Review: Fallen Earth (PC)
By Andrew Kershaw on Sep 21st, 2009 at 6:56PM
Due to a bug in the game (which has now been fixed), an updated version of this review will be posted up in about a week.
Today is a look at a new MMO that has quietly slipped onto the scene known as Fallen Earth. There hasn’t been much hype over this game and it’s been under the radar, but with an intuitive-looking genre mix and combat mechanic, it’ll be interesting to see how this fairs up against today’s other MMO giants.
After you’ve finally downloaded the massive client (4GB in this case) and registered, you can finally begin character creation. The character builder is nice and easy to use. While it’s nothing new, it has a lot more to pick when it comes to the details of your character. It has a much wider selection to pick from than what you would find in World of Warcraft, thus leading to a more individually and uniquely populated world.
Once your character is created, the game starts with you at the highest level and after a couple of simple quests, you gain access to weapons that introduce you to the mechanics and tutorials. Once you have completed this first section of the story line, you get a nice cut-scene introducing you to the big wide world, back as a level 1 and as confused as ever. It’s at this point that the game loses all sense of direction and stops holding your hand. You are on your own to figure out how to do pretty much anything. After killing some low-level rats with no weapon, I turned around to see the rest of the players running around with guns and wooden planks and all sorts of paraphernalia that I didn’t have a clue on how to get.
The object interactivity is very smooth. When looting objects and such you need to pause in order to get a good look, but if you’re running to a door and click on it while running you can just keep going and the door will open, which can be a really nice feature when you’re in a rush.
The combat system is rather unique. It blends RPG and FPS together in one. The RPG element is how the damage is calculated just like pretty much every other MMO available and how you play every aspect of the game apart from the actual damage-dealing, which is where the FPS comes in. When you go into “Aim mode,” the game puts you in a first person view. While it may not be a fantastic FPS system, it is integrated very well with this game’s mechanics.
Socially, this game doesn’t have the appeal that I get from World of Warcraft or even Age of Conan. It didn’t seem as socially accessible as those two did and the chat area was quite unreadable at times. The color of the text blended in too well with the surroundings, often making me have to squint to read what anyone was saying.
The movement in the game is a bit sloppy, especially when you jump. Every time you land your character pauses for half a second and then carries on. This can be very disconcerting, especially in combat. Another interesting mechanic in this game is the ability to crouch and even prone. This adds an interesting stealth element to the game. The noise of your movement is indicated around the mini-map, and from what I’ve learned, depending on how much noise you make can be life or death later on in a few levels.
Scores
- Graphics: 6
As far as MMO standards, the graphics are okay, but they certainly have room for improvement and somehow got caught between realistic graphics and a cartoony style like WoW.
- Storyline: 5
While the storyline is good and certainly intriguing at the beginning, it manages to do what Age of Conan is well known for doing. After the beginning, it seems like the writing team just gave up and went off to have a snack while the game developers kept making the game up as they went along.
- Gameplay: 8
The combat mechanics are interesting and incredibly open. It can be very fun to be running around in Fallen Earth’s massive open roaming world where you can just aim and shoot whenever and whatever you want.
- Controls: 6
Even though they are easy to use and just a generic MMO-based control system, which is more or less unchanged all over the genre, they aren’t very well explained, especially the short cuts to opening key features like your inventory or the quest log. They seem to have been mapped to random buttons with no relation to the name of the window they are opening.
- Lasting Appeal: 4
After the introductory levels, the game loses all plot and I found myself getting very bored, very fast and unable to find anything to do. It just doesn’t seem to offer as much as WoW, where you can log on just to go crafting/fishing/achievement hunting/questing or any number of other things.
Overall: 6 Olives
Did you play more than 5 minutes of this game? Immediately into the real world you’re hit with quests which give you stuff to do. The stories in each of the towns is pretty involved and well-written (unlike this review).
Poor rating for lasting appeal? My biggest complaint with this game the first few days I played it was there being too *much* to do. I’m guessing, as your screenshots suggest, you didn’t spend more than an hour playing this game.
I get that you didn’t like the game, and that’s cool, but the majority of what you’re writing here is just plain wrong and you fail to mention any of the neat things to do in the game. If you aren’t going to spend any real time with a game, do your readers a service and don’t bother reviewing it.
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“After killing some low-level rats with no weapon, I turned around to see the rest of the players running around with guns and wooden planks and all sorts of paraphernalia that I didn’t have a clue on how to get.” <— indeed, he did not open inventory at all. All the starter weapons were there.
Game is really fun and there is a lot to do. Surei t is a bit difficult in the beginning. Perhaps not suitable for wow kiddies.
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Omg another person who doesn’t give this game a proper chance you reviewed this game the moment it came out pretty much give this game a chance i haven’t played it yet but i think it looks awesome i have been wanting a game like this where there are tons of quests tons of thing to craft lots of enemies to fight so give this game a real chance instead of pouncing on it and giving it a bad review.
