Gameplay

LEGO has confirmed that LEGO Universe will be cooperatively played with others to accomplish in-game tasks rather than PvP (player versus player) gameplay. For example, as shown in a walkthrough video taken at CES 2010, there are some special “gold bricks” within LEGO Universe, which, at times, can only be obtained with the help of friends.

Quick Build

Another gameplay feature is Quick Build, which allows a user to quickly build an item. This can be used to make turrets, vehicles (only shown in early concept video, and not quite confirmed as of now), and other useful objects. In some video walkthroughs, it ca be found that destroyed Darklings can be turned into other helpful objects, such as turrets, with the use of Quick Build.

Properties

In yet another CES 2010 video, it was confirmed and shown that a player will have his/her own Property, in which they can use bricks collected from battles, shops, and other locations to build houses and other models. (All models are approved before public availability, of course.) As of the Closed Beta Phase, it is reported on some sources that a user can use up to 80,000 bricks.

Animation Capabilities

One other feature of properties (shown in the same CES 2010 video) reveals that a user will be able to animate objects and/or pets within their property, using a block-programming system similar to the one used with the Mindstorms robotic models. A user can have an animal or object do certain things upon nearing them, saying a keyword, as well as many other possibilities. The user can then adjust the numerical value of each property of the programming, to create a truly unique animation.

Cost

LEGO Universe will be available on DVD at some stores, as well as online, by download. Instead of purchasing the whole game on one set price, a user will be required to pay a certain subscription amount. As of now, no one is certain of whether it will be run on monthly costs, yearly costs, or both, but it appears as though a monthly cost will be implimented with the Live 1 release.

While Oren Peli‘s Paranormal Activity is blowing up in theaters and making tons of cash, he is prepping his next film for Paramount Pictures, Area 51. He has cast his lead actors in the film, and guess what. No one’s heard of them… yet. Reid Warner, Darrin Bragg and Ben Rovne are the people who will star in the film. I don’t know about you, but I like that he is using people we’ve never heard of. It will add believability to the story.

Area 51 has been shooting in Utah for a month already. As we’ve said before, it will be one of the found footage films, like the Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity. It’s being described as a claustrophobic terror. Peli says,

I’d rather not say anything about Area 51 except that I am very pleased to be working with the same team who stood by me for the two or three years it took Paranormal Activity to get into theaters.

He has a much bigger budget to work with this time around, and I’m interested in seeing how this project turns out. The film follows three teenagers whose curiosity leads them to the legendary and mysterious Area 51 Air Force base deep in the Nevada desert.

Check out the official press release below for more details:

LOS ANGELES, October 6, 2009 – Writer-director Oren Peli is set to start production next week on AREA 51, his follow-up to the supernatural chiller PARANORMAL ACTIVITY which after creating exceptional underground notoriety since its production in 2007 is now in the early stages of its US release by Paramount.

The AREA 51 storyline is a closely guarded secret but is reputedly centered around three teenagers whose curiosity leads them to the legendary and mysterious Area 51 Air Force base deep in the Nevada desert. AREA 51 will, like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY employ a “found footage” narrative strategy. Though Peli will enjoy a significantly larger budget than the $11,000 he spent to make PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, he will continue to work with undiscovered actors.

AREA 51 is produced by Jason Blum under his Blumhouse Productions banner, with Room 101’s Steven Schneider and IM Global chief Stuart Ford serving as executive producers. The film was co-financed by Aramid Entertainment Fund and Incentive Filmed Entertainment, with IM Global handling worldwide sales and CAA co-repping the title in the U.S.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has enjoyed sell out midnight screenings in 33 cities over recent weeks and Paramount is set to expand the film to around the clock screenings in 40 cities this weekend.

Said Peli: “Actually, I’d rather not say anything about AREA 51 except that I am very pleased to be working with the same team who have stood by me for the two or three years it took PARANORMAL ACTIVITY to get into theatres.”

Said Blum: “Oren has already proven that he has a unique gift for using technology and our inherent fear of the unknown to tell simple yet emotionally compelling stories. In this case his canvas is just a little larger.”

Said David Molner, Chairman of both Incentive and Aramid Capital Partners:” Not since ‘Blair Witch’ has such innovative film-making set off such a stampede among young movie audiences. We are proud and privileged to be in business with Oren and Jason and our longtime partners at IM Global.”

Said Ford: “We’ve already had a crazy ride with Oren and Jason on PARANORMAL ACTIVITY that looks set to get even crazier. It’s exciting to be launching into AREA 51 with Oren just as a worldwide audience is discovering his thrilling debut.”

