Initially the story and graphics of this game are very appealing. The quality of the fighting and the experience using weapons with visuals are indeed fantastic. The basis for a fantastic game is here with strong roots in great gameplay.
This being said, it will quickly fall short as a title you'll want to keep playing. The hype that came with this game was so above and beyond what actually is there in story and content that it is a smack in the face for strong regular gamers that play many hours on their games.
You see there is no real end goal except collecting guns and armor. The armor has a light (armor) rating that will have you chasing after the best stuff anywhere and everywhere you can find it. In order to do this you'll need to play some of the harder missions. Regardless of your level though you'll find the game will alter enemies to be just a bit stronger than you rendering your actual armor level nearly worthless. You can play a mission over and over again at any level you like and it is pretty much the same challenges with only slight differences in enemies.
The mission rewards...terrible. The grind of doing the same missions over and over to upgrade armor and weapons makes this game boring fast. Couple this with the weapon and armor drops being random (regardless of how many times you do it or how well you perform) and you often find you are doing these same missions many many many more times only to get not much of anything.
Each DLC released is destined to have you virtually reset to an equal level as others due to the availability of high level armor and weapons released with the new content. You could grind daily for months and when the next DLC releases you might as well be starting over.
PVP. Well it can be fun if you are into using a few select weapons that get the job done. Again rewards are virtually none existent, random, and nearly always all but worthless.
The plot of the game...not there. You just show up in the game and nowhere do you get any real in game information that amounts to anything understandable or cohesive. It is simply a bunch of aliens attacking various planets...go fight them! Matchmaking with others is not available in many important areas of the game. You have to have friends ready and willing to play the hardest challenges with you and then rely on them all to be on during the same large block of hours, have good weapons, a good connection to even hope to get a majority capable of chatting, and be of sufficient level to hopefully participate. The discussion of strategy is usually pointless because bugs and game glitches will repeatedly sink your "team" progress more than anything else. The "raid" (the hardest and supposedly most rewarding part of the game) is often a nightmare for most players in that people leave out of frustration. The "average" player is simply not likely to have fun here and you must expect all participants to be well armed, ranked up, and highly skilled to get close to having any success.
To sum it up...it's pretty, shooting is done well and smooth. The graphics are great. The races and back end thought in setup of planets is fantastic. But ultimately a little kid could just mindlessly get on and blast stuff and have fun for a few hours a week and this is the best use for the game right now. It seems to me to be a beta waiting for the story and vast interactive gaming (with true teams of friends) still needing to be developed. As I've heard said many times "style over substance".
