So this weekend was the first beta weekend of the Secret World (of Alex Mack - no not really). I was lucky enough to win a free beta key from wodnews.net which will allow me to play as one of the factions, the Dragons. Now my mate James (who has been co-hosting some Darklings with me) has already bought the life time subscription and is also playing Dragons, and also has beta access. But for the beta weekends we have to play as specific factions, and this weekend was the turn of the Templars. So in brief in the Secret World you essentially play as monster hunters and paranormal investigators, allied to one of three factions (Illuminati, Templars, Dragons). These factions fight against each other while also investigating the world for the devices, magics and secrets to win the shadow war. So this basically means that it is a combat heavy MMO that draws on the same themes as Supernatural, the World of Darkness, the X-Files, Millennium etc etc. For the beta weekend the main locations were London, home of the Templars, and Kingsmouth - a location that takes heavy inspiration from the work of H.P Lovecraft. So we have the best of British and the best of New England. We have the streets of Shoreditch and the woods of Salem. Now graphically it works well. Not too amazing right now, but the locations are filled with atmosphere (the streets of London and the red phone boxes, and the streets of a coastal town of America). Put it this way it runs fine on my laptop (Toshiba Satellite Pro L670-189 with 6 Gig RAM, and a ATi Radeon Mobility HD 5650 graphics card). So it's a year old but it works fine. So the gameplay. First up. I hate most if not all MMOs on the basis of them all requiring you to grind. Now as a table top rper that just does nothing for me. Fuck that shit! Now the basic combat mechanics is nothing special, no different to any other MMO. Select skills. Press to attack. Await cool down. Attack again.There are guns, close combat weapons and magic. There are items to equip like talismans and charms. Now that all sound not very unique. Monsters of course act in the same manner and drop shit when killed. What is different is the need to grind. So of course you get xp for killing monsters - but that is not the main way. Of course you get xp, and a lot, for completing missions. Now not all missions are the same. Some are go here, collect this, bring it back. Or go here, kill this thing, kill more, survive. But then they also have missions that require proper thought. They are quests that involve using your brains and solving riddles and finding the correct locations and items. This means that there are missions that don't rely on how powerful you are. It also means that team work is more useful to have more brains working on it. The exact same reason why I love Assassin's Creed 2. Other cool things are that clues are give as in game artefacts. So things are written on pages of the phone book. Rather than just bland text. Also the game is not level based. Instead you just buy ranks in skills as you see fit and kit out with two weapons and so you swap between ranges. So over all my experience with the game was great. Myself and my mate James essentially rped as Dean and Sam Winchester. So we had Google chat open on voice chat and were chatting through the clues as we battled our way to the next clue. So roll on the next beta weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment