Prof, please move this if you think a non-mini thread doesn't belong here, but as Matakishi put his Cthulhu MMO thread on the Cthulhu board I figured it was okay...
So I've tried MMOs before, but for one reason or another never really stuck with them. I really like the communties, joining a guild and playing with other people and all that.That Star Wars one that came out last year had good stories and interesting worlds, but the main stumbling block for me with this kind of thing is the
gameplay (which is quite a stumbling block). Click on your oponent, click on an ability, learn your rotations, Tank/DPS/Healer teams, all that shit. It doesn't seem very role-playey to me, more like some kind of puzzle game. I prefer the action RPG, where to shoot someone you don't click on them and then click on the "shoot gun" button,
you aim the gun and fire it. Games like
Skyrim and
Fallout 3.
So I was thinking about getting into that Secret World thing, the one Matakishi posted about, but I wasn't sure. Then, thinking of
Fallout 3 and
Fallout: New Vegas I saw this:
An action-MMORPG very much in the vein of
Fallout. And then I saw it was Free-to-Download, and also Free-to-Play. What? I didn't seem to have an excuse not to try it out. So here's how I've got on over the last three or four days...
Let me introduce you my character:
She is a clone, grown in a LifeNet lab purely for the purpose of having her organs harvested. But she wasn't having any of that, and so escaped the facility in an "exciting introductory tutorial mission", only to find herself having to cope with life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Some sort of biological and/or nuclear disaster has wiped out most of humanity (that just keeps happening, doesn't it?), and a few survivors are eking out some kind of life in a relatively unaffected area in the south west of what was once the United States.
"You can have my organs! Put me back in the pod!"
She finds herself helping out in a small community troubled by raider scum and a rather worrying toxic waste problem. She soon eschews her newbie starter weapons in favour of this lovingly-fashioned piece of state-of-the-art killing technology: A plank of wood. Yes, she's proud to say she made this weapon herself. Quite the craftsman, ain't she? It actually does loads more damage than the fireaxe for some reason, no doubt the love that went into making it.
She soon scavenges some clobber to better blend in with the local riff-raff. Now while the game might not have the latest snazzy graphics (it has been going since 2009, I think), the day/night cycle does lead to some rather beautiful sunrises and sunsets (like the one Yewande is ignoring in the above picture).
Star Wars: The Rather Expensive Old Republic may be much prettier generally, but it doesn't even
have day/night cycles. All the planets in the Star Wars galaxy seem to be tidally-locked to their suns. So free game wins on that (admittedly not very important) score.
A little while later and she is a little better equipped to survive in this harsh new world. From the neck up at any rate, she has adopted a look partially based on the eyepatch-wearing Angelina Jolie in... er...
That Thing Where Angelina Jolie Wears An Eyepatch.
Forget the trusty old plank. Wooden planks are now obsolete technology. The crossbow is the weapon of the future!
The game world seems massive at the moment (as I am unfamiliar with it). She has covered but a tiny fraction of just one of the areas but it is still too big to walk everywhere. So you're going to need a mount.
Meet my trusty steed,
Divorce Referendum. She bought him as an untrained horse and trained him to be a cargo mount. It means he can carry lots of her stuff, but she can't fight from his back. I'm thinking I maybe should have made him a combat mount instead. It is rather annoying having to get off the horse to fight all the time. Oh well, I'll just have to get used to being mounted infantry instead of cavalry (or get another horse).
As well as horses you can get quad bikes, motorcycles, Mad Max-style junk-buggies and also cars. But that's all a little out of my reach at the minute and so for now I'll have to make do with old
Divorce Referendum.
A girl and her horse enjoying another Arizona sunset.
Our heroine runs into a little bother on the road...
"Excuse me, miss. Could you give me directions to..."
"Ouch! Watch where you're pointing that thing! You could have my (other) eye out with that!"
"Miss? Er, miss?"
Hostile giant mutant rabbits. You have got to be fucking kidding.
If you want to have nice things but don't have cash, you'll have to get used to rummaging in bin bags and getting your hands all mucky. Scavenging is an important skill, as there aren't really any shopping malls. You can buy gear from other players with the in-game poker chip currency, or with real-life money from the Fallen Earth website; but otherwise you're going to have to make your own stuff out of junk you find. Later in the show, Konnie Huq will be showing the viewers how to make a model of Tracy Island out of a bunch of medical waste she found round the back of the town clinic.
Contemplating a new look. What do you think? Yes? no? Can she carry it off?
So there we are. I'm having a blast in this game at the moment, and it ain't costing me a cent. As I said it is free to download and also free to play: no monthly subscription. You can get perks and gear by paying cash, but the game is perfectly serviceable played for free. So if any Lead Adventurers are out there already, or if you like MMOs or Fallout-style games and want to give it a go, maybe you can say hello when you're out there in the wasteland. You can download it from the Fallen Earth website (
http://www.gamersfirst.com/fallenearth/ ), or if you are on
Steam you can get it straight from there.
Welcome, Guest. Please 
April 27, 2024, 07:11:50 PM
December 02, 2013, 07:37:49 PM