Attack of the Free-to-Play Sci Fi MMO Shooters

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
Where the MMO genre used to be dominated by generic fantasy, several sci fi MMOs are currently in beta or recently released and may be worth investigating.

I've downloaded and installed:
  1. PlanetSide 2
  2. Firefall
  3. Hawken
  4. MechWarrior Online
I've seen Danny playing PlanetSide 2 and there's been discussion of the other games on this list elsewhere on the CGA Forums, but I haven't seen much chatter lately.

Are any others playing these games or interested in playing them? I thought about creating separate threads for each game, but, well, I'm feeling lazy tonight. :D
 
I played about 3 minutes of Planetside 2 in beta but it made Gerbil's machine limp around spawn so I never even bothered trying it in actual combat XD. Still on my HD for the moment but I don't think I will be firing it up unless I can play it a little better. Not interested enough in the others to try them much less spend my bandwidth cap on them -_- .

My games for the foreseeable future are...

Team Fortress 2 (must get spy skills to a higher level for comp!)
Blacklight Retribution (it's free so yeah)
Natural Selection 2

I am also going to try Ace Of Spades and FTL. Once I get the next map version released of course.
 
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I know one of the guys working on Firefall from another gaming site I frequent. He's posted screens and videos of the game but I haven't played it. I looks really slick, but I can't vouch for playability.
 
Kendrik said:
You were saying about DUST 514? >.>
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Right, right, I forgot about DUST 514.

To be honest, it's difficult to get excited about a FPS on my PS3 when I dropped $800+ to build a rockin' gaming rig. Hawken and Firefall look fantastic on my PC.

DUST 514? Ehhh...

I'll be the first to say that gameplay trumps graphics every time, but nothing about DUST 514 seemed particularly special. Spawn, find dudes, shoot dudes, get shot by dudes, rinse, repeat.

If anything, DUST 514's graphics really shows how far current-gen consoles are behind PCs at this point. It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look all that great, other.

Critter Crunch at 1080p still looks amazing, though. :)
 
How is Hawken so far? I've been eligible for play for some time, but I haven't given it a shot. I just have a really hard time getting excited about competitive shooters, even if they feature mechs. DUST 514 carries on the epic-scope feel of MAG for me (though not as much in the TDM-style modes), combined with EVE's skill progression system (and, of course, integration with EVE to play part of a bigger overall universe), making it easier for me to want to play (though I still don't end up playing it haha).

And I'll be the first to say that DUST 514 doesn't look pretty in the slightest. Its excessive use of grays is so boring. The metagame is what attracts me to DUST; the in-battle/core gameplay doesn't do much for me, though, and the graphics border on, to use the technical term, downright icky.

But I digress. I'm interested in your thoughts on Hawken. Care to share 'em?
 
Mechwarrior gets old fast with no campaign. Constant arena combat didn't keep my interest.
Firefall should be great once they get their big PvE patch. The use of jetpacks with afterburners is ahhhmazing!
PS2 seems heavy pay2win
 
I haven't played any of these, I'm still playing GW2 and some WoW. -_-

Once I start making real money I will probably expand my horizons. Although, I tend to be kind of picky about which MMO's I play. I'm not the kind of person who will drop $60 on a bad game and only play it for the first free month and never pick it up again - that seems like a huge waste of money to me. Then again, I think that only applies to pay-to-play MMOs. I've put down GW2 several times since it came out.

We shall see.
 
Kendrik said:
But I digress. I'm interested in your thoughts on Hawken. Care to share 'em?
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It's purdy. Really purdy.

I like the controls better than MWO, though I know they're not as "realistic" (read: I don't care about realism, I care about fun). I've only played the tutorial so far, but out of the games mentioned, it probably ranks just behind Firefall for level of interest at this time.

PS2 sounds like a great concept but without a group of ToJ guys to play with, I wouldn't expect it to be that much fun.

And while I know gameplay trumps graphics, MWO ain't pretty. Maybe they'll beautify it in later patches or I just need to tweak my settings, but Hawken definitely has more polish and better art assets.
 
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