[-] What Testing is All About [-]

Before any gamer geeks out there start panting hard and fogging up their screens while they think (with all too much enthusiasm) on the possibility of playing a new game before many else gets to, realize that it won’t be what you’ve experienced before. I’m not making reference to the various features Global Agenda offers in contrast with other games, as I will elaborate on later while attempting to not repeat statements in my previous GA article, I’m referencing to that fact that beta testing GA is just that: beta testing.

All too often, a select few, anxious gaming enthusiasts are given the opportunity to join in beta testing of a game that has not yet been released. Nine out of ten times, this experience has nothing at all whatsoever to do with actual testing, but is, instead, all about you experiencing a polished and finished game before anyone else and then telling the rest of the world all about it.

If anyone out there actually thinks that they were making major contributions to games like Aion or will make a difference in SWTOR’s beta testing, think again. Most people who played Aion beta payed for the privilege, and BioWare stated before opening beta sign-ups (in an interview that I can’t find, now) that studios don’t learn anything new from beta testing. So, most studios don’t expect anyone invited to beta test to actually test anything at all. Hi-Rez Studios, however, thinks much differently.

They make sure to issue an email about one week before every not-on-site test, explaining what they want players to look for and be aware of. They also make sure to include a snippet to motivate beta participants to test, not just play. A real tester is going to find bugs, write them down, report them, and try to duplicate the bug until the studio fixes it.

[-] My Experiences [-]

GRAPHICS

I rank the graphics as one of the highest in quality for an MMORPG, which shows through even better when I play from my gaming rig at home. It takes a few seconds at the login screen for the graphics to really kick in, but I have absolutely no performance problems in-game. I’m not so big on the smooth lighting textures that Hi-Rez chose to use for character, items and environment, but it’s not a deal breaker, either. It kind of reminds me of Doom 3.

SOUND

The music and sound quality are great. I really am glad I invested in those 5.1 surround sound force feedback headphones because games like Global Agenda are definitely making use of it. Whenever you’re involved in PvP combat against other players, every queue an enemy can give you to let you know they’re attacking is worth watching and listening for. Precision gaming audio equipment will give you that much more of an edge, making the difference between number one and second best.

USER INTERFACE & ITEMS

As for the user interface, I have mixed feelings. I really like the helpful info stations that a player can query to find specific locations, such as the armor store, and it generates a three-dimensional path hovering above the ground for the player to follow. As for equipment and talent windows, they’re not quite there, yet.

It was very confusing for me to figure out how to have any equipment or abilities at all. Most players are used to filling up their skill trees, dragging combat ability buttons from a menu to a hot bar and then equipping weapons to a character slot from the inventory. Not in Global Agenda. Fill up the trees, select the abilities you want to use, and then select your weapon designated by how you set up your tree. In short, weapons aren’t items in an inventory that you need to buy or find, but are given to you after setting talent tree points.

Don’t worry, you can still upgrade your weapon, armor and more above another player’s through the use of special mod items. These mod items are supposed to have something to do with nanotechnology, but they’re used the same way as gems in WoW.

The controls and interface are a bit different than any MMO you’ve probably played before, it doesn’t take long to figure out. In fact, the only hindrance to playing the game most intuitively is not moving around the map, but using the hot bar to initiate attacks and special abilities as you run around in the same manner you would in an FPS (first person shooter).

GAMEPLAY

The game runs smoothly. I have no complaints, there. I have not yet been able to test the orientation portions of the game, including any missions that grant experience. I’ve only been able to test PvP, so far, and while it is definitely pretty good on the PvP side (that’s the part Hi-Rez wants to focus on), I really, really want to get in on some PvE.

The PvP has a few different maps and modes. There’s a capture-the-flag type map, with three flags to capture/defend until time runs out. There’s a sort of escort mission that doesn’t use an MVP, but instead forces one team to move an object from one side of the map to the other, while the opposing forces try to stop it’s movement. The object cannot be reset or reversed and moves sort of slow. The only other PvP map I played besides those two looked to be a different version of capture the flag, but my team was getting pwn’ed so hardcore, I can’t tell you what it’s about.

COMMUNITY

In general, I like Global Agenda’s community. The dev’s all have characters and play the game, though it’s usually for testing, and they’re all super nice and/or helpful in game … even while they’re stomping you into the ground in PvP. Though almost every last one of the players in beta testing, right now, are high schoolers, they’re not entirely unruly. My chat box is not constantly overfilled with cursing and derogatory comments, which is nice.

I asked a lot of newb questions when I logged in on the beta, and while most of the testers who could read me didn’t respond, there were a few that actually answered my questions, were super helpful, and even offered me in-game currency to buy equipment that was, at that point, purely aesthetic.

