Loadout PS4 Update Adds New Character, Smoother Shooting

For those of you enjoying the over-the-top third-person shooting antics of Loadout on the PlayStation 4, you may have noticed that a recent update made your shooting sprees more enjoyable than ever. For those who haven't tried Loadout yet, perhaps the recent additiona of “Phase Zero” improvements will finally convince you to lock and load.

For starters, as mentioned above, Loadout is a free-to-play shooter so, if you have a PS4 and enjoy shooting things, you have nothing to lose when it comes to giving the game a fair shake. As I said a few weeks ago when the game first launched, this is actually a good example of how to do free-to-play right, giving players plenty of content to sink their teeth into and cosmetic bonuses, as well as ways to bypass some of the grind, for those who don't want to earn their rewards by simply playing the game. Within an hour of play time, I had built a pretty rad weapon and was ready to keep pushing forward without ever feeling like I needed to spend a dime.

If that wasn't enough to gain your trust, then Edge of Reality has decided to actually support their game, rolling out this first update of tweaks and content less than a month after the title actually launched. Even better is the fact that this is leading into a more substantial update coming down the pipe, but we'll talk about that later.

In the meantime, let's have a gander at what Update Zero actually offers, revealed this weekend on the PlayStation Blog.

“We've released our first update for Loadout on PS4,” said Community Manager Jason Heitman. “We've taken all your feedback over the past few weeks and crammed a huge list of awesome improvements and outrageous additions (you will know it when you see it) to the Loadout universe.”

Heitman goes on to explain that the main purpose of this first update was to fine-tune the console version of the game, getting things ready for even more content to come. These additions include a new playable character called Disco Kroad Tony, boosts to the enemy AI, “extensive weapon balancing” and analog running that lets the player automatically move into a sprint rather than needing to push a button.

Also added in Update Zero are performance enhancements for aiming and camera work, as well as difficulty tuning. New parts for your guns have been added, as well as new ways to acquire them. Another huge plus is the inclusion of persistent lobbies, so you no longer have to go back into matchmaking at the end of every single round. You can also now join PvP sessions that are already rolling, and the usual assortment of bugs and stability issues have been addressed. We see updates like this all the time for other free-to-play games like Warframe and World of Tanks, and they typically make the game bigger and better than ever.

As for the Phase One update that's in the works, expect a new player rating system, more social features including text chat, an update to 60 fps, new maps to play on, weapons to play with and more.