Pop Culture Reviews

Navigating Fallen Earth Part One

I blogged about Fallen Earth some time ago and since then I’ve had some quality time with the beta. I’ve discovered that it’s going to be a relatively fun game to play if they can sort out the bugs and server stability.

The nearest comparison I can make to any game is probably to that of Fallout – post apocalyptic environment and storyline where you are a clone that is on a mission to save yourself from dying. Well, that’s the introduction, the game plays like any other MMO where you’re given sub-missions (or quests) to level up and gain ability points (which you can then add to various abilities or tradeskills).

In Fallen Earth you’re a clone,  so technically you can’t really ‘die’ – you’re basically resurrected (just like the cylons), which is pretty cool (but is essentially the same as any other MMO where you are ‘rezzed’ by a healer or some such). So no real surprises there. The one very cool thing about Fallen Earth has to be the use of mutations.

During beta I was only given access to the ‘Alpha’ stage of mutation. I am guessing the higher you progress in the game, the more powerful your mutations become (the dialogue between NPCs hints towards some characters being able to turn themselves into human flame throwers!). The gear you acquire also points to psionics being accessible which I am very keen to see in action. Currently, my main character is running around in pretty nifty looking 3-d glasses (just like the ones you get at the movies) which apparently help against psionic attacks.

Questing in the game is straight forward and will be common place if you’re an MMO player. The quest lines are very easy to follow (chain quests in other games are impossible to navigate) but are harder than your average MMO at lower levels. And when I say hard, I mean don’t expect to be able to play much of Fallen Earth solo. If you want to do it that way, you can but it will probably take you a while to level up if you don’t interact with other players. Dying is annoying and although the penalties for dying weren’t obvious to me in the beta, it’s annoying enough having to rely on others just to kill one person at level two!

In some ways I see this as a good thing (assuming this level of difficulty continues into the finished game). The last thing you want is everyone leveling up to level 40 in a day. But you also want to give players a bit of hope that they won’t always need to be part of a group to complete tasks and quests. Solo game play can be very rewarding (think of all the loot you get to keep!) so the option to choose how you play needs to be retained.

I’ll blog more about character classes, mutations and tradeskills in my next post but so far, the game is looking very promising.