ISSUES

The only issues I experienced had to do with things on the game coding side. I couldn’t participate in the first beta because there was some sort of issue that prevented me and several other players from being able to run the program. That issue, however, was fixed before the second beta, during which I ran around trying to learn the classes and how to play them in the short amount of time I had. During the second test the only issues I had were (1) the game was unstable in windowed mode and would freeze or crash regularly, and (2) after leaving an instance based mission, the game would either crash or freeze.

The reason for the score? Any issue that keep me from and discourages me from playing the game is a big issue.

During the second test I had developer David Tyler in chat the entire time, so I was very well taken care of on the support side of things. Thanks, David!

[-] OVERALL [-]

It must be known by all that this game is still in development, and since every bug I’ve ever experienced or reporting has been fixed, I forgive them any problems I have had. All other aspects of the game, including, to a lesser extent, graphics, and to a larger extent, things like user interface and class abilities, are constantly being updated. Hi-Rez Studios is making sure they get class balancing and intuitive in-game controls as fine-tuned as possible before releasing their baby for the whole world to play. For that, I will delay most of my opinions concerning most any aspect of the game, until the game is released.

When is the launch date? No one knows, yet. How can you get into the closed beta? Create an account and request to join. Will you be playing Global Agenda when it is released? As long as I’m not bogged down with SWTOR or FFXIV (because I have extreme lust issues for anything Star Wars and/or Final Fantasy), I will most likely be playing Global Agenda.

My main goal at watching the developer lead gameplay videos was to assess SWTOR as best I could from the gamers perspective as possible since I am not in the Alpha testing and, even though I have applied to beta testing, I’m not sure that I’ll make the cut.

After watching the Deceived trailer, which was totally effing awesome, I wasn’t sure what SWTOR would offer in terms of gameplay. Was it going to be more along the lines of a single-player game, like Knights of the Old Republic, only with characters that looked more cartoonish, like The Clone Wars mixed with WoW-sized armor, or would it be more along the lines of Star Wars Galaxies? As it turns out, it’s quite a bit of mixing previously successful Lucas concepts with new innovations.

Ican haz flmthrower?

The new feature that BioWare seams to most want to sell to players is SWTOR’s supposedly unprecedented level of interaction for an MMORPG. One aspect of said interaction is that absolutely every NPC in the game will have a verbal response for you and will be voiced in English or some existing Star Wars universe language. This wasn’t exactly unexpected, though, since the progression of player-NPC interaction has come from textual, to textual and body language, to MMOs having generic verbal responses for genders and races you may encounter. In fact, I can’t think of any current subscription based MMO that doesn’t have verbal responses to player interaction. I guess that BioWare is telling us that every line we’ll read in text from an NPC will also be voiced? They weren’t very clear about it in the videos.

Another feature relating to the level of interaction a gamer can plan to experience are the weighted decisions that each player will make as they progress through story-lines and quests. It looks like there will be many opportunities for players to speak with NPCs and choose responses that cannot be undone and will affect faction standings, quest rewards and even level grinding methods. Furthermore, while in a group, it appears that each group member experiencing the same interactive cut scene will be given the opportunity to respond to NPCs, but whether or not one team-mate’s actions will affect another’s in terms of factions standings and rewards is unclear. Most likely, I expect this part of the game will be fine-tuned after the game is launched and player response is weighed in.

I can hear the sound effects and music, already!

In terms of graphics, world map composition, and even basic character movement and struture, SWTOR is very reminiscent of both SWG and KotOR. To be more specific, the game looks, moves and feels like SWG, but with a few battle system, as well as, character and structure model enhancements that look to be influenced from a development standpoint from KotOR. Using the dev videos are representative samples, the environment, characters and effects don’t look to be anything spectacularly beautiful or even coded the same as games like in LotRO and FFXI, but will be like SWG was: very hardware intensive, requiring much of the typical system’s resources to render graphics that are not as good as they could be. That is to say that the resources used to graphic quality rendered ratio looks to be as inefficient as it was in SWG.

Getting to the battle part of things, BioWare and Lucas Arts are both very upfront and honest about their intentions concerning a “heroic style of combat.” They want any player to be able to easily handle several targets at one time. From the MMO player standpoint, this feature of SWTOR will allow for the feeling of invincibility and badassedness, but will severely take away from the team-based aspect of the MMO. In advance, I’m sorry to keep referring back to SWG, but the two games just look to be so similar! In SWG, the ability to defeat an entire dungeon full of the highest level mobs, including bosses to farm loot is what killed the game for me. Why keep playing a game who’s main attraction is, let’s face it, combat, when my character can kill anything by him/her-self? Side note: dual lightsaber weilding, cool, a lower level force user force-choking a Jedi Master, not cool.

