Defiance

The MMO company's effort take the genre template and switches the interaction with enemies in the sprawling continents of near-future Earth from timing ability commands to the precision shots of real-time arcade combat. Sure, it's all button pressing in the end, but snagging a headshot through steady stick work is a might harder than the rolling of the dice behind the scenes with a stab of F2.

But it's a definite push into the waters of the online shooter; the hope that accessibility and mainstream acceptability will pull in those that would sink hours into earning XP with skill kills based on reflexes and quick thinking, but would sniff at the slower pace, sneer with prejudice, those that come with the RPG time-sink. Funny when you concede that any game jostling for online audience these last few years have expanded their attraction through ability unlocks that come from across the fence.

We sit down and shoot our way through the world of Defiance - near-future Earth the population of which is amalgamated from natives and space farers looking for a new home - for five hours, crammed between a city of PS3s and TVs, and sat between a horde of colleagues, and roaring past whatever development team members are patrolling the lands of the virtual world alongside us.

The game's due out on Xbox 360 and PC as well, the latter of which is represented today by a smaller set of machines set on the end of the row. A check over the shoulder of a player confirms the PC version's the smoothest looking: the PS3 version's currently looking quite rough, character models serviceable but not eye-catching, rolling hills, alien vegetation and sci-fi settlements evocative from afar, less so up close. All this though not unexpected given the open world and scale of the operation going on under the console hood.

It's the same case with the majority of the game's profile menus: skill trees and XP layouts a mess, clearly very much work in progress. There's a thought that the studio's still tinkering with how to present this section: given the rest of the game's building itself as a very accessible online shooter, chances are this'll morph into a flashy system rather than clinical spreadsheet layout.

Its more skill grid than tree, the four base classes, each with a unique ability, each at one corner of the grid. New character upgrades, wholly centred around making you a stronger badass in the field, gradually pushing you out into the grid: overlap is likely, but a character respec is optional, and a tidy sub-menu lets you flip between your custom character types to suit preferences or missions. Everyone carries a health bar and over-shield as standard.

Those base abilities, short term in use, slow to recharge to begin, read as if from the manuals of other online adventures this year. For the most we favour the Overcharge, a red glow on one arm indicating higher attack power - popping humanoid shields like bubbles with ease. Decoy's a hologram imitator that at least pretends to act human for a spell - Cloak's your sniper / stealth ability.

Even with emphasis on gun play (and the weaponry sounds very, very good in use) this is still running on the template of an MMO mission structure.

Quest inductions are dotted throughout the continent, early objectives rotating around clearing out mining operations, uploading data, downing shields. That's combating different enemy types, and holding down a button at the right terminal to complete a task. Most fun's obviously had when others are joining in, either stumbling into a mission pre-started by someone else or if you see backup arriving unexpectedly. It becomes a hoot, and restarts between missions are swift enough to avoid boredom.

Go alone and things aren't so evenly stacked; you're aware of the grind behind each spent clip, as enemy numbers are at times overwhelming. There's a one-off quick-revive, and after that you're back to the nearest base camp on death. Even with the ability to spawn a quad bike anywhere at anytime, the swiftness of your deaths can become frustrating.

More so if you're downed on the way to your mission. The developers have piled enemy encounters and mini-missions along highways - a nice deviation if you want a quick break from driving. But early on as we are with our character, it soon becomes strike avoidance if we don't spot anyone else mid-fight first, as we're clearly outclassed by swarms of Hellbugs or trigger-happy kidnappers.

There's a few PvP and PvE modes, selectable with a few presses of the D-Pad. PvP Is territory based, though where we conducted our competitive field trip was all flat fields, small shacks; not much in the way of strategic cover. The 'where' of PvP likely more important than the 'when'.

Better is the cooperative mode, a corridor-based dungeon crawler mission entitled Motherlode, as we and a team explore a mine labyrinth. Its quickly becomes messy and chaotic, the abundance of grenade launchers in our possession turning it into explosion cascades rather than strategic team work. but it proves a fun way to let off steam, and the climax is surprisingly funny, as we're dropped into a mineshaft with the Motherlode: a massive hammer-swinging beast with knees as weak points and a coal chamber chest we've to lob bullets into. Hopefully other bosses continue the trend of imaginative design work.

The game's tying in with a SyFy television series set in the same world and time. Both are reportedly to be interlinked, though as to how iron-tight that connection is remains to be seen. We're exampled an early mission where we help out the two central protagonists of the show - the mission ends with them driving away, and the next clip is from the show, opening with them driving into a near by settlement.

It's fairly light narrative tissue between the two - both first season and opening weeks of the MMO will have to prove if there's more to it than that, and really do something to dazzle with the promise that one will impact events in the other and vice-versa, and it does lead to the question as to how much knowledge will a player need from the TV series to understand characters or species in the game.

Due to a couple of crashes during our time with the game, we didn't make much of a headway with the central story, instead testing our race challenges and missions focused on sniper sharpshooting for the most. The feel of a solid third-person adventure's there: but as is with any MMO, Defiance has yet to answer whether it can sustain our interest past the first opening hours. A question impossible to answer until the game goes live and the gaming world migrates to near-future next year.