8.5
gamescom 2012: Defiance Preview
Before Gamescom I had defiantly (this spelling mistake is intentional) never heard of Defiance. Getting a quick swing on it’s multiplayer was a good introduction though, so here’s what I found out.
I played a couple of rounds of a 6 vs. 6 team death match. That hardly sounds original, you can get that from practically any shooter. However, because Defiance is also an MMO the focus on player characters is stronger; it makes sense that outside of the campaign world you can play with your character in PvP maps. You get to choose loadout sets and shoot funny coloured balls at the other team, so that’s what I did. There were some interesting weapons to play around with and all had a different role in combat.
Things like machine-guns come as standard, while a short range electricity gun that heals friends and slowly damages foes is quite fun to mess around with. I had a great time just sprinting around ending people with a future-shotgun shot to the back; it kind of reminded me a third-person TF2. Over all the shooting experience seemed smooth and the effects were exciting – the PvP will provide an interesting place to show off your shiny special armour.
Defiance is integrating a Syfy TV show into it’s story; the only other examples I can think of like that are Nintendo franchises like Zelda and Mario. Hopefully there won’t be any annoying catchphrases. For quick reference, there is a catastrophic event in an alien’s home galaxy, so they band together (even though they don’t like each other that much), get in some massive space ships and travel to Earth… without realising that it has us there. When they get here they hang around in orbit and negotiations start.
The spanner is thrown in the works when terrorists blow up their ships. Two things then happen: Space flight becomes impossible because of the debris and the aliens get a bit pissed off and start a war. Nobody knows who did it; aliens, us or a bit of both? After about 50 years of accidental terra-morphing, the world’s resources have changed completely and a new mineral called gulanite that everybody now wants is found under San Francisco. This is where the game starts and as a soldier of fortune you search for valuable bits of space ship that have crashed to Earth.
There are also some swishy powers to use with all of the guns and by the end of the game all of the different skill tree options will be open to you. Strangely it is coming out at the start of next year, not only on PC but on PS3 and Xbox360 too, so maybe Trion Worlds have some plans for the next generation. We will see!
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