Really? If you can force-choke another force user, you might as well be able to mind control them, too. Ridiculous... D:<

As far as classes are concerned, so far there look to be four developed classes, but the videos focus on Bounty Hunter and Sith Warrior. SWTOR doesn’t look like it will operate on a typical MMORPG team-play strategy where there is a tank, healer, crowd control and damage dealer. Combat survival will depend on each players’ equipment, stats and talent specialization, as usual, but in a world where every mob is not melee tank & spank, the deciding factor will be the player’s knowledge of their class and their ability to improvise based on what other people they may have with them. If SWTOR classes were to be classified in classic MMO categories, anything with a lightsaber, Sith and Jedi, or heavy armor, commandos, would tank, but also probably be the main damage dealers, while classes like Bounty Hunter would be more for soloing and role-playing. If previous Lucas Arts and BioWare titles are any clue, there may be a medic class in the works, but, most likely, every class will have self-healing methods including both items and class specific abilities.

As a general opinion of SWTOR, no matter how negative my review of the dev videos may read, I really want to play this game. The most attractive feature of this MMO is that it is in the Star Wars universe, which, coupled with the games interactivity features allow players, even ones that do not typically role-play in games, to easily immerse themselves into the story and develop their avatar as an actual character. If it is made with a few of the key elements contained in SWG, I will most likely lose myself in this MMO for many, many months. The features I speak of are ever expansive environments for my character to travel across including planet surfaces and space. I want there to be many planets to travel to, many NPC run ships to board, player built cities, player homes that are decoratively customizable, space ships, both star fighters and cruisers in which several players can roam or operate systems, outer space to explore, lots and lots of Star Wars lore including iconic figures we would know from this point in the time-line, faction based PvP, various land vehicles, droids for personal use, whether medic, combat, flight, data or whatever, and an environment that is both easy and fun to role-play in. If it gets all that and even more, you won’t get a review or even so much as a rating out of me because I’ll be too damned busy letting SWTOR suck my soul into MMORPG oblivion.

If you are unable to view the following YouTube versions of the gameplay walkthrough, you can view them on IGN.com’s website.

I’ve been waiting for Aion since I first heard about it, which wasn’t so long ago. I haven’t been anticipating it’s arrival for years, like the hundreds and thousands of U.S. and European fans chatting up in forums. I’ve merely been waiting for about the last eight months. I even downloaded a Korean launcher and tried to get into the beta they were having and did the same when the beta went to China. All of the work was for naught, and I was unable to experience true gameplay, first hand. Until this past weekend.

Me so tiny. ME SO BIG.

After the 20+ hours of downloading the launcher and game files, I was finally able to log on. I was greeted with a sort of Japanese version of holy-pop-concert music that made me feel like I was about to watch a kickass anime. The login screen was pretty pimping, too, with a display of a large, white city built on a mountain side with overflowing lush greenery and smooth flowing water falls. After I was finally able to stop gauking at the login screen, I went into character customization and spent about an hour making eight different characters, one of each class and four for each faction.

The customization options for characters has more options than any other pay-to-play MMO I’ve ever seen, even more than SWG. Lip size, smile arc, tattoos, breast size, hair styles and more! I actually spent a good bit of time customizing some of my characters to look like real people I know. It turned out well. To illustrate the incredible differences in customization, I took a pic of the smallest and largest available heights.

After I got into the actual gameplay, I was beamed into a generic sort of starting area remeniscant of many Chinese made MMORPGs. For the first 10 minutes, the game felt very much like Runes of Magic, actually. Running around, picking up quests while killing level 1 mobs that are just walking around, and gathering nodes of plants nearby.

But as I ventured farther and began to accept more quests, I noticed that not all was as similar to free-to-play MMOs as I had previously conjectured. When I approached the first city or small village, I was just sort of running around turning in quests and picking up new ones, checking out what the vendors had, but then I stopped for a minute to just look around. Everything looked fantastic. From the textures on the floors and walls, to the NPCs and other characters around me. The food vendor was holding a basket of food and picking items to show off to the crowd. I decided to take a bit of a closer look at the scenery and ventured to a small stream nearby.

Catching fish in the stream. Sushi time, bitches!

The only reason I went to the stream was to check out the water effects (which were great), but then I got something extra. My character started reacting with the environment around him, started checking out the fish. He’d reach in to try to catch one, miss, try again, and catch one! It didn’t loot an item to put into my inventory or anything, it was just for show. In fact, the character even threw the fish back into the water.

Hiding from the rain.

From then on I would stop every so often to see how my character would react to new environmental conditions. The rain was great. It wouldn’t always just storm harshly or sprinkle lightly, in fact, it would alternate. Also, the rain wouldn’t start out of nowhere, the sky, environmental lighting and sound effects would clue me as to what the weather change would be. I remember seeing a flash of light and everything in the forest I was running through, all the objects, static, player and NPC, having yellow light cast on them, but not overlayed. Instead, it was faded from one side, as light hits an object in real life. Then thunder. Flash and thunder, again. Then I heard the rain falling through the trees before I finally saw it.

