Fallen Earth: Reviewed (PC)

Fallen Earth, the debut MMO from Icarus Studios will always be hard to review. Not because of the scale of the game but simply because any MMO that gets released normally needs a few months to bed in properly as updates, patches and fixes come our way to get the game running correctly.  The premise and style of the game itself could easily be seen as a MMo version of Fallout but being so blinded by initial reactions will not make you see the game for what it really is.

OK, so Fallen Earth is set in the post apocolyptic backdrop of Washington DC the wastelands themselves bring tribal communities and their settlements to the forefront to act as mission hubs for players to act out roles and proceed to join up with factions and groups in a quest to complete various storylines and goals.

The story basic story behind Fallen Earth is that it has been attacked by the Shiva virus and a subsequent nuclear war broke out which lay waste to the beautiful landscapes that we all knew and loved.   Obviously, there is more guts to the story but the important information is that LifeNet – a subsidiary of a corporation called GlobalTech – has developed a way to clone human beings to help rebuild life as we once knew it.  Humans are rebuilt as clones and that is what we play.

Before you start you need to create your character or clone if you will and are provided with an array of options that include tattoos, piercings etc. It is not as heavy as some games that I have seen but more than enough to make you stand out in the world you are about to enter. Once done it is time to go through the basic tutorials of the game and then get released into Fallen Earth itself.

Icarus Studios made a noble attempt to mate shooter mechanics with an MMO here, but I don’t think it works well enough. Any time you mix player skill with random chance, you’re going to get a lot of equally mixed reactions. Take Fallen Earth’s rewarding of shots to the enemy’s head with a critical hit as an example. On one hand, I feel like I’m playing well because I’m shooting my enemy in a small target area while he’s running around like a madman. On the other hand, I just unloaded a dozen bullets into some bandit’s face and he didn’t die. I am clearly not playing a shooter (because that bandit would be dead) and clearly not playing an MMO (because why would I have to worry about aim?), but I’m encountering pitfalls of both.

The control system to Fallen Earth does take a while to get used to. Standard keys and the mouse are used for directions with a hotbar
Even controlling the combat can be a bit of a chore. I constantly found myself forgetting I had a hotbar with skills I could use simply because it took me out of the flow of combat to consider using them. My eyes are on the crosshairs and my hands are on W-A-S-D and my mouse; it seems very counter-intuitive to have to look down at my skills and then use my movement fingers to use my special attacks. It’s not a bad system by design, but it can be very disorienting, especially if you’ve played other shooters or MMOs recently.

Fortunately, Fallen Earth has plenty of other things to suck players in. The quests are well-written and numerous, if a bit standard by design. There are plenty of postal delivery and “kill x monster” quests to go around, but the real star is the dialogue and presentation. It’s rare that I will read so much quest text in any game, much less an MMO, and the quality of the content is clear.

It’s not just entertaining by presentation, either. Fallen Earth is hard! Players looking for a bit more challenge in their MMOs need look no further. The content itself is one thing, but the time investment and required knowledge are another entirely. Fallen Earth is an experience best approached cautiously. There are no respecs, the leveling curve is slow, and it’s very easy to create a sub-optimal character from the very start.

If that isn’t challenging enough, there are ten tradeskills and a ludicrously large amount of recipes for you to sink your time and teeth into. It’s definitely worth the investment, especially if you decide to use firearms in combat. Players either have to craft or buy all of their ammo and you will soon find yourself penniless if you don’t spend some time with the professions.

When it finally comes time to level up, Fallen Earth has no classes, instead opting for a hybridized skill & level-based advancement system that lets players pick which stats and skills advance with each level. In addition to the shared basic abilities, there are both Faction-based skills and Mutations that you can use to further customize your character. In theory, this allows for a lot of variety, but in practice it seems to lead to a lot of min-maxing and balancing problems.

You may have noticed that I seem to balance every bit of praise with a new criticism. Fallen Earth is a game of dualities. It’s immediately comparable to Fallout and yet very different. It’s a shooter-hybridized MMO. It’s a very good game that can burn you with its inaccessibility. It’s a game that you simply cannot play half-heartedly, though it’s tremendously fun in short bursts.

In the end, Fallen Earth is something that every fan of the post-apocalyptic setting, shooters, and massively multiplayer gaming should try. Even if you don’t like it, chances are you’ll recognize uniqueness of the experience and the quality of the world Icarus has created.