Conversation

I want to keep playing Sonar Shock, but goddamn the gimmicky reload system keeps pissing me off. It's bad enough with magazine based weapons... at least you can usually finish off an enemy before you need to reload during a quiet moment or while you're sprinting in circles trying to buy time.

Then I found the lever action repeater. I had lots of ammo for this, I thought. Why not swap my shotgun for it? Of course, idiot that I am, I failed to realize that every shot requires pulling on the lever to chamber to next round. Shooting is accomplishing by moving the crosshairs onto the target with the mouse, and reloading is accomplished by moving the mouse down into the corner of the screen, clicking on the lever on the gun diagram in the UI, and dragging it back to reload, then moving the crosshairs back up to the target, shoot again, repeat.

Maybe people with better reflexes and good muscle memory can handle this, but it seems retarded and clunky to me. Having the user click and drag on ammo to reload the weapon, or to pull back the slide and chamber a round if the gun is empty must have seemed like a fun, immersive idea in the design phase, but in practice? Just give me a dedicated reload button for fuck's sake.

Combine this with the tank controls that don't even let you strafe while running, and it's just ass to play if you have a bad weapon. I spend more time running in circles fumbling with the interface to reload my gun than I do shooting, and that's if I don't get stuck on level geometry because I can't strafe to evade it.