The log in screen is definitely striking.
After playing my trial account of Global Agenda for the Personal Computer, I have decided not to commit to it at this time. Based on what I have seen, I can understand why developer Hi-Rez Studios has stopped charging people monthly fees to access some of the contents of the game. GA is a massively multiplayer online shooter with some role playing elements added to it. But mostly, it's just a shooter than anything else. It controls like one, plays like one, and you don't get massive amount of abilities to carry around with you. The thing is, I have played a better shooter/RPG hybrid before and that game is Borderlands. Sure you don't get the third person view that GA offers without messing around with the files, but Borderlands is far more rewarding than this game because of its addictive loot heavy philosophy.
You still get to do a lot of shooting no matter which class you choose.
When it comes to the actual online experience, GA is designed just like Phantasy Star Online or Guild Wars where you can meet other players in a hub area and then access instances to carry out missions. It's a tried and true formula but certainly, this game is made less of a true MMO because of it. I don't mind such a design decision but I really do mind that the game offers poor visual customization when it comes to what your character wears. You get to upgrade your armor statistics frequently by attaching modifiers into slots specific to the many locations on your body but doing so does not change the look of your character. There is a separate section of your character customization screen that addresses actual visual alteration to your character. This means that you don't get to see your character change visually as you move up in levels and though I have seen some wicked looking armor on other players, there is not enough here to really keep me engaged.
Welcome to dull, I mean Dome City!
The game's limited amount of classes - 4 to be exact - doesn't bother me so much, especially with the introduction of skill trees in the game that allows you to customize the classes to your liking. These classes really depend on each other so if you think of doing a lot of soloing, which is possible by the way with the low level quests, this is not the game for you. GA thrives on team synergy and you can think of the game as Team Fortress 2 only with much larger health bar so that you could really enjoy the player versus player section of the game a lot more. Graphically, this game is certainly one of the best looking MMO available in the market today, well if we can really call it a MMO that is.
A small town full of quests? Oh yeah!
I was really excited when I jumped on GA for the first time and it is with a heavy heart that I must say that the experience has been rather forgettable. The game is certainly not bad by any means but it is too simple to be engaging. Perhaps it needs another year of polishing and there may be some untapped potentials waiting to be implemented on top of the game's tunnel vision shooter design.
The game works well with the X-Box 360 controller. Strangely however,
you can't use the controller to navigate around quest and character windows.
FIRST IMPRESSION: 3 out of 5
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