When it wasn’t raining, the scenery was just as beautiful. Critters were running around with the overt and passive mobs. Everything was attack-able, except for the NPC’s. Which leads me to another part of the gameplay, the quests.

A lovely day for giant-insect extermination!

I enjoyed the story-line, very much. But in the structure of the quest a feature I enjoyed the most was the ability to make choices in a particular quest line. For instance, one quest had a a smitten fisherman wanting you to give flowers to a nearby fisher-woman for him. After gathering the flowers, I opted to take the flowers for him, hoping maybe I could get some nooky or at least some sort of reward, but instead I got a disgruntled fisherwoman and a heart-broken fisherman. I wonder what would have happened if I told him to take the flowers himself?

Frank's meat pie was always the hottest dish on the plains!

Another feature of the quests that I really enjoyed were cutscenes. This little tidbits would help show you where you needed to go for what part of the quest, just in case the instructions on the quest journal weren’t clear enough (you, dumbass). The best part about the quests, however, were not how some merely tied into the local culture and people, as most quests in MMOs do, but how the main story-line unfolded to let you in on you being a part of something much bigger.

Turns out, all this fighting skill that you have is not natural; you were trained. You just don’t remember. A giant tree in a mystical forest helps you figure that out. He’s guarded by walking trees, sort of Wizard of Oz-esque, and helps you remember things long forgotten. You start to remember a war that happened a thousand years ago that tore the planet into two halves, and that you were a part of the war that rages even still. You are a great warrior, and you don’t get to just hear about and watch cut-scenes about it, you get to play as it!

You’re transported to this other realm, well, not really, you’re simply remembering it. But either, way, it’s still cool. There’s a line of soldiers there to greet you and you’re dressed all like a badass. They salute and cheer for you, proclaiming that now that you’re here, the war will soon be over! You get to fly around through the rift of space to a small chunk of land, forged around what look to be wyrm bones. You easily fend off several beastly looking mobs at a time and then a boss appears. The he/she/it thing goes down pretty easy and it looks like you’re about to win, until CUTSCENE! It knocks you back and flings you into a wall. You struggle, but end up passing out and wake up next to the crazy talking tree, again.

BAMF!

From then on out you realize there’s definitely something spectacular about you; you are some kind of chosen human-type dude with wings that can fly’n shit. So, you get some help to be transported to the friggin awesome city where all cool wing-type hero people hang out. It’s effing beautiful, btw. Once in the city, a parade of people salute your awesomeness and your return to the war effort. You are knighted as a true badass of badassed-dom.

After I was crowned King Badass of Badassadoria, I decided that the first thing I should do is run around, prancing like a sissy woman-like-man and check out what the city had to offer before I got booted off the server. I stopped at every shop I came by to check out the cool armor and weapons. The accessory shop was pretty spectacular because it offered different types of masks and sunglasses, all with different looks and all with stats (I like them not being jsut for show).

I'm sexy when I cook.

Then I spent the rest of my time checking out the crafting system. As far as I can tell, there are four professions. I only got to check out cooking and tailoring. It looks like a player could learn as many crafts as they have money for and what was pretty awesome about the crafts is that they give you quests to level. For levels 1~10, they give you all the materials you need to complete the quest and you simply repeat the quest until you hit level 10. Then a new quest becomes available for 10~20. It’s at this point that you begin to buy some of your materials yourself from a vendor that’s 3 steps away for dirt-cheap.

OH! That’s another thing. The commerce of the game. I forget the currency used, but it might as well be called “gold”, and it didn’t separate into silver and copper or whatever, it was just numbers. Like, at level 5 I had 1,300 gold and then at level 10 I had 15,000, with learning a new crafting skill costing about 6,000, I think? Also, I was clicking around on the user interface and noticed that as you gain reputation with areas, prices on things you buy decrease and you get more gold when you sell stuff in that area. Then I saw something else about taxes and there was a percentage next to it. Maybe that’s how much you would pay for a house or something? I didn’t see anything about lodging, hotels, or user decorated rooms.

I assume that if the game has any sort of personal lodging, it will be very similar to mog houses of FFXI or maybe even neighborhood-thingies, like in LotRO. The world didn’t look anywhere near expansive enough to build player cities, like in SWG. But that’s fine because I’ll trade player cities for streamlined gameplay and environment, any day.

All in all, I’d say from my experience so far, I rate this game an 8/10. It’s not perfect (which would be a 7), but I can already tell that it’s going to hook me in for a long run (going to be a 9 in later levels), but I have yet to play the perfect game (which would be a 10). I think I might have actually fell in love with this game because of the music and scenery coupled with crafting (I love crafting) and story-line.

