Ace of Spades Review

This all sounds awesome: Ace of Spades mixes Team Fortress 2, Minecraft, and Worms, where teams of blocky players fire rockets and bullets (often with jetpacks) on a continually changing landscape made from destructible blocks. But after a week of lag, the highlights of which include incidents where I've been able to catch up to and overtake some of my own rockets, I can't quite believe Jagex has managed to undermine this potentially fun FPS with such a shaky start.



It's sad to see its good ideas go to waste. For example, all the classes have digging tools of varied strength, and everyone can drop pre-shaped chunks of blocks. The Miner class has a rocket launcher that fires drill rockets that carve holes where they strike -- they don't make huge tunnels, but they're good for cutting out caves to cower in, or punching large holes in defenses. The Commando's bazooka, meanwhile, blasts out big chunks of the world. The Marksman can deploy his own little hut to snipe through, while the jetpacking Rocketeer trades heavy destructive skills for flight. And weapons may spit out cubic muzzle flashes and spill cute little hexahedrons of blood, but the rifles and pistols feel hefty and dangerous thanks to the way they chop away bits of the level.

Everyone's a Demoman

Which all sounds vaguely tactical, but Ace of Spades leans more towards reactive moments than the contemplative action of the original free version -- it's more about destroying bridges than building them. I was on the moon map hunting for diamonds (one of the plethora of game modes that also includes Death Match, Team Death Match, Demolition, and Zombie) and attempting to hide from two enemies. They were hopping and firing, trying to shoot over the lip of moon dune I was behind. Hunkered down, backed into a corner, I had two options: fight or dig? I was out of shotgun ammo, so the choice was dig. And by "dig" I mean I fired a drill into the ground and jumped in the hole, then plugged it up with blocks behind me.


These kinds of cartoon physics are silly, but can produce astonishing moments: I've watched entire buildings crumble after timed TNT tore their foundations out, I've blasted the blocks out of the side of a tower to allow a marksman to snipe a scrambling enemy through the hole. Moment to moment it can be loads of fun: you can snipe rockets out the air while jetpacking across valleys, you can dig up into an enemy base and take them by surprise. Nowhere's safe when enemies can drop in from the sky, or claw their way out the ground: not the moon, not the Tower of London, not the Dragon Bridge, not the Spooky Mansion.

Land of The Lost

Yup, those are all playable maps. They're all distinct, with different challenges inherent to each: the Dragon Bridge is set amongst tall, rolling hills, while the Spooky Mansion has a map-dominating castle in the centre. If there's a negative in their use, it's that the challenges are a bit confusing and not detailed enough. That's not a problem in something like deathmatch, but when you're hunting diamonds for your team the icon spins and jerks awkwardly. There's generally not enough information for the players to create a cohesive unit from the disparate public gamers.


But oh, the lag! There's no denying that Jagex has flubbed this one. The lag wasn't a problem when I was playing pre-release version a week before the public landed on the servers, but when they did, things started to crumble. The lovely, oddly designed levels are host to skittering, jittery fights that seem to run in slow-motion. The more players involved, the bigger the lag. People are complaining on the forums and in-game about the state it was released in, and I have to echo their anger.

What about hosting a custom server, you ask? Nope -- there's no server software for the community to bear the load. Ace of Spades is also missing a level editor, which is really surprising in a game built from blocks, but that goes hand in hand with the locked-down server, I'd imagine. Those poor decisions have left it in the remarkable position of being fun to play, and completely unplayable at the same time. It's capable of some amazing moments, but Jagex haven't built the potential blockbuster (har har) that it could be.