Defiance GAME Exclusive Collector's Edition Xbox 360

Released on 02-Apr-2013

• Defiance - Review

  
  

  

  Fight Together, Survive Together

  Defiance is a game kicking down a lot of doors at once. It's an ambitious massively multiplayer online game for consoles as well as PC, more shooter than role-player but no less impressive for the sheer scale of the experience on platforms that have previously made do with small gameplay lobbies. It's also one half of a bold cross-media project developed in partnership between TV's Syfy Channel and game studio Trion Worlds. Defiance the game takes place in the same world as Defiance the TV show, and each will influence the other over the coming months.

  Raiders Of The Fallen Ark

  You start by creating your own Arkhunter, a roguish loot-seeking survivor living on a terraformed Earth, where a conglomerate of alien races known collectively as the Votan now share an uneasy truce with the human race. There's a lengthy storyline running through the game, centred around the battle for possession of a piece of powerful alien tech, but that's really just the introductory course, the spine from which the rest of Defiance grows.

  The map is covered with bonus side missions, checkpoint races and survival mode rampages, not to mention unmarked events that you stumble across unexpectedly. You may find some ranchers being held hostage by raiders, or an infestation of "hellbugs" that needs clearing out. It's up to you whether or not to intervene, but for those who do engage with the world the reward is paid in experience and "scrip", the game's main currency.

  

  Experience levels up your EGO system, an integrated AI that grants the user one powerful ability - cloaking, super-speed, enhanced damage or a hologram decoy. Perks can also be earned, making you more resilient, or granting combat advantages against, for example, enemies attacked from behind. This is your long-term goal - the accumulation of more perks, more inventory slots, anything that might make you better equipped to thrive in this unforgiving environment.

  Crowd Sourcing

  As you're sharing this space with hundreds of other players, it's inevitable that your adventures will overlap. Come across someone else taking part in the same mission and you'll team up naturally, sharing the load as you tackle the objectives.

  This element is at its most integrated in Arkfalls, random events which send players swarming across the map to tackle waves of enemies and giant bosses in the hope of earning hefty XP bonuses and rare weapon drops. These battles can be intense and lengthy, sometimes even a series of smaller encounters which lead up to a major Arkfall. When this happens, you really get a sense of Defiance's potential, as dozens of players all work together to complete enormous challenges.

  If you prefer a more intimate and scripted way to play together, there are also seven co-op maps that can be played with a team of four. The loot drops in these raid-style missions can be spectacular, so for the player looking for the best kit, this is where you should be heading.

  

  You won't always be working together, however. Hop into the quick and easy matchmaking menu and there are also multiplayer deathmatches to satisfy your more bloodthirsty urges with, and something called Shadow War, a more Battlefield-style mode with capture points and vehicle use.

  A Stretch Too Far?

  You certainly couldn't accuse Defiance of being stingy when it comes to gameplay, but that doesn't mean it gets everything right. The game's launch has been a creaky one, with reports of lag and disconnections on consoles. It's also far from being the best-looking game, with some crude character models and an unfortunate amount of pop-in, as scenery and even enemies appear out of nowhere.

  These wobbles all stem from Defiance's ambition though, and even just a week after launch many of them have already been addressed. The game is much more stable than it initially was, and Trion Worlds has big plans to roll out more content and other improvements. If the idea behind Defiance grabs your attention, then you owe it to yourself to give it a go. There's a fantastically epic action game here, one that annoying surface flaws can't obscure.

  GAME's Verdict

  The Good:

  • Massively multiplayer action comes to consoles
  • An endless array of missions and events to tackle
  • Crossover with the TV show promises to be very cool

  The Bad:

  • Technical problems are being addressed, but remain a concern
  • Some features are poorly explained in-game
  • Not much room to create a truly unique character

  Published: 11/04/2013

• Defiance: more than just a 'men in tights' MMO

  The MMO genre is well established on PC, but has yet to take hold on consoles. Defiance is a game hoping to change all that, as Trion Worlds has partnered with TV channel Syfy to develop a game that will not only bring the persistent world and character building of an MMO to consoles but will support and crossover with an expensive TV show at the same time.

  "There is no denying that doing MMOs on consoles is difficult," Nathan Richardsson, executive producer told Official Xbox Magazine. "When they were envisioned, the massive online model with aggressive evolution of the game and dynamic universes wasn't part of their core purpose. This has discouraged a lot of developers, going the paths of less resistance and sticking to other platforms."

  "That being said, what's commonly associated with the word 'MMO' has a lot of connotations on consoles and even the most known games of the genre are experiences which would be a really poor experience on consoles. So yes but I think everyone is also just waiting for the answer to the question, 'what is a massive online game on console?'"

