Recent reviews by Alienfirst

I wished to finish a play through of this game before writing a review. Not because I was unsure of it at first (I very much was smitten right away), but because the game does have some technical issues that become rather jarring. Yes, the game is quite buggy. I had scenes just not play at all and leave me with either a close up on a texture, or with a character that could just walk around and not interact. These could be fixed by restarting the game. Other times I would have situations where textures didn't appear to load at all (I say "appear" as some circumstances I couldn't decide if it was just something I SHOULD see, or something that is just being assumed there because the characters describe it).

With such issues, why would I finish the game at all? I'll admit, I had a couple moments where I quit entirely for the night because the game was being fussy. But the characters, story, and visual style kept me coming back. I love the take on these characters and their interactions with each other, and I would dearly hope to see what would happen next (if not a game, a comic would be LOVELY). Tech issues aside, I loved this game. I wish there had been more time and money to polish up the many rough edges, but I love it anyway, and I think it a wonder none-the-less.

(My ONLY huge complaint is that the story seems to jump around erratically in the last couple acts. I'm not sure if this was due to the tech issues I was having, or perhaps some written scenes just were left out. Continuity breaks a wee bit near the end and it took a bit for context clues to catch me up, but it just made me sad that I potentially missed good character bits!)

One of my favorite games to date. I played the original Secret World, and was happy to see it continue on, even if in a new state. The story, atmosphere, lore, and characters is incredibly strong and one of the highlights. Combat is thankfully more straight forward than it was in ye olde TSW days (I for one am grateful for the rehaul it took into SWL). Recent updates have given "challenges" that unfortunately boil down to "take a bunch of time to chip away at a load of hp on this beefy boss," so combat variation has suffered somewhat. The only huge downside in this game to me is the graphics. It looks dated compared to pretty much every other multiplayer I've experienced. I wouldn't call it bad, and the inherent visual aesthetic still works.

I'm playing down the negatives (and not really getting very nit picky on them anyway), because to me, this game has always been about the story, lore, and characters, and this game rocks those points in spades.