Just wondering who did the art for the two characters we have as the background here on the forum. I'd like to see more of their work. The style reminds me of Simon Bisley's stuff.

I found the first part of "In Shock" was generally a little easier with Alicia, as her gun has better range and power than Lycus'.

However, I still ran into the same problem of having to take out a tentacle that could only be hit by standing in an exposed area. Even the nearest cover to hide from the Beholder leaves your back exposed to Bots, all of whom come running, since they can always see Alicia. The position in question is also right in front of where the dropship deploys the Bots, who will rip you to shreds in seconds if you don't move before they hit the ground.

Once you get all the tentacles, then you've got to stay close enough to the mobile Beholder to actually do damage to it with your short range weapons, all while not getting blasted by it, and dealing with all the Bots. It's not impossible by any means, but after a while it's just a grind.

All in all, I'm still enjoying exploring the game an it's various characters and how they play. Thanks for the Beta key, and I'm happy to keep playing and giving feedback for as long as you need it!

Last weekend I was getting into matches fairly easily, but this weekend it never even found a match. To be fair, I'd give up searching after a few minutes and play Solo instead.

-I haven't been able to get into any multiplayer games so far this weekend.

Reactions from playing "In Shock" on Solo:

Several of the locations that the tentacles plant themselves are out of range for Lycus' gun. Generally, it seems that there's only one in range at a time. This can be a problem, because a few of the locations can only be hit from one highly exposed position.  Given that his gun is underpowered at anything but point-blank range, it takes forever to kill the tentacle. Meanwhile, you're easily swarmed, flanked, and sniped.

I was able to complete that section with him, but it took a long time due to the constant crowd control, and avoiding getting zapped by the Beholder. There's a fine line between challenging and tedium, and I think the Solo missions are going to fall on the "tedium" side if they aren't well balanced.  That would be a shame, because there's so much to like about the game, even with what little we see now. I think lots of people who aren't necessarily interested in the multiplayer would still buy the game if they know they single player mode is good.

I haven't been able to beat Dr. Kuzmann in Solo mode. I'm not sure how short-range combat characters are supposed to deal with him.  He's aggressive and very powerful.

If you retreat, he's got his  'bomb attack,' and when you try to move out of the affected zone, if you're exposed to even one Bot, it can be enough to give you trouble.  Then, the button prompts randomly pop up, and you're supposed to hit 4 or 5 buttons on the machine, or Shea dies. Every time I've played, Kuzmann is right in front of the machine, so it's an impossible task to complete.

When I heard him say something about his gun being jammed, I figured that was a prompt to attack, but the second I was out of cover, he blasted me. I've also tried melee attacking him, but that just got me killed, too. It's one thing for the difficulty to be up there when you're playing with a full team. When you're on your own, and stuck with one character, it needs to be scaled to an sensible level for the character you're playing with. Or allow players to switch characters within the match, so they can take advantage of different abilities.

So far my favourite character to play is Konstatin. He's got the firepower to compensate for my lack of subtlety while I try to learn the game's ins and outs!

I agree, I don't think the combat needs to be changed, just have a good tutorial/explanation for how it all works, so that everyone has the opportunity to use it as effectively as possible.

I think melee killing enemies to replenish ammo is one of the best features in the game, and I think it would take a lot away from it if they changed it. Even playing as the sniper, I generally didn't have too much trouble melee killing the bots. Given that most of them move towards you once you engage them, I found all I needed to do was not get caught in a crowd of them. If you've got three of them moving towards you, plan ahead and pick off two of them, allowing the third to get in close so you can kill them for ammo.

I only encountered what seemed like bugs twice.

First was in the tutorial mission with Harec. At the point where you're directed to use his teleportation move, I did as instructed and seemed to end up outside the map. All I could see was what seemed to be the outline of structures in orange. I mashed the buttons and eventually returned to the map.  I was going to try to recreate it this afternoon, and record it, but I didn't have the time to get on.

Second, I was playing solo on the map where you have to overload the three reactors. I was able to activate the first one, but wasn't able to activate the other two. The button prompt didn't show up, and nothing happened when I pushed the interact key in front of them. I died a few times and respawned, and still wasn't able to activate them.