Massive multiplayer online experiences generally go like this – you are sent on missions, you gain XP, you level up and once in a while you go into a nice dungeon raid with friends. I can safely say that Firefall doesn’t fall too short from that description, which is a good thing because people expect such a general experience from their MMOs, even from a ‘Free-to-play’ MMO.
The big niche for this game, well at least for me, is the first-person shooter part of the description. I love FPS games with a passion, thus my excitement for Destiny, so I know them like the back of my hand. Firefall, for the most part, does a great job with incorporating the FPS feel in the game, which is a fantastic draw to keep playing. Everything feels like an FPS does, even down to the dimwit enemies that have patterned moves that makes them easily disposable. If you know how Call of Duty games work, then you understand what this means. And let me just say, I’m not implying that this is going to replace your Call of Duty or Battlefield needs, but Firefall does fulfill that FPS element in this F2P MMO wrap.
In true FPS style, there are plenty of missions to attend to during Firefall. You can pick missions at job boards, which are scattered across the game’s landscape. You have plenty of opportunities to level up as you go through these missions. I leveled up over a three-day period to level 10 pretty darn quickly. What does that mean ultimately? Usual stuff, better weapons, harder missions, more ways to expand the experience. I just left a 6-7 hour session in one area where I just completed mission after mission after mission. It was quite easy and the missions, even the ones with bosses, did some unique things.
For example, one mission had me taking out an evil bandit boss that was recruiting Ares fighters (that’s the protagonist group) to join his bunch of ruthless bandits. I was ordered to go get some new recruits back, battle some bandits and eventually take out the bandit boss. Going in these battles alone is tough, though not as tough as a mission you would find on an MMO like Elder Scrolls Online or Final Fantasy XIV. This mission was doable solo, but I ended up dying because of bad technique (and because I suck at using a mouse – sorry, folks, I’m a gamepad guy). Anyway, generally when you get killed or leave a certain boundary in an MMO, the mission resets. Firefall is a bit different in those regards. It actually allows you to respawn, even if it’s far away, and the enemy you’re fighting still maintains the damage you did before you die. Now, that changes if you logout or quit the game, but if you just respawn then you can go back and take care of business without having to restart the damage.
That might seem like an easy route to go if you’re playing the game, and it is easy, but it’s nice to see that your efforts against a bad guy aren’t wasted. That’s a fact I do appreciate immensely. You’ll be happier about it when you realize that no one will come to your aid if you’re going solo. I happened upon a group of fighters once in the game that helped out when I was down, but I didn’t have another instance where that happened.
There are tons of missions in the game, so you won’t be bored when you get to specific mission areas, though some can be drab at times.
The flipside to all those missions in the game is the exploration between missions, which is bland at best. There is almost literally nothing from point A to point B when you’re traveling through Firefall’s landscapes towards a new mission or a new area (or both). You barely run into any enemies of significance. The rare times you do, the instances are short stints, and they are extremely rare, the fights are over quickly. It’s unlike ESO, which rewards you between point A and B. It’s not even close to FFXIV, which has ‘fates’ all over the place when traveling. To be quite blunt, Firefall just boringly makes you ponder your life as you seek adventure. There should be side-quests in the game on the way to your main adventure, but there isn’t. What’s even worse is that you’re not rewarded for exploring the landscape, at least the hours I logged (which are quite a few). I ran into some complexes that were off the beaten path, but came out with nothing to show for it. The first time I played Firefall, I found a complex that allowed me to turn on lights, which also lit up a new piece of the landscape map. Pretty cool stuff, huh? That was the extent of my excitement and my reward for exploration – turning on a light that lit up a map, which I couldn’t do anything in because I was too low a level.
Even though Firefall is a free-to-play experience, it still needs a better draw than it is giving. It has to have some element of interesting spots for players to explore, and more importantly for players to get rewards for exploring. It must change a bit, if it is to get out of the stigma of only being interesting when you get into the heart of a mission. It sounds petty, but if there is an MMO out there that is going to break away from the rest of the mold and offer up a fun, rewarding and interesting experience, it has to engage and reward its players every step of the way for going around and exploring. This is an old element that harkens back to the days of LucasArts’ Habitat in the 80s, where wandering around can be fun and rewarding.