———————————-

For more information on all of Aion’s features visit AionOnline.com. For information concerning discussion of classes and game play and much more, visit AionSource.com. If you’re a part of the closed beta, find out updated information at the Aion Beta Forums. If you want to get in on the closed beta, I suggest either pre-ordering the game or following the Aion members on Twitter: @Aion_Ayase @Aion_Liv @Aion_Xaen

It was a typical overcast and rainy day. The kind that always makes me think that, at any moment, I’m sure to run into some zombies and, finally, have the opportunity to beat them back with my fists and giant forehead or just run away from them, get to a nearby truck with a few shotguns and chainsaws in it (though, I don’t have one, this is Georgia, yall) and get to hackin zombits.

I was a bit put off by the waiting lobby. The emails I received told me that I could dress casually, and though I was wearing jeans and black, steel-toed work boots, I was glad I at least had on a button-up because the secretary looked like one of those women who are half professional desk jokey and half professional killer. I definitely didn’t want to go anywhere without her permission, but I finally broke down and asked to use the potty. To which she replied, “Go urinate in the street with the rest of the scum.” So, I did.

I was relieved (haha… ah… ‘relieved’… because I was just talking about… *ahem*) to see Michal Adam, PR Specialist and Associate Producer for Hi-Rez Studios, walking to the lobby from the other side of the glass doors. Relieved, partly because I didn’t have to keep my back to a wall to ensure some sort of safety from secretary-caused bodily harm, but mostly because she wasn’t some big, serious, mean looking professional businessman starring me down and assessing the worth of my soul. In fact, she was a short, attractive, long-haired woman with good humor and huge tracks of land.

Very casual-professional, Michal invited me with her to the break room so that I could start pelting her with questions and so she could inform me about the origin and goals of Hi-Rez Studios and Global Agenda.

——————–

[-] The Origin of Hi-Rez Studios [-]

Hi-Rez was founded by Erez Goren, who is, apparently, some kind of crazy-mutant mixture of software coding intelligent and business wise. He co-founded Radiant Systems, a company specializing in providing Point of Sale systems for places like Taco Hell & grew their revenues about one hundred and thirty percent in seven years. He was then so bold and ballsy as to build his own company for developing enterprise software and sold that company after a few years. It now has products in some twenty five thousand sites world-wide. That’s some kind of evil genius rated distribution, right there, I tell you wut.

I guess by this time Erez was thinking to himself in a sort of British hunting enthusiast sort-of aristocrat kind of voice (because as much as he loves baseball and giant-sized, greasy cheeseburgers, he’s too awesome to not be British… even if he is, in fact, not British), “Well, old bean, I seem to have conquered and utterly demolished every goal I’ve set out for. Time for some fun!” Erez promptly started another company, lowered his sword against its shoulders as it kneeled and dubbed it “Hi-Rez Studios.”

As their website boasts, Hi-Rez is the largest independent video game development studio in the state of Georgia. What this means, as Michal pointed out to me, is that Hi-Rez doesn’t have to deal with the pressures of having a crazy, blood-thirsty monkey on their back (publishers). Even so, Erez needed some good talent to help him out with his new endeavor. He called up Todd Harris, who worked with him at BlueCube, and Todd, using his knowledge of how the frack to manage huge projects and help make software awesome, presumably spoke like Tommy Chong when he said to Erez, “Hey, bro. I’ll totally help your gaming business thing, man.” Then Erez and Todd laughed and started making, what they were sure would be, a pwntastic gaming company.

——————–

[-] The Origin of Global Agenda [-]

Now that Erez had his own video game development studio, he decided he should, probably, make a game or two. But, what should he make his first one about?! Turns out that Erez is way more into the “pew-pew” and possible realities of the future than the fantastical versions of an Earth-like past.

Now, tell me the secrets of Global Agenda or you'll never leave that glass!

Apparently, Erez is one of those guys, like me, who reads articles from Cracked.com about man-made, flesh eating robots (that are really vegetarians) and possible ways based on biological evolution and engineering that humanity may eventually turn into zombies, and has to take breaks to call, email, text and twitter as many people as possible about humanity’s impending doom. Considering that there’s a growing fan base wanting to read and even be a part of such information, but not too many MMORPGs that focus on the future of shiny, metallic armor humans might have to wear to protect themselves from the harsh conditions of Earth after world-wide devastations ravage its resources, Erez decided to merrily skip and trod down the road less travelled.

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[-] The Lore [-]

While there are other ways to get information concerning the lore of Global Agenda than harassing Associate Producers (here and here, for example), I prefer my information disconnected a little fuzzy not all that accurate beaten out of something from a second-hand source. So, here it is:

The most common wiping impliment of your not-so-distant future.

