District 187 comes to America in closed beta, and we have the scoop!

The two sides are currently identical in terms of weaponry, which comes in 4 varieties: main weapon, secondary weapon, melee weapon and explosive. The main weapons included assault rifles, sniper rifles and shotguns, with varying power, accuracy, recoil and reload rates. The explosives consisted of either grenades or smoke bombs, both equally deadly depending on how they were used (but limited to one use per respawn). All players start with basic, weak types of each weapon type, but more advanced versions and different types can be purchased (or leased, rather) from the in-shop store.

Costumes are pretty limited: there were about three options for each side.

The shop itself contained weapons, costume decorations and some miscellaneous items such as weapons decals or upgrades. All the items are available for lease: players can choose the time frame they wish to hold the weapon and pay a discounted rate for longer times. This does mean that, after a lavish spending spree and then a month absence, a player can be stuck with nothing to show for his/her effort besides ranking (which can degrade over time as well). Well, unless they want to purchase items with real life money (which I believe will be an option come release).

So, if all players can get the same equipment, and the sides are functionally the same, is the play test balanced? Not quite, I found. First, better items will give an advantage to a certain extent… but proper aiming and latency factors have a MUCH greater impact than all the equipment in the game. Namely, sniper rifles and shotguns have the ability to score headshots with greater ease compared to other weapons, and headshots are instant kills in District 187. While this is a positive factor when it comes to making skill more important than “pay to win”, it also often means fights come down to “Who has the best connection and fastest machine”? I’ll admit most of my deaths were from my own idiocy or the other players’ skill, but often I would swear I scored several shots to the enemies’ heads and they just wouldn’t drop! … Sorry, I’m beginning to sound like the whiners I palled around with during the test.

But seriously... Bomb and Round were far inferior to Death Match and Bank.

Actually, balance is somewhat achieved through the ranking and matching systems. As players win (or lose) matches, they gain experience and currency. A loss gives less than a win, but a player’s contribution is the most important factor. In games where I lost without a single kill to my name, I would only get around 60 experience points; in the best matches I ran, I ended up with several hundred. The game does a great job at arranging teams based upon the statistics in the game and the rankings of players. Say one side completely outguns the other and is winning by over 10 kills. The game will either add extra players to the losing side, or try and get higher ranked players. Almost all of my Deathmatches ended up within a few kills of the other side. It’s not perfect (in one particular game, we won with around 140 kills to 75 deaths), but it kept the action fresh. And players are randomly assigned to a side when they join a channel, so I would often see former allies as enemies in the next match.

I found it odd that so few people bought upgraded weapons. Not that they helped THAT much...

But that leads us to the final goal of the closed beta test: was it fun? And I would have to say… yes. I enjoyed myself. Quite a bit more when I was in melee-only matches, running a 49-kill, 14-death record, but even in the regular Deathmatches I had a blast. However, the closed beta did NOT seek to test one key characteristic: will the game retain its players? I accumulated enough money to purchase the best weapons and frills early on; after that point it’s just a matter of gaining experience until a player reaches the top 5 ranks, which are doled out based upon rank among the top 1000 players. While the Open beta test later on is set to release 2 new weapons and three new maps, I am not sure if the game possesses enough popularity (or enough uniqueness) to place it above other F2P games like APB: Reloaded or multiplayer shooters like Modern Warfare II. The one thing District 187 has going for it is that the world of online shooters also provides unique challenges and excitement; as it reaches the next test, it will be up to the players to see if that’s enough!