Metalcore: the beginning of the Open World Alpha

Metalcore had an Open World Alpha (OWA) session that started from the weekend of 27th to 29th October. I had the chance of trying out for the first week of public testing.

The OWA sessions are expected to run for several months, starting with small windows of time. It will expand with more gameplay and server uptime in the future.

Enter the Open World

We start at the Garage after launching the game. It’s an offline mode that players are free to explore without being interrupted.

Everyone is free to test out player classes and vehicles here as all are unlocked.

There’s an open field on the map where players can pick out any of the available vehicles. Target dummies have been placed in the open field for players to test the vehicle’s firepower.

Once I had a feel for the controls, its time to join the OWA server. The console at the start center of the map transfers us to a randomly selected faction base. It was either Holy Corps or Metal Punks.

We only start with a Light Infantry player class and a Light Assault Tank vehicle. Players need to reach higher levels and collect crafting items to unlock the rest of the player classes and vehicles.

It wasn’t hard to notice that it’s always easier to fight a group of enemies in a vehicle rather than going on foot. Only fight on foot in tight spaces and within buildings where you can’t bring your vehicles in.

I had a chance to go on the bigger vehicles as more experienced players were in the game at the time.  Moving through the map was so much easier once aircraft were accessible. Looting enemy bases became way much easier.

We could attack using the big guns of the aircraft at the start of the assault. We would only drop down for gunfight on foot to finish off the remaining enemies and collect the loot.

Improvements Needed

#1 More choices for new players

Something that I want to see change is about having all infantry classes and vehicles locked at the start of the game.

Only the basic option was available at the start. This may deter new players from learning the game as we are forced to use the least powerful option.

Within my first hour of playing, it was very noticeable that using air vehicles was way superior and more fun. It would be much worse if players with aircraft or Mechs dominated players that had access to land vehicles only.

Here's hoping for more options for new players to try rather than needing to grind for everything.

#2 Better graphics optimization

During my playtime, it seems that more optimization is needed. Lags and stutters still happen even though my PC specs are better than the recommended specifications. This happened even though I changed to the available various setting levels

My PC specs:

• Ryzen 3 2200g
• 16GB RAM
• RTX 3060ti

Minimum Specifications for OWA:

• Intel Core i5 Processor, or AMD equivalent
• 8GB of System Ram
• NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB.(or equivalent generation)

Better graphics optimization is needed before more players start trying the game.

Final Thoughts

The core gameplay loop was enjoyable. Even without having Mechs during the playtest session, it was still a fun mechanized combat game. Metalcore is going to be a fun game once it’s released!

However, I would still suggest for players try out once more optimization has been made for the game.