I'm going to assume the NDA has been lifted - Oh well if not.
The game is very worth playing. There are only a handful of balance issues and technical problems.
Problem 1: Driving - Though it's not much of a problem. Your driving input has to go through the server and back down to you before you notice it. So if your latency is 130ms, it takes 130ms to respond. So on days with not-so-good connections, driving may be impossible. Sometimes, very very rarely, a packet gets lost and your input doesn't take, smacking you into a car, or wall. The driving isn't really bad by any means, it highly encourages roles; so better drivers are preferred over worse drivers.
Problem 2: Crashing. The game seems to crash a bit for no real reason. It seems to have gotten better in recent play sessions, but I still crash on the average of 2-4 times a night.
Problem 3: Balance. Some weapons are annoyingly more powerful than others. Namely the AK47 type (they call the NTEC). It's range, accuracy, rate of fire, and overall damage is fine on the base model, however when it's modded it starts to really pull ahead of the other weapons. There is a pistol that you can snipe with, and kills people in 3 shots.
Problem 4: Match Making. It doesn't exist. It just throws you random missions against random people. So if your rating is 30, and you have a starter gun with no upgrades, it can match you against a person with a rating of 250 with a 3-slotted, fully upgraded gun and the best cars.
Problem 5: Addicting: I've logged over 150 hours in the beta in the past month. I haven't been this addicted to a game since Everquest. Be warned.
Really those problems are all sort of minor; frustrating at times, but still minor. The game is pretty well polished and certainly ready for release. The customization is what hooked me initially; but after playing extensively, I enjoy the game as a whole.
The combat is more twitch based than iron sight based. Yes you can zoom to iron sights, and you will; gun fights happen a lot in face-to-face situations, when that happens, think Quake 3. The combat, thankfully, is not 2-3 shot kill like in Call of Duty, and it takes a few extra hits - thus requiring better aiming skill.
The driving, problems aside, is the funnest part of the game for me. The cars handle the way they should. SUVs flip if you take a corner to hard, cars with a lot of muscle tend to over drift easier and drift out farther. I only have 2 problems with the driving physics. Jumps seem to be sort of low-gravity, but that makes it more fun I suppose; and the fastest cars in the game (the Jericho v20 based off the Mustang GT, and the Bishida 8800 GX based off the Supra and 350z) really only feel like they're going 45mph at top speed.
Are those 2 things actually a problem with the game? Absolutely not. The low-grav jumps keeps things interesting. It's always fun to launch off of a 50-foot high highway and land on unsuspecting cars. And the slower top speed actually makes the car manageable. Everything is an obstacle, and there are penalties for hitting anything.
The pedestrians or civilians are the blind un-suspect NPC sheep that roam around the city. They're insanely stupid. Remarkably stupid, even. They make every effort to hit you or run in-front of you. If you are in the left lane, about to pass a car, that car will unquestionably pull in-front of you. If you go through an intersection, the cars will turn in-front of you.
The pedestrians that walk around the city really enjoy running in-front of your car. You try to honk and scare them away, but they'll just run directly to the hood of your car. However, It can be entertaining sometimes as the bodies rag doll dozens of feet into the air.
The game works on prestige, 0-5 stars. Both sides earn prestige differently. The criminals earn prestige by committing crimes (which is just about any action, short of breathing), and enforcers earn prestige by stopping crimes or catching criminals in the act. Each higher level of prestige earns a higher reward for completing a missions. At 5 prestige, players on both sides earn a bounty on their head. So any player can hunt down this high prestige player and kill them for a bounty. This also unlocks the ability for the player to kill anyone in the city to also earn some monetary rewards for each kill.
On the criminal side, at 3 prestige you can get "APBed" which means that an enforcer (player) can be dispatched against you at any time. This is inconvenient, and very annoying. You're prestige as a criminal goes up for just about anything. Running over pedestrians can get you up to 3 prestige pretty quickly. Destroying public property such as road signs, trash cans, barricades, fences, etc, all bring your prestige up slightly. Having a higher level prestige is undesirable for a criminal due to the APB system, so this is their penalty for being reckless.
On the enforcer side. It's quite the opposite, you want to have a higher prestige to earn higher reward. There is no penalty for having a higher prestige as an enforcer. You lose prestige whenever you commit a crime, such as killing a pedestrian or destroying public property. If you've made it this far in the post and are actually reading this, +5 points to you.
The previously mentioned Rating system is an important one. Your rating can determine what equipment you can use including cars, weapons and clothing. Your rating is determined by activity not by skill or grinding. Just playing the game brings up your rating. If you spend your time customizing, your rating will go up. If you spend your time doing missions, your rating will go up. This is to help keep people from accessing the entire game right away.
There is also an unlock system along side the rating system. To unlock most things in the game such as weapons, cars and clothing, you need to complete missions for organizations and contacts from inside that organization. To do this, you simply join an action district and "pledge" to a contact. Each contact is associated with specific organization. To earn some respect with these contacts and organizations you need to complete missions. You get points for winning and losing, however winning gives you a higher reward. Each contact has 6 levels, and you unlock new contacts as you progress further into the game. Finishing a contact will give you unlockable rewards specific to the contact. Leveling up a specific organization will also unlock specific rewards unique to that organization.
Various unlockables are unlocked by time, rating, achievements or progression levels. These unlockables include new shapes for the customization areas, and emotes.
Finally there is another system called the "Threat Level". Your threat level is how good you are. I believe there are 15 threat levels in the game. Your threat level goes up whenever you win missions, because 90% of the missions involve killing other players, winning usually means that your better than them. I found the threat level to be surprisingly accurate of skill. A threat level of 1-4 usually means your pretty new, 5-8 means your average, 9-10 above average, 11-14 pretty good killing machine, and 15... well I haven't seen a 15 in person. Before the end of the beta, I had a threat level of 12. (had to brag sorry)
I could get into detail about a few more things, like the customization and how awesome that is. But you'll just have to see that for yourself. Thanks for reading my exhaustively long post. Bye
. I'm too impatient to wait 8 days, then wait about 2 more weeks!
