Trion Worlds set their stall out to climb the proverbial mountain when they signed up to a deal with Syfy for a MMO and television cross-over title. Not an impossible task, thus they completed development on Defiance (Xbox 360) and released it on 2nd April for the judgment to begin. How will it fair for one of the few console based MMO games I have seen? Will it be a groundbreaking success or just broken?
Defiance is a third person shooter MMO, set in a time when the Earth has been re-shaped, landscapes altered and life has changed forever with the arrival of alien species. Some have learnt to get along with the human race and clearly some haven’t which can lead to plenty of conflict. The game allows you to create a character to use and choose an origin, this can either a Human or an Irathient (alien race) plus whether you’re a machinist or veteran soldier etc. but apart from appearance it doesn’t seem to matter what you go for.
From here you are introduced to your boss Von Bach and other character(s) that you’d eventually recognise from the television show of the same name. The original objective is to search the San Francisco Bay Area for alien technology but after a crash landing whilst travelling it leaves you searching for your boss and trying to make a bit of Scrip (currency) along the way by accepting various missions from people and places.
Like most Ark Hunters (that’s what you are) you have had EGO (Environmental Guardian Online) implanted into you which aids as your symbiotic guide and allows you to possess extraordinary abilities. After picking my starter ability, cloaking, I am able to enhance this by levelling my EGO rating up with XP and select other minor abilities to compliment this. These will help hugely when taking on hordes of enemies or larger than life bosses.
Now I’ll move onto these missions, these can provide money or items to use and up to now they’ve been quite varied consisting of clearing out areas of mutants or accessing points of interest and then defending them from these creatures for example. I’ll not beat around the bush it can get pretty overwhelming and you can be outnumbered in seconds with nowhere to run or hide. High intensity within each area (the whole free roaming area is massive by the way) that you must accomplish your missions in, but this is where the secret (not much of a secret, granted) weapon of Defiance kicks in... the multiplayer experience because you are never alone.
That’s right everyone playing the game could be your saviour at any moment, making friends is key to progressing without the frustrations that each mission could bring. The only problem with that is if you don’t have any current friends with the game then you will have a potentially hard job making new ones. The guys at Trion currently allow voice chat in group and PvP, luckily there’s also an option for a small surrounding area of you in which you can be heard but unfortunately not many people seem to have this unmuted. If you do get lucky then it’s possible to start a group or a clan within game which certainly allows you to gain maximum enjoyment.
Without a doubt though the best parts of Defiance are the dynamic events which pop up all over the place, that range from a small ones like rescuing a few fallen allies to the huge Arkfalls that draws players from all over the land. Why? Simply because these Arkfalls are fallen pieces of alien technology which become surrounded by a mass amount of enemies, variants of hellbugs, mutants and such, where eliminating these can bring great rewards (items to use e.g. weapons, shields). The first one I participated in involved just myself and one other destroying a wave of enemies, then the going got tough I kept getting put down but fortunately you can self revive once and players can revive you. About 30 people arrived to save the day and with a bit of teamwork we easily secured to area and collected the reward.
I must give credit to the extensive collection of weaponry (that can be modified with the right attachments) on offer, although you need to be lucky to get the rarest of them, it’s always good when it pops up with a colourfully titled (white ones are most common) SMG. You can buy weapons from selected vendors using Scrip but I found it much more rewarding to kill an enemy for them to drop an item that you desire. Of course for the lazy gamers (sorry but I’m a firm believer in putting in the hours to reap rewards) out there, it has micro transactions to purchase the necessary resources to buy your way to total domination.
There is an option for Player v Player modes which include team deathmatches and a Shadow War, both of which I can live without but for entirely different reasons. Whilst in a TDM I found myself getting destroyed by better guns, higher levelled characters and was well out of my depth. The Shadow War however I tried to take part in on two separate occasions, it put me in a queue waiting for more players. It’s quite a good feature than you can carry on as normal until it starts (if you are mid-mission though you will lose progress so not worth doing much) but when over an hour passes you begin to think you’d be best off watching paint dry, an utter shambles.
Now for the bad news, sorry I’ve left it till now to tell you but the servers are diabolical so far. I will give respect to Trion for releasing a large patch for the issues already, unfortunately in the early stages of the Defiance life I fear the damage is done. Yes they fixed a lot now but here’s just a few of the bugs I found that spoilt my fun; mass amount of enemies spawning of which it appears take no damage whilst my health deteriorate and I die. My gun goes invisible, my ally glitches into thin air rendering the mission impossible to finish, I cannot shoot or move well due to lag in a populated area. Despite this not occurring constantly, it is frequent enough to hinder gameplay.
Final thoughts are that the very bad cancels out the rather good aspects and with this I offer my words of caution. Buy it if you feel confident enough that Trion will solve the issues I have found, if fixed it will be a gaming and TV experience worthy of your time. I cannot with a clear conscience though recommend it too highly in the state I’ve played it in.