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How long does it take a comment/response to show up on here? As I’d typed up a detailed response to this person’s review and it seems that is may have been lost to cyberspace. Might it have been too long? :/
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While I do partially agree with the first two comments, it’s worth keeping in mind that MMO’s are especially hard to review when you have a small window of time. The review would have benefited from a longer playtime, but short of playing the game for about a month, there will still be huge amounts of things missed. And the most important part of an MMO is the first 2-5 hours for 90% of everyone that will try playing the game. And everyone will interpret those 2-5 hours differently. However, this still does not justify the relatively short review period.
And @ Nia: It’s possible that the comment got caught in the spam filter. And although I looked through it, I could not find any other comments from you. But, don’t worry, I’m sure someone will accuse me of deleting it, so you can be ahead of the curve and start accusing me of it now.
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I found the following text and believe it may be Nia’s lost text. I tried to repost it in full, but had the same problem. I believe there is a limit to how much can be posted at once, so I will break it up.
One other note, I understand that an MMO cannot be properly reviewed after only a few hours of gameplay. I would suggest that anyone who considers himself a reviewer either get early access to the game (as was offered to anyone who pre-ordered) or refrain from passing judgement at launch.
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I honestly do not mean to insult. But I must profess that I really feel that this review is somewhat inaccurate. Now never really having commented on a blog/review before I will just do so by breaking down what was said and explaining it since this seems the most logical thing to do.
“Once you have completed this first section of the story line, you get a nice cut-scene introducing you to the big wide world, back as a level 1 and as confused as ever. It’s at this point that the game loses all sense of direction and stops holding your hand. You are on your own to figure out how to do pretty much anything”….
This first part is really somewhat inaccurate, or it is when it comes to what you are talking about. BUT from your mentioning of rats I can figure out at least where you started off! (Terance has the rat problem fyi). As far as the “loss of all sense of direction” goes, why did you not speak to the NPC with the icon over it’s head that practically greets you at the starting location? (Where you also will spawn each time you die in said town) In doing so you will get directed through a series of quests which will help familiarize you with the basics of the game, which include at least for this town the process of scavenging, building items, using specific mission items, using your skills (first aid) on yourself, using select skills on others (buffs), how to use special attacks on others.
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Next part: “….. After killing some low-level rats with no weapon, I turned around to see the rest of the players running around with guns and wooden planks and all sorts of paraphernalia that I didn’t have a clue on how to get.”
Now unless you where playing in the beta, and I’m under the impression you where playing when the game was live/early start? The bug which causes you to occasionally spawn without any items was eliminated. Barring that, in order to access the basic items that you saw everyone running around with all that would have been required was to open your inventory, much in the fashion that the tutorial indicated. From here you could then equip the items. (From memory, each person starts out at least with the following: The shirt, pant, shoes combo they chose on startup. A “life net jacket”, a board (weapon), a cross bow, two zip guns, a knife, and a short pipe). To equip them you would do as you did so as was indicated with the axe from the tutorial.
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Onto the next part.
“Socially, this game doesn’t have the appeal that I get from World of Warcraft or even Age of Conan. It didn’t seem as socially accessible as those two did …..” *snip*
Wow, now I will admit right now that I’ve not played AoC. But, WoW and socially accessible. Not really the two words I’d really tie together personally, this being that I’ve tried (very hard) to really get into the game (since I also have friend playing said game) and socially accessible has never really worked out well for me, rather I find there is a lot more general ickyness among the area chats. But I digress this is not about WoW, or AoC, it is about FE so onwards!
In FE I did find that it was a bit disorientating that the first chat you come into is the “New Players Chat” ironically enough. And while there is plenty of advice to be had from this channel. It is quite chaotic and not the most visually pleasing all the time, especially when trying to distinguish Newbie chat, from Regional chat, or local conversations that the npcs have. (Yes they do talk amongst themselves if you stand around them long enough, and if this bothers you, it can be disabled in the options menu, along with the swear filter).
However, this is also easily remedied! If you will right click on the local tab, or in the chat window ( again from memory since I dont have the game up and running in front of me >.<). You will be presented with a menu that allows you to change the names of the tabs that you have open in your chat window, along with how many tabs you have, and which chats go in which window, or even which chats no longer show up period.
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“…..and the chat area was quite unreadable at times. The color of the text blended in too well with the surroundings, often making me have to squint to read what anyone was saying.”
