Defiance the Game

To go on with my current path of thought I felt I should write my early impressions of the game "Defiance".  So far it is an interesting idea, with great voice actors, and incredible graphics.  The world is well made and missions are straight forward with a clear objective in mind.

The Good:
Graphics- I got so lost in the game last night that I forgot that I was straining my eyes at a computer screen and not actually in the action.

Story Line- The story line follows another aspect of the show.  Instead of St. Louis you are in San Francisco and following the plights of the people there.

Controls- Playing on the PC I can say that the controls are pretty easy.  Buttons to walk, run, jump, crouch, etc... as well as the mouse movement that points your weapon and lets you click to shoot.  The only negative is the movement of vehicles but I'll get to that in a bit.

Actors-  The speech and dialogue is for the most part on key with what is going on in the game.  The voice actors they hired are incredible and the sound mixing seems to be flawless.

Price- I know that $60 is a bit pricey for a game.  Especially for those that don't have expendable incomes, but this is a good thing because, as of now the servers are free.  There is no subscription for the servers and the one time payment is not bad compared to the constant subscription fees of other MMO games.  My hope is that they are able to continue the free servers, but we'll have to wait and see how the game reacts once more players are playing it.

The Okay-

MMO-  This is a question mark for me as I have not joined a "clan", really grouped up with anyone, or done any co-op maps.  What I can say is that it is nice to have four or five other players going for the same objective since some of the bosses are difficult to handle on your own.

PvP-  This will be covered in two places, here and further down the page.  If you like the Halo style, run and gun, with limited skill..... this game is for you.  If you want something a little more lifelike I would stay away from PvP.

The Bad-

Server-  This game has instances that happen real time anywhere in the world.  These instances draw anywhere from 2 to 25 people to them and once all those people come together the lag starts to happen.  (I guess this is one of the drawbacks of having a free server).  The cut scenes are flawless but the load rate on some of the heavier populated portions of the world cause skipping, or jarring in the graphic quality.  My suggestion play late at night, or during the day when all the kiddies are at school or asleep.

The Ugly-

Mobs- There is limited artificial intelligence to this game.  The bosses stand in the open but are so nerfed that they take forever to kill, the mobs don't coordinate and just fire blindly into your character.  The worst part is that they hit you every time, no matter how much you dodge, cover, hide, etc...  The mobs accuracy is impeccable.

PvP-  I told you this would be covered here again.  The matchmaking is a little off on this game.  Something I know the developers are trying to iron out but it makes the game not very interesting when you are going up against someone not only a higher level, but with such good gear that you stand no chance in open combat.  Best bet is to duck and kite those players but right now PvP is more broken than World of Warcraft which is saying something.



I hope that you all like the review.  I actually think I would recommend this game to anyone that wants to give it a try.  It is not a must have but definitely fun and worth a look into.  I plan on playing this game throughout the television season and will write updates to this blog as new patches and content is released.  I hope that it continues to keep my attention but we'll see how things go.