn, I get disorientated a lot and end up in the enemy spawn. But I am enjoying the game. It feels like a third-person Halo 3with no vehicles, a titan-battle to focus on and farming instead of powerups. I haven't seen that combination before and it's interesting to explore for a bit. The biggest appeal for me are the multiple times per match that I end up in 15 second scuffles that include retreats and manuevering.

Minimum has a much, much smaller scope than Titanfall and initiallly, the objectives/mechanics don't feel tightly woven like in SMNC, but it's different and I'm having fun playing it.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vkGEFknEd0

[Architecture]

This was in my Discovery Queue today, I think I added it to my news feed? I dunno, third-person shooting just isn't my scene.

[Justin Leego]

Thanks Clyde! Sounds like on the one hand it's not as sophisticated as SMNC. On the other, I like the idea of a more relaxed experience. Torn!

And on the third, I realized that in a dream state I had been conflating footage from this and Blizzard's Overwatch.

[clyde]

I've been having fun with it. I'm sure that for some people this is the right mix to finally let them enjoy a multiplayer shooter with some Lords Management elements. It's the only third-person shooter I know of that has a lane and creep farming. I haven't played Smite though. I think I heard that you can't jump.

[clyde]

I've put some more time into titan mode and it doesn't take long to learn the maps and get familiar with the rhythm (which is good). But I have started to find some nuisances that make me think I won't spend to much time with Minimum.

-The collision detection of some things doesn't seem refined in important ways. I keep getting stuck when very close to titans and when jumping over knee-high geometry. (I don't get stuck for very long, but in a competitive multiplayer shooter, it doesn't take long for a snag to be a problem).

-I don't know if it is my controller, the net-code, or something else, but sometimes shooting, jumping, and especially throwing grenades does not feel responsive and snappy. The grenades have a cool-down so I think that complicates them a bit, but still.

-Of the first three weapons available, I don't like any of them. The assault-rifle is my favorite, but when it levels up it turns into a horizontal spread rifle which is so irritating. I want it to be good for burst fire on one target. The shotgun is great at short-range but it encourages sneaking up on other players the entire time and I like the cover-based skirmishes most. The sniper rifle suffers from that lag I was talking about before, it's pretty much unusable for me.

I get the impression that a competitive shooter requires more refinement than this team is capable of. I wouldn't care much about these problems in other types of games, but snagging on geometry in a counter-intuitive way when being chased in a multiplayer shooter is infuriating. Pressing the grenade button and it only getting thrown a little bit after your third press when it was immediate a moment ago when I'm trying to get someone dead so I can get to the golden creep is really off-putting.

Maybe they will fix the problems or my internet will get better. But I run into one of these issues atleast 3 times a match and it takes away from my enjoyment of the game.