It’s set in the 22nd century. For those readers of mine who don’t know what the 22nd century is, the events in this game unfold a very long time after your death that involved counting to twenty, a highway, and the most horrifying ending to a game of hide-n-seek, ever. There’s been some kind of disaster that’s affected most of, if not all of the world, very much limiting the abundance of habitable locations. Pretty much all of these places are controlled by a government called the “Common Wealth”. You have decided that you don’t like this Common Wealth thing very much and want to live your life without Big Brother always stabbing you with cattle prods and telling you what to do, so you’re going to fight against them in an effort to retire to a nice, isolated beach on the coast of a large and very radioactive body of water.

Since there are, as mentioned not one paragraph ago, few habitable locations left on the planet, you’re going to have to fight not only the Common Wealth for your little piece of plutonium-laced pie, but you’ll also have to convince other rebelling factions that this particular piece is yours, dammit. They’re going to have to either join you or, mayhaps, get involved with a little negotiation… negotiation between their face and your ass! Yeah! There’s sure to be a lot of unpleasantries going along with that, considering all of the toilet paper factories were (wait for it) wiped out, long ago.

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[-] The Game [-]

Like this, but more evil.

Chatting with Michal, I found out that the game has been in a playable, interactive form for almost 3 years, now, but that it just wasn’t as polished back then as it is now. Currently, Hi-Rez comes out with a new build for the game every single day. The process involves some sort of super intelligent computing system (that will eventually be the fall of man once it becomes self-aware) to test the builds overnight that are fabricated by the teams creating the designs.

The entire studio of about 40 developers is working only on Global Agenda. Animators, designers and programmers all coming together to make one solid, fine-tuned, awesome piece of video gaming, soul robbing, mad science for me and you to drool over.

[-] Classes [-]

Players control one character, which can be one of four classes: Assault, Recon, Robotic or Medic.

Assault focuses on wearing heavy armor and/or putting out lots of damage with big, heavy weaponry. I like to think of it as a commando. Recon has the ability to attack from long range with sniper rifles or to sneak in close to enemies, cloaked, and attack with melee or small arms fire. Robotic I like to think of as an engineer that can create an array of robotic mobs including static turrets. Last, but not least is the medic class that’s able to, of course, heal itself and nearby allies while putting out its own dose of fire power.

Every class has options on how to interact in combat based on the way they stack their stats, what type of armor & weapons they use, and which ability tree they put points into. The ability to control stats and choose trees allows every class the option of being a sort of survivalist, a specialist, or a mixture of talents. Also, being able to swap out weapons and armor during a combat situation is pretty nice. There is also a crafting system that allows for enhancement, health recovery and other items to be used by the character, but I’ve yet to explore that aspect of the game.

[-] Game play [-]

Characters are referred to as ‘agents’ and may set up ‘agencies’ with other players. This is a key component of the story-line and of Global Agenda game play.

Agencies may recruit players and compete with rival agencies in multi-instance based combat where agencies are split up into groups, thrown into different areas of the devastated world, and fight each other for those positions. Global Agenda isn’t all about PvP, however.

The player versus enemy system works in a similar way. There’s a city and a place to go, a task to complete and an instance to enter that involves combating something you don’t much care for and would like better if it were a big pile of burning corpses. The mobs you encounter have AI akin to something you might encounter in a first person shooter meaning that fights aren’t going to always be like, “Okay, everyone. Let’s all start wailing on this one, now. NO! STEVE! WTF ARE YOU DOING, GDI, STEEEEEEVE!!!!” There will, however, be boss-like mobs that you run into and, may I say, they look a bit intimidating. There will also be situations where it is crucial to have at least one of each class on your team.

GDI STEEEEVE!!!

Anyway, the persistent world feeling left by claiming areas with agencies, the automatic thrill that accompanies playing PvP, the hard-core I’m-gonna-beat-your-ass looking mobs and the playability of a first person shooter all combine to make a pretty big adrenaline rush, whether out of fear or excitement.

Oh, yeah, I totally forgot to mention that everyone will also have jet packs (fuck yeah!). I know, some of you are going “huh…?” others “WOOT!” and still others “well, that ruined it for me…” but I assure you that from what I’ve seen from the combat situation, it does not make players OP in PvP and does not take away from the overall game play. In fact, it adds another level to the game, allowing you to experience combat and the environment in a way that was previously unavailable in other games.

Also, you may be wondering about how to upgrade weaponry and armor. Is there a loot system and are the upgrades dependant solely on crafting? From what I can tell, pretty much all upgrades will come from trading in a form of in-game currency to NPCs. I did ask more questions about how the economy will work, but I don’t think that aspect of Global Agenda is much developed beyond having a public auction house, just yet.

