The concept is great: Robin Hood and his cheerful gang rebel against high taxes by stealing money from the state. In a battle where enemies controlled by artificial intelligence guard the treasures and teamwork is the key to victory.
The premise is very good and in several ways ideal for those like us who think cooperative modes are the best ways to enjoy video games. However, a good game has to bring many other equally important elements together, and luckily Sumo Digital is a professional studio. So in theory this should be a no-brainer.
In recent years, the Robin Hood franchise has grown increasingly dark. It’s true that in its origins it represented a much harder story than the Disney movie, but we don’t think it’s particularly dark. However, this is Sumo Digital’s great bet and consequently they gave us a Robin Hood that seems straight out of the first Assassin’s Creed games. a Lady Marian who suspiciously resembles the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, who is also trending with various tribal t attoos; Tooke’s hairstyles are reminiscent of famous football players; And of them, only Little John looks reasonable (although he looks more like a WWE wrestler than a medieval character).
Since Hood: Outlaws & Legends is an online-only title, you will need to go through a required tutorial first before entering online mode. In it you can test the four characters and analyze the advantages of each character. Unfortunately at this point we begin to notice small problems. The controls don’t respond very well and the opponent’s AI seems to be working randomly as they walk around repeating the same sentences to themselves over and over.
Even the combat system seemed unoriginal and not fluid at all, so we began to suspect that we would be disappointed with a game we initially looked forward to. Basically, robberies are made up of several parts, from reaching a specific destination, to reaching a meeting point and loading the loot into a vehicle to escape. You are not alone, however: for reasons unknown, another team of Robin Hoods are trying to steal this treasure at the same time as you. So you have to fight against both AI controlled enemies and other players.
The game has a central hub around a campfire where you can change your character and decide on a mission. However, if you’ve ever played Payday 2, Sea of Thieves, or Borderlands 2 with random people, you may already know how hellish it can be when people don’t communicate in the slightest. It seems that today it has become the norm: a large part of the community does not comment, probably due to the huge nuisance on the internet.
As a result, the games begin to no surprise, and your teammates split up right after the start. Nobody seems to be focused on getting the treasure chest, someone alarms and unleashes the wrath of the guards, a madman accompanies you but refuses to duck and hide in the grass for them to discover and kill you while another is thinking , You play Team Killer in Halo, and chaos ensues. It also doesn’t help that games take so long to start up that people are in and out and that consoles and PC play together by default, which is a huge benefit for those who play the latter.
On the flip side, there is a matchmaking system that we honestly don’t know what it is for, as the game has matched us with those who have already passed level 60 from level one. Plus, these people already know each other The Levels to the Fingertips also had time to level up their characters with various benefits. This is because those who bought the most expensive edition could start playing three days early. So they had an advantage that leads the rest of us to spend the first few hours very boringly massacred by much more powerful opponents.
In short, to play seriously you have to find people to talk to. When faced with reasonable opponents, you may have good games where you hide and run from each other. For the first time we understood in our flesh why NPC guards don’t see you when you’re walking through tall grass or when you’re sitting behind walls in stealth games. In this case, we felt like there were enemies everywhere, but we couldn’t see them. When you meet someone, you can tag them so your companions know where the villain is. When you pick up the treasure and bring it to the ship you are escaping with, it can sometimes be fun to protect the person who is carrying it, although hand-to-hand combat is not very sophisticated.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to play more than five decent games. For the most part, we found the experience frustrating. This game has questionable checkpoints, AI controlled enemies that are a nuisance, random events that ruin even the best of plans, and every time we played all we wanted was to leave it and move on to something else. Ideally, the stages and what happens in them make us feel like no two games are alike, but after just an hour you seem to have already seen it all, and in the end, the start doesn’t even come into the category for fall mediocre.
It’s not enough that Hood: Outlaws & Leyends works very well at 60 frames per second, or that there are interesting scenarios like we’d like to see in a better game (or even a multiplayer of this type where we do it) do not have to compete against others). Unfortunately, it’s an example of clear potential that has been wasted.