  Obviously he's hoping that for many people the answer will be "Defiance" but there's also Bungie's Destiny on the horizon, which has similar online aspirations. "I don't think it's a threat at all," Richardsson countered. "I think it'll broaden the audience and introduce people to massive collaborative experiences as well as make online gaming more approachable. It's at the point where 'MMO' is very much associated - and even stigmatised - with a certain men-in-tights deep-and-wide subscription type of game."

  Defiance is out for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on April 2nd. There will be no subscription fee, but if you buy the GAME Exclusive Limited Edition or Collector's Edition you get bonus goodies to help you get started, including weapons and XP boosts.

  Published: 21/03/2013

• Defiance - Preview

  
  

  

  A Brave New World

  Well, this is a brave new idea if ever there was one. Defiance is an open-world third-person shooter which ties into a TV show. Nothing so brave or new about that, admittedly. But get this: it's an online game, and events in the TV show will be reflected in live updates to the game world. There's even a suggestion that what players get up to while the TV show is off the air might even affect the plotting of the next season of Defiance on TV. Now that got your attention, didn't it?

  Due in April - both in game stores and on TV - Defiance is a collaboration between Trion Worlds and the SyFy TV network. SyFy makes popular sci-fi series like Stargate: Atlantis and the recent Battlestar Galactica remake. Trion is less of a known quantity, but it's an ambitious company with some cool technology, and its first release - a massively multiplayer RPG for PC called Rift - was a pretty decent stab at a World of Warcraft-alike.

  There's another aspect of Defiance that makes it noteworthy, too. This is that rare beast, a massively multiplayer game that's launching on consoles as well as PC. While the run-and-gun gameplay will feel familiar to fans of Borderlands, Gears of War or Just Cause, all of it takes place in a persistent world populated by hundreds of other players and punctuated with spontaneous live events. At first glance, Defiance looks like any other sci-fi shooter, but in reality it's anything but.

  

  Alien Nation

  The setting of Defiance is a future Earth that has been terraformed and partially colonised by alien races. These races were pursued here by another, hostile alien civilisation which has the planet under attack - and a terrible accident when they arrived changed the face of Earth forever.

  So it's a sort of Wild West, frontier set-up, with various immigrant civilisations (including humans) rubbing shoulders and jostling for power even as they resist invasion from evil space bugs. The TV show takes place in the reborn city of St Louis, while the game occupies the San Francisco bay area - far enough apart that they can follow separate plot threads, but close enough so that, for example, a character from one area can plausibly show up in the other.

  Although the overall concept is pretty radical, Defiance feels comfortably familiar to play. It's got a mission-based structure that sends you scurrying around the hilly world map on a quad bike (which you can conveniently summon out of thin air whenever you need it). The action is standard third-person shooter fare, with cover being relatively important but not central to the whole thing.

  As you might expect from a massively multiplayer game, Defiance does have some character customisation and advancement, but this isn't a deep RPG and the emphasis is still on the moment-to-moment action. It's probably closest in spirit to Borderlands: there are different classes, but they're mostly defined by a single signature ability and can all use any weapon, or switch between combat roles. As you level up you do unlock new perks an options, but the biggest influence on your character's development is the new weapons and equipment that you're constantly looting from enemies. New guns keep coming, they can be upgraded, and you can save five different loadouts to suit your mood.

  

  One For All

  The cool thing about Defiance is that you don't need to choose to play the game with a party of friends, as you do in Borderlands. When you arrive at your mission destination, you might find other players already there and playing the mission, which cycles through several phases. You can simply muck in - the mission scales to match the number of players present, and everyone gets rewarded at the end. It's simple, fun, and it works.

  Outside of the story missions, you also get short, solo-friendly side-missions, quad bike races and Horde style survival modes dotted around the map. There are also dynamic "Arkfall" events that happen at random locations and gather larger and larger crowds of players as they move between phases, with giant boss battling thrown in. These are brilliant fun to get involved in. Similarly, there's a very large-scale player-versus-player mode called Shadow War which happens in the open world and can have up to 100 players battling over objectives.

  If you're after a more organised multiplayer experience, you can also play a team deathmatch mode on separate maps - or if co-op is more your thing, there are the four-player Pursuits, which are basically like MMO dungeons, with more focused and challenging gameplay than the story missions offer.

  With subscription MMOs falling out of fashion fast, the last big question mark is how we'll pay for it. Trion says the game will be sold like a regular boxed game, but will follow a "hybrid business model" to fund the online service and regular content updates that will arrive every two months or so.

  Based on a day's play, Defiance still needs some work with some bugs to iron out, but it's a very complete package with plenty of fun ways to play. It's not an exceptional game in its gameplay or looks, but as an online world, it does stand out from most of its shooter rivals - especially on consoles. And that's not even accounting for the link with the TV show. This is one to watch with interest, if nothing else.

  Published: 31/01/2013

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