Fallen Earth

Fallen Earth is an MMO with first-person shooter elements and ties in good parts from games like Tribes, Stalker, Fallout and is set in a wasteland, not so dissimilar to that of Borderlands (or Mad Max). Set in the year 2156, some big corporation has ruined the world for everyone and you follow the story of being a clone slave to a big corporate company, killed thousands of times for their financial benefit, before being set free by a rebel movement to go and liberate your fellow clone brethren.

This is an MMO for those of you who are bored with the standard cut and thrust of your fantasy MMOs these days. Its blend of melee and ranged first-person combat helps you feel like you’re taking part in the action, instead of just bashing a few buttons ad infinitum on a keyboard.

The first thing I’m going to say about this relates to your rate of exposure to information as soon as you’re out on your own exploring the world. In some cases you are just bombarded with information – mostly about skills you’ll need to craft and gather resources to make items you will need in the game – and sometimes there’s a complete lack of it, for example on where to find quests and where to go on the map. This all eases out after a couple of hours of playing, after that time you should be familiar with the layout and flow of the game. When I started running about I was pretty lost, but asking questions on the global chat, I soon got answers and that made the game a lot easier. Finding out that you had to push tab or middle mouse button to enter the combat mode took a lot longer that it should have.

As you progress through the game, killing stuff, collecting stuff and completing missions, you will be rewarded with APs, which are Attribute Points. These can be spent directly on skills, or on character stats. Stats and skills can follow preset templates, like Soldier or Leader, and give you an idea of what you want to spend your hard earned APs on. You can follow them or you can just make a character to suit yourself. Customisation plays a big part in this game, too, from the character creation screen to your what your character wears; it’s all very detailed with plenty of options.

If you want good equipment and weapons, etc., you will have to become accustomed to the crafting structure in the game. It plays a massive part of the leveling up process as items aren’t always available at vendors and you will have to make them for yourself. You can’t miss this option when starting a new character because your bag fills up with all sorts of random stuff, which you will initially think is junk, but later turns out to be the life blood of how you generate your income. Unfortunately, you will find yourself scavenging a lot to make cash to buy some of the things you need early on, so get used to rummaging about in the dirt.

You will probably find that after a while of playing the same character you want to go back and create a new one to take advantage of all that you have learned while playing your initial creation. I found things easier when I did this and got into the game and the story more easily once I had an understanding of everything that was happening in the GUI and in the game.

Although I found this highly enjoyable, this definitely isn’t an MMO for everyone. However, if you enjoyed games like Fallout and Stalker then I think you will be pleasantly surprised by this offering from Icarus Studios. It blends together the components of FPS and MMO well and is by far the best attempt at something original and unique that I’ve played in an MMO in a good while.