Gameplay

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Damage Zones

Thresh:
One highlight of Kingpin is that the 3D models have different zones you can damage. Keep plugging away at one limb, or the guy's head, and that body part will shatter into a satisfying shower of blood and gibs. The zones will also show varying levels of damage, depending on how much you hurt the person. The bad news is that your gun doesn't always shoot where you want it to fire. It's explained in the readme that you start off the game very unaccurate with the pistol - to the point where you have to walk up next to the guy to hit him. The more you use it the better you get. However, even after emptying and reloading a few clips, it doesn't always shoot where you aim. Sure it's realistic but we're now crossing that Realism vs. Fun line again. It's pretty friggin' annoying to penalize a player for having good aim. The flip side is that players with poor aim can get some fortunate breaks. CalBear is notoriously bad at first person shooters, and yet he scored a few lucky head shots while he was clearly aiming at some bad guys' chests with the pistol.

My boy is banged up! Notice the discrete zones and damage skins

Not the old key and door!

As CalBear mentioned, the interactivity with the NPCs was pretty good in the beginning, and then degenerated. Well another thing that happened along the way is that the demo started to form into a "find the key - open the door - find the next key" game. That kind of repetitive play is a tremendous pet peeve of mine! By the end of the demo (it's not a long demo mind you) you're holding SEVEN or so keys! Geez what does that say? Anyway it's good that the Kingpin demo ended where it did because I was starting to lose patience with the way overplayed key-door thing.