Again this can also be remedied, actually in two ways depending on how much effort you want to put into it. One, you can tweak the opacity of your chat box by right clicking in the chat box and toggling the slider, so that the text no longer blends. (Personally I never had a problem with the text from the get go and this option remains the default for me) Or two, you can use one of the few skins included with the initial installation of the game to change the background color, and UI color of your game. To do so go into the options menu of the game (you can open it yourself by hitting the mystical button that says menu and selecting option, or by using ctrl O, going to the GUI and selecting the skin you want to load. ) Or if you want to load your own custom colored gui you can go to http://www.globaltechatlas.info/2009/09/fe-skins-directory.html which has FULL details on how to get it in game, which even has some bonus pictures demonstrating how people set tabs to different chat!
Next part jumping: “The movement in the game is a bit sloppy, especially when you jump. Every time you land your character pauses for half a second and then carries on. This can be very disconcerting, especially in combat. ”
As was mentioned in the forums and really quite discussed. The jumping itself was done that way so as to prevent bunny hopping. As you land though you are quite free to back peddle, move forward, left, right, rotate etc. But again this was to discourage bunny hopping in pvp, because sorry folks, this is not Doom, Quake, Unreal tournament, or any similar FPS.
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As far as graphics go, okay I wont deny it. They are not the BEST graphics in the world, but they are not too terribly bad and I enjoy them as there are some BEAUTIFUL visuals in the game. More closer to realistic than cartoony though imo.
“- Storyline: 5
While the storyline is good and certainly intriguing at the beginning, it manages to do what Age of Conan is well known for doing. After the beginning, it seems like the writing team just gave up and went off to have a snack while the game developers kept making the game up as they went along. ”
After the beginning? Which beginning are we talking about? After the tutorial I am assuming? If so, I will just simply state that this is NOT the beginning. As for the writing team giving up. In doing the missions which were seemingly neglected in this review, you learn not only about what happened to your clone as the nifty video/story showed through the tutorial. You also learn about “The Chosen”, basically individuals who where not killed by the Shiva virus (the virus that has ravaged and mutated the world the game takes place in) who are not very nice people whatso ever. The group which was started by one of these guys (Blade Dancers), at another point in the world you also learn of the leader of this group and how he came to be who/what he is. Heck, depending on where you start in the game (which depends on if you select to start in an area that teaches crafting first, weapons first, support skills etc), you end up dealing with an insane AI who was basically set loose to wreck havoc on a town by a man who was attempting to resurrect his dead wife.
As it is, you are presented by a living world when you first start, and as you explore and make your way. Not only do you learn how to perform the basic tasks (use skills, learn how things work, etc) You deal with many different story lines, and choices along the way. Some of which influence on a minor scale at this point even what items you learn to make. But all of which ends up tying together in one way or another.
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Gameplay is pretty much as described, so I have nothing else to add or comment on there.
Controls: Meh, more to say here and its already quite late >..<)
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“- Controls: 6
Even though they are easy to use and just a generic MMO-based control system, which is more or less unchanged all over the genre, they aren’t very well explained, especially the short cuts to opening key features like your inventory or the quest log. They seem to have been mapped to random buttons with no relation to the name of the window they are opening.”
Okey, random and not well explained, ESPECIALLY the key features like opening your inventory or quest log. Well inventory is I, which last I thought was pretty common place. Quest log is J, which again is commonly used (most games you q, l, or j for logs). As for the other ones, I’m not quite sure what other examples I could provide. But it is quite easy to customize the key strokes if you do not like it by hitting “ctrl O” to open ye old options menu and set it to what you want on there.
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Well at least Im almost to the end of this review of a review but one thing remains
“- Lasting Appeal: 4
After the introductory levels, the game loses all plot and I found myself getting very bored, very fast and unable to find anything to do”…. *snip*
Now seriously, what does the reviewer mean by introductory levels? I’ve been playing for two weeks, (an hour or two each day, more or less as real life allows) and am finally almost done with the starter areas of the game. (Nine starter towns in total depending on what you want to do, all can be accessed if you walk/ride to them.) I’ve got two left to work through/explore of the starter towns, and I’ve YET to run out of plot. And there is only more plot as you go to the major towns in the starting area. (Which I’ve not even had the chance to set foot in since the game went gold on 9/9 >.<)
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……”It just doesn’t seem to offer as much as WoW, where you can log on just to go crafting/fishing achievement hunting/questing or any number of other things.”
Well let’s see, it is possible to craft AND the crafting system is MUCH MUCH MUCH more in depth that WoW’s. Okay, no fishing so you can’t do that. Questing? I think I’ve covered that. Any other number of things. Well let’s see you can also harvest plants, mine, harvest skin animals to use their resources. You can also cook, make clothing (actual clothing, not the crap they call tailoring in WoW), make all sorts of varied items which can be used as weapons, or even as social objects. (Golf clubs anyone?) Then you have general hunting of creatures (PvE I suppose), and you have PVP. So perhaps, I may be naive to the wonders of WoW. But really does it not offer?
Well thank you for taking your time to read my review and critique rolled into one. I do hope it clarified some things or gave you an accurate idea of what FE is like.
