Defiance
In Defiance you will join a futuristic online open-world shooter where thousands of players scour a transformed Earth competing for alien technology. Hunt alone or with others as you improve your skills and level up unlocking powerful weapons that will help you survive the massive battles that await.
Sounds freaken awesome right?
Well first there are a few hurdles. Especially for a console gamer not used to how PC gamers apparently play MMOs. Defiance arrived on the Friday afternoon of a very busy weekend, but I made sure to keep a decent two hour spot open on Sunday night for my first play. My plans had been to put the game in, download and install the 4MB update and play for two hours (or more, depending on just how addictive the game was!). However the game wanted to install itself onto my hard-drive. Not your average console experience. Half an hour later I launch the game, only to be told I have to download Patch Notes. Sounds like a fairly small text file, but it’s not. The down load time continually fluctuates between 1.5 and 2.5 hours of download. Crap.
Two hours later I’m tired but the download is almost done, I can soon play Defiance. Once the patch is installed I attempt to play the game, only to be forced to download Patch Notes. What the hell? I just downloaded this. Frustrated, I head to bed.
The following day I do some research, seems there are three separate Patch Notes that you have to download the first time you play defiance. Two nights later, it’s late but I’ve finally downloaded and installed everything. I have to play this game now!
Defiance turns out to be a low budget Borderlands, without the fun, variety and graphics. It turns out to be an uninteresting go find this, go find that mission based game.
The promise of a dystopian on-line open world shooter had me thinking of a mix between Fallout and Battlefield, with a vast new world to explore, and the dangers of this world being populated with other players who would either want to kill you or join you.
In reality you’re all on the same side. You can’t shoot each other, so unless you’ve got a group of friends eager to play Defiance with you, it’s pretty pointless even being online.
It is early days for Defiance, with no classes and only two playable races, you’re limited to being an Ark Hunter. As the game progresses hand in hand with the TV show, apparently things will happen. I’m not sure when or if the TV show is coming to New Zealand, so the tie in for kiwi gamers is slim at best.
Possibly the game will improve massively, and, as my PC gamer friends tell me, these games take time before they work properly, it may be a really good game at some stage. And if it does become a really good open world experience in the future, I’m going to be kicking myself for not sticking with it and having a decent amount of experience. But with plenty of other games coming out, Defiance is going back on the shelf.