Well I was actually sitting at work on Thursday the 10th looking at the website debating on pre-ordering this game. I was initially all for the game when I first heard about it a while back but had started to lose interest as the months passed. Sitting there in my desk chair I finally said what the hell why not. I wasn’t around for the Age of Conan fiasco that many people seem to dislike Funcom over so they had a clean slate with me.
One reason I was hesitant about pre-purchasing this game was when I looked up information about the Beta event it seemed very limited. I initially saw this as a red flag and thought Funcom was hiding something they didn’t want the gamers to find. However, after thinking about they could just be trying not to spoil a lot of the game since its premise seems to be puzzle solving, story and uncovering mysteries. Of course the former could still be true. We won’t know until we are able to play the whole game. Also, i still have ordered The secret world power leveling to help me.
Ok, onto the actually game stuff. The Secret World takes a modern-day setting where myths, conspiracy theory and urban legends are all true. Three secret societies (factions) are fighting for power and ultimately the fate of the world. You can join one of these three factions; the Illuminati, Dragon or Templars, although during beta we were limited to playing as the Templar.
So first let’s get the bad stuff out of the way. The first thing I noticed was there wasn’t a whole lot of group intensive content. There were about three or four times I was taken into a solo instance even though I was grouped with another player. After about an hour of questing by myself I invited a random player to my group and we went about questing together for about the next two hours. Having another person in my group actually made some of the puzzle quest a little more fun. We would talk in group chat as to where we thought the quest was leading us and two heads was definitely better than one when trying to solve some of the puzzles and riddles in the game. While I was grouped with another player it was still clear that a lot of the quest in Kingsmouth were soloable. Again, this could be different later on in the game since I believe this area serves as a starter zone with The secret world power leveling, but as an MMO with a monthly fee there should be lots of group content.
Another area of concern was an fps issue. Most of the time I was running around on ultra-settings with my game around 55 fps and then all of a sudden out of nowhere it would drop into the teens or my screen would freeze for a couple of seconds. This usually happened when someone got close to me although other times it just seemed like it would randomly drop. With The Secret World being a month away from release I seriously hope they are able to do some optimizing to make the game run smother overall.
The combat it the game was somewhat average or mediocre. It definitely wasn’t the worst but it wasn’t the best either. In the game you are allowed to use 7 active and 7 passive abilities that you get by spending ability points. I am not sure how to explain this but the combat just seemed a little clunky. Certain weapons like the sledge-hammer seemed to respond amazingly while the pistols and rifles seemed to have a delay or awkward response time to hitting a button and the weapon actually firing. Maybe this is just how they work but they just didn’t feel as smooth as the sledge-hammer to me.
So with those issues out of the way I can move onto the shinning things about this game. The ambiance and back ground music are terrific in my opinion. It really seems to bring you into the game and kind of feels like at any moment some monster is going to come jumping out at you. It reminds me of watching X-Files and hearing their theme music and how uneasy I used to get high level with The secret world power leveling. Oh and as a side note pay attention to the sound, one quest had you recall where you heard a certain sound in order to complete it. This was kind of annoying but once I figured it out it was pretty gratifying. Now that I know these types of things pop up I will start paying attention to as much as I can because you never know when you might have to recall something you heard or saw.
The game looks great in my opinion. When running the game on ultra settings it is pretty good looking. Everything just seems to go together, the graphics, the realism art style and setting of the game. Maybe it looks so good because I am used to a fantasy or sci-fi setting when playing MMOs. It is a great looking game though.
Finally, the puzzle quest were tons of fun. This is rather hard to explain without ruining any of the puzzles but I will try. I enjoyed the feeling of having to pay attention to the cut scenes and notes you read in order to figure out where you needed to go. Normally I get super frustrated in games where quest directions are vague without reason, but in this game half the fun is in solving the riddles and mysteries. I spent about 45 minutes trying to solve one mystery about a man who had killed three girls with The secret world power leveling. Once I finally made it to the end there was a real sense of accomplishment and the story behind the quest was actually pretty darn cool too. I believe this is one area where the game truly shines.
Again these was just my initial impressions based on this weekends beta events, we were pretty limited in what we could do and see. Basically you could only be a Templar and quest out of the Kingsmouth zone. Overall I was pleasantly surprised with how fun this game actually was for the The secret world power leveling. This could change over the next month for better or for worse we will have to see. I will hopefully be able to re-visit this and give you a more in-depth review once the game launches.
Related article: Removing Mystery's Shroud-The Secret World Is Coming
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