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Ok, that finishes it. Sorry for the way it was broken up, this website kept rejecting comments for being too long.
To Nia: if this was your response, well said, I agree with you and hope that Andrew Kershaw takes the time to read it. Hopefully he’ll give the game a real shot and then update his review from a more knowledgeable perspective.
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Hi Nia, thanks for the feedback, as Tim says I didn’t have much time to play the game and have somewhat neglected the content after 8 hours, I’m on holiday at the moment, but I’ll play it more when I get back and give it a proper review like it deserves. Thanks for your great feedback and I hope to hear from you again in the future :)
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Fallen Earth is not worth $50, or your attention.
Player base is smaller the that of most free browser games, and mean age is around 15-16 y.o. Those who do dwell in that game are mostly fan boys to the point that they will call you a flaming troll If you dare to ever question the divine awesomeness of the game.
Gameplay is more boring then even any free game u can get. No lasting appeal.
Poorly written story line. Questionable graphics. Combat and mechanics are that of the 2000 industry standard, if at all. Animations and physics are simply pathetic. Their own website manages to miss advertise features. Server lags at all times. Graphical optimization isn’t there. And devs pretend that its normal and ignore it, even though every other post on the forums is about game’s poor performance.
No trial. Otherwise I would have asked u to not take my word for it and try it for yourself. But since they charge you $50 for that excuse on MMO, I would advise to just stay away from this one.
P.S. Before long I expect a rabid-angry attack by foaming-mouthed fanboy in rage to appear below. Thats your preview of what the community will be like for you. Cheers.
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@Ben Lee – so would you say my review is accurate then?
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There was during beta a frequent bug in which after going through tutorial you would be dropped into the game at level 1 with no weapons or quests. This appears to be what happened to the reviewer. This is NOT the intended gameplay, and not what you will experience if you go into the game now. This review is inaccurate as it is based on a bugged experience which has since been fixed.
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Who the heck is Andrew Kershaw and why does give two bits what his opinion is? Oh look, a free range blogger. yay.
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Why the hell do you even read reviews, if all you want is for someone to confirm your opinion of the game? That makes no sense whatsoever. If you already own and enjoy the game, then a review would be a consideration, at best. These reviews are intended for people who are on the fence about making a purchase, and subsequently spending money month after month for the privilege to play. And truth be told… in an age where WoW, Aion, EVE, and Guild Wars exist, you had better bring something significant to the table. And with a DC, Marvel, Knights of the Old Republic, and Fallout MMO in the pipes, there’s going to be even stiffer competition before long. I don’t think it’s unfair, or biased to have a heightened expectation from these publishers, independent or otherwise. And with 50 bucks, and another 10 bucks a month, on the line, that’s definitely not unreasonable. At all.
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Thanks for the info about the game! I have been on the fence for a few days but after reading several reviews from trusted game sites I have decided to take a pass on this one.
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Anytime someone is reviewing an MMO they should be kicked in the junk everytime they compare a feature directly to WoW
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It’s never a good thing when a reviewer says something along the lines of “seeing everyone else with weapons”. As a game reviewer, I would think there should be some standard level of skill.
It seems to me that reviews of MMOs fall into two categories. Those who played the game for 45mins – 2 hours and those who still play. Obviously those who hate the game aren’t going to play it long, hence why there are so many “I uninstalled this game after 1 hour of play” and at the same time we hear “What are you talking about, this game is awesome!”.
Only in MMOs do we see such a large number of people split. Which brings me to my point, why is it that trials aren’t offered? I don’t even care if its a 3 day trial. It’s so hard to find a good review because either people hate it or love it. MMOs aren’t like Halo or Uncharted. There isn’t a general “Best game of the year” by the media.
On a side note, thank you Nia for your review. Because of you, along with similar comments from other people, I have purchased the game and am now installing it :D
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Again, everyone has their own opinion, but here is what one site says of the game. Oddly enough, they are calling it a first impression and it’s very obvious the person writing is much farther along in the game.
http://www.massively.com/2009/09/02/first-impressions-fallen-earth/
Just to give you a heads up, the person doing the article wrote a paragraph to the right of each picture. So when you click on the first impression button, it is not just a photo gallery. What’s more, they show you more than a screenshot of a guy named Benny saying “What?”
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@fried rice Thanks for you’re input, you’re posts are based off whether I was a good player or not, I played World of Warcaft for 4 years (From beta), Age of Conan, Guildwars and Star Wars Galaxies for half a year. I also played a lot of smaller MMOs when trying to get over WoW like Wizard 101, Dungeon Runners, Runescape (Cringe). So I have the skill to play MMOs and this is still the outcome I came to.
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To all those who are saying the bug that starts you with 0 items was eliminated, it wasn’t. A buddy of mine just started and he got the bug and had to get help from a GM to set things right.
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