Be Excellent To Each Other

In light of the great Jim Rossignol's controversial 8/10 on Eurogamer, I decided to give this a try (especially as there's something of a war in the comments arguing that the game deserves a fairer trial than the five minutes most people are giving it.

Off to space war we go!

THE GOOD
-it's Tribes! Forget any whippersnappers who try to compare it to Battlefield or Planetside. It IS Tribes
-Okay, fine, it has Planetside-style mech suits
-You can choose to spawn anywhere on the map (as you're dropped in from orbit).
-JETPACKS!
-nice big maps
-objectives randomly appear to give you something to aim for other than just killing enemies and capturing control points.

THE BAD
-The jetpacks aren't nearly as much fun or useful as in Tribes.
-Sprinting, while cool, is annoying in that until it charges up you're left doing little more than a slightly fey mince.
-There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the creation of or placement of the various missions - at one stage an enemy convoy entered the map, bound for our base (where it would be massacred by our turrets)
-generic weapons, name a standard FPS weapon and it's here.

THE UGLY
-The jetpack is used up far too quickly and takes far too long to recharge. Cock up a jet-assisted leap and you can try again sometime next year.
-My weapons don't seem to be particularly effective against the enemy no matter what I choose. It's great blasting someone repeatedly in the face at point blank range with a shotgun and their health and shield bars are barely affected.
-But their guns have no problem killing me - they all killed me in seconds with the pistol, but when I tried the same I did not get the same results.
-Heavily team focused - two enemies will easily destroy you if you're alone, so unless you have a good side (mates or the world's best randoms) you'll be trounced.

Overall, it's not 8/10, 7/10 would be more fair. There are numerous issues apparent from the demo and certainly it's too complex from people who've been addled by Halo and Call of Duty for too long, but for those who take the time to learn its nuances I have a feeling it could well be the nearest to Tribes 2 we'll ever get for the 360. Am I buying it? Probably not - nobody else here will, which will doom me to a life of randoms.