In short, the travel between areas is absolutely exhausting and a tad unexciting. I wish there had been more to do on the way between points.
Anyway, missions aside, Firefall does a good job with getting technical when it comes to its battleframes, weapons and abilities in the game. The battleframes come in various sizes, depending on what type of character you create at the start – I was assualt. I went with a lightweight frame, which allowed for less armor and more mobility. You can do crazy things with the battleframe like customize the colors and style, and that can be changed anytime during the game. It does give the game some personality and some personalization.
As for the weapon side of things, you can purchase and collect weapons during the game. There are missions where you can kill certain enemies and pick up specific rewards that equal out to decent weaponry. You can either keep the weapons or throw them on the marketplace for selling. You can also purchase weapons in the Red Bean Store for a certain amount of coin, which is where the ‘free’ part of F2P ends. I was lucky enough to be loaded up by developers before I dove in, so my wallet didn’t feel much of a pinch.
The last element of interest with your Ares fighter is their abilities. If you had the chance to play Destiny in its alpha or beta stage, then you’re familiar with the abilities you can set for your Ares fighter. This is a power that allows you to do a great deal of damage during a fight. For example, my ‘crater’ ability, which is specific to my assault type, can deal a devastating blow to a group of enemies during battle. It’s basically a ground-pound that can decimate lower level baddies, which is fine because you’ll usually find yourself in the middle of a fight with a boss and lower levels surround you. You can set these type of abilities in your slots, which are conveniently numbered for your keyboard pleasure (like every good MMO/Dungeon Raider provides you). The abilities vary from class to class.
All-in-all, these are the three main things you’ll be toggling with outside of your smaller, less permanent rewards. They all work well and Red 5 Studios does a good job with providing you a variety of items, abilities and weapons to pick up and upgrade with.
Now, here we go with the good stuff.
While it won’t win any awards for being exquisitely tantalizing in the graphics department as Crysis, the visuals for Firefall are pretty damn impressive for an F2P game. The sheer depth of background to foreground is beautiful enough to make you cry a bit. The details of the textures may not be that great, but the structures and details set up for Firefall fit perfectly within the Firefall universe. Much like the battleframes, the graphics are big and somewhat flat, but they fit the style of the game brilliantly. I’m running an NVIDIA GeFORCE GTX860m with 4gb of DDR3 RAM built onboard, so there wasn’t one issue with depth and absolutely no graphical pop-ins. It was smooth sailing on the visual ship.
In addition, the load times for this game were about 4-5 seconds in length. In other words, there wasn’t much downtime to be had with the amount graphics/textures that are being loaded. It was just a quick lock and load with the game.
As for the character models, while they were plain (and more ‘common’ looking than the environments), the animation did the job. The only downside to the whole thing were the enemies. They certainly looked the part, but the repetition of models left something to be desired. Outside of the bosses, you’ll see a lot of the same stuff when you’re in a particular area. That’s not a terrible thing, especially for an F2P, but a little bit more variety would have made this a lot more appealing to the eye holes.
Before we move out of the presentation department, let’s discuss the audio. The audio was good. The music rarely changes in the game, except when you shift from large area to large area. I was enormously impressed with the voice over work that the characters bring. Your handler, the person you speak to (Aero) does a great job with explaining what you’re supposed to be doing and when, plus the actor does a great job in conveying urgency and emotion. All-in-all, the voice work keeps the game a bit more interesting while crossing lengthy areas.
So will you have fun in Firefall? Well, if you’re looking for something a bit different while Bungie is prepping Destiny, I think Firefall is a good game to try out. As a full package, there is fun to be had within Firefall. If you can look through the large amount of dead space between your points of interest in the game and forgive the lack of rewarded exploration, then you’ll find an interesting first-person shooter MMO waiting for you. There’s a lot here folks, but some of it simply needs to be refined a bit before it hits the ‘good’ mark.