[-] Graphics [-]

As of right now, the game’s development is focused on playability for PC’s. This means that there will be some control over the level and quality of graphics available to each player. So, I don’t want to be playing with anyone and hear “Oh, man… I just can’t do this, guys. My FPS is, like, .004” anymore than I want to hear some bastard say “Mine runs fine with the graphics turned all the way up. I’m running on a [insert loads of statistics about some sort of ultimate gaming rig that I’m not lucky or rich enough to own].”

I want this so bad...

Much of the motions you will see characters make in the game will be based on motion captures that have been fine-tuned and edited by the dev teams focused on character systems. I like this because it means I’m going to see real motion in this game instead of computerized renderings of what some animator only thought a person would look like if they were hit by a missile. Oh, wait… they wouldn’t motion capture people being hit by missiles, would they…?

The character graphics are based mostly on the graphics of the armor and weaponry the character will be carrying, and I’ve got to say that it looks shiny and nice. The details designed into the textures and colors of the various armor pieces bring the game closer to reality. The fact that they thought far enough ahead to include armor dye kits, also makes me very happy, unlike many other MMOs. What really brings the game to our world, however, are the environments.

The environment design team, I think, did a good job with their creations. From what I saw in the Beta Testing Room, the environments are detailed to the point that I want to explore them. I want to read every strip of every sign and hump every wall with my character’s body because, you know, since this is our future and all, I want to know news before it happens and if there are invisible holes in walls that I can jump through. Most of the environment design I was able to look at was of the futuristic, metallic & cement gray design, complete with stairs, elevators, and bio-particle-transmition devices like you see in… dammit… what was that show with that pointy eared guy?

I feel like I'm really there, scared out of my balls!

Anyway, I’m very anxious to see what the destroyed portions of the planet look like and how my character reacts to them. Pretty much, the zombie-seeking side of me wants to experience the edge of the world, and I’m looking forward to how pretty it’s going to be!

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[-] Overall Impressions and Expectations [-]

I really do want to play this game. In fact, after leaving the studio I tried to play the latest Aion Closed Beta weekend, but I just couldn’t get into it. I was too distracted by the future and all its carnage to spend time questing and advancing my crafting abilities. I expect that when I finally get to play Global Agenda that I will be exploring every facet of the world, until leveling and questing scales into taking up too much time and I must reserve more time for other things than play.

As you can see, nearly 7/4 of my day will be spent playing games. Don't ask, just accept it!

[-] Comparative Analysis (A.K.A. What other games it’s like) [-]

The instance based encounters, armor and weapons remind me a bit of Hellgate: London, which is a game I miss being able to play online. In fact, I was considering developing a networking system and/or setting up a server for it, but now that Global Agenda is coming, I won’t need to. GA not anywhere near as dark, gloomy and dirty as Hellgate, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, except to say, like with any comparative statement, GA is its own game.

The plot line reminds me of Red Faction. I can’t help thinking about my character in a space-suit with weapons fighting against a totalitarian government without imagining a giant red fist in the background and government police agents running away screaming because there’s a sticky, remote-detonated mine on their face.

The PvE combat reminds me of Halo, but in third person, and the PvP combat reminds me a bit of Half Life 2’s online PvP. It’s not quite as fast paced as Half Life PvP is and the gamer isn’t rushed through objectives like in Halo, but the overall feel is similar, especially considering that the way the AI reacts is so much like that of an FPS.

In Soviet Russia... games don't exist. Only deviations on torture methos related to doing something while being cold.

The ability trees, stat mods, armor & gun options and combat style remind me of pretty much any MMO, F2P or not, made in the last 10 years. Let’s face it, as gaming has evolved, there are certain aspects that are universally considered to be necessary parts of the game. Most MMO’s (pretty much all MMO’s, honestly) base their overall systems of level, ability, equipment and character development on Dungeons and Dragons. There are ways to get around having ability trees, but, in the end, it allows the player to immerse themselves into the game, connect with their character more, and, bottom line, play the game longer than they would had they not customized aspects of the virtual personification of themselves.

What game do I think it’s most like, overall? Futuristic, third person, melee and ranged, heavy armor commandos, combat medics, robot making engineers, able-to-cloak class, capture-the-flag style PvP, instance based, totalitarian government, agencies against agencies… it’s pretty much a mixture between Hellgate: London and Star Wars Galaxies, I’d say, but with more intuitive AI and better graphics.

In the end, Global Agenda is original in that it is its own game and did not steel concepts from any other MMORPG, but evolved in development along a similar path as many other games which makes it the interesting and very playable mix of unique, but familiar. The most exciting thing about it, from the viewpoint of the PC gamer (who is tired of the dwindling numbers of worthy-to-play MMO’s out there), is that it’s something new!