"Here comes a new challenger": Global Agenda

Global Agenda (GA) releases on Friday! I hadn't heard about this game until a week or two ago when people started talking about it on our guild forums. A bunch of us pre-ordered and checked out the open Beta last week. In short, the game is a blast and highly addictive. I found myself wanting to play game after game until it was way past my bedtime, and suffered the following days as my gaming had eaten into my working time.

Although it's labelled as a MMOFPS, it's not really an RPG. It's an over-the-shoulder team-centric FPS, with MMO and RTS elements. You can play any of 4 classes (Assault, Recon, Medic, Robotics) and each class is customizable through gear and skill trees. You get skill points to spend in your skill trees and gear options are automatically unlocked by levelling up. As far as I can tell, there aren't any rare gear upgrades that you can grind for to get an advantage. So after getting to max level, everyone is on an equal playing field and player skill is what makes all the difference.

From the website: "Create, customize, and develop multiple agent characters, complementing your FPS skills with accessible RPG-style progression. Unlock weaponry and cuttingedge devices including jetpacks, grenade launchers, mines, deployable turrets, stealth suits, holographic decoys,robotic droids and HUNDREDS of others." One of the fun things about the game is that everyone has Jetpacks. The jetpack "flight" in GA (short bursts, acceleration, deceleration, gravity, seamless integration with combat) feels and plays better than Aion's flight (constant velocity, flight potion chain-chugging, wonky flying class/combat dynamics, freefall distance limit).

The game uses the Unreal engine, so the graphics are pretty shitty by today's standards. I almost feel cheated for paying $40-$50 for something that looks like a 5-year old game. But, they're good enough to get the point across. It was absolutely refreshing to be able to pew pew without having to grind for anything (think Guild Wars), and not get 1-shot by some no-life kid with the best PVE gear in the game.

Everyone plays on the same server. All the fights in the game are instanced, and players fight for control of cells on a grid that represents "the world". However, the cells are not independent of each other, and players will often have to coordinate attacks on multiple cells simultaneously --- an action in one cell can affect another cell. While the instancing sounds weird for anyone used to open-PVP, it can make sense if done right. Consider this: in Warhammer, the people in the front and rear of a Keep do not fight together, although they work toward the same goal. The only thing that's missing in GA is that there is no world to 'roam' around in. It's just non-stop, instance after instance (PVE or PVP) of pewpewing (FPS-style) from level 1 to level 50 (and subsequently, world domination). Gear can be reconfigured at the starting area of each instance, but skills can only be redistributed at the "lobby".

I am probably going to be a Recon and Medic. Heck, what does it matter! You level so fast in GA that everyone will probably have max-level characters in each class. I'm stoked! I haven't played many FPS games lately even though that was what I played a ton of as a kid (Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, Rainbow Six, Half-Life, Counterstrike, America's Army, ...). Ah how I missed the pew pews.