My gf and I played it last night for about 7 hours. I hope they did remove the random NPC/mob encounters for the beta because running through the empty streets go old rather fast. I'm not looking for Suikoden levels of random-ass battles but it definitely felt like it needed more shooting/combat.
I would have gotten a lot more done on my own, but my gf was in her inventory after every fight/loot comparing this kneepads and backpacks like crazy. She also changed primary weapons and re-modded them abut 18 times. :sigh: When she discovered the appearance tab and how many coats and pants she had found I got up and tended the woodstove and split some firewood for 20 mins.
On the other hand, not playing with a friend probably would have bored me very quickly since there wasn't many thugs to fight.
Anyway, we did all the missions and side missions and 95% of the encounters and then went into the darkzone. I did enjoy the NPC fights in the DZ but felt they needed to add a lot more there as well. We extracted some loot a few times, thought someone was trying to steal our stuff the second time and chased him off. Turns out he just wanted to extract as well so we didn't have to cap him after all. Got into a firefight with a couple of red-skull tagged players right after we had extracted (they attacked us) and managed to kill one and the other ran off to (to later be shot by someone else according to the chat log).
Then, as we were leaving the DZ (or thought we were - we went to the entrance not exit) we were jumped by 2 more guys. My gf was diddling with her inventory again and I was 'keeping watch'. She completely ignored my warnings that two red-tagged guys were running very fast our way. 2 grenades later and a shotgun blast to my character's head later I was re-spawning. I was then informed that she thought I meant NPCs and she had time to finish modding her gun and that it was my fault we didn't win that fight. :/
All-in-all I liked it alright. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of randomized encounter/fights, but if the Dev said they turned that off then I suppose that'll change (I still think that's incredibly stupid since a lot of people were probably turned off from the game for a lack of fighting). I , also, would have loved it if there was more of a take back the city block-by-block vibe.
Oh, and I would have killed for a skateboard/bicycle or even goddamn razor scooter after the first hour. There is a reason they have cabs in cities - running around everywhere gets old really quick.
I still plan on buying it - but probably not as a day one purchase.
