Some may remember Face of Mankind from a while back as a small futuristic SciFi MMORPG set in the 24th Century. It had a lengthy closed beta and open beta phase before going retail. For a number of reason it didn't work out too well although the system in place was extremely unique and a draw to many people. Well years later the developers, Duplex Systems, have teamed up with NeXeon Technologies, who are providing servers and various network support, to bring the game back to life.
The developers know very well what the problems were the first time around and have made a number of significant changes and redevloped many parts of the game. For those that don't know the system I will explain it briefly. If you know the system then you might want to skip this part.
There are a number of colonies that players can transition/travel between. For the relaunch there will be 5 to keep the player base condensed, and more will be added as the player base grows. The 5 in for the relaunch are: Manhatten, Tokyo, Cered Delta, Keplers Dome, and Titan Station. Each of these worlds, or colonies, can be controlled by the factions within the game which are player driven. There are 8 factions that a player can join upon creating a character. Two of those factions are law enforcing factions and they can free a Colony, but cannot capture one. The other six colonies can capture and take over the colonies, and have different political standings with the other factions which can be directed towards military or economic standings. One faction can be economic allies, but not military allies with another or vice versa. As players progress they rise in the ranks of the factions and eventually can be voted in to become leader of the entire faction. It becomes an entirely player driven economy and political system.
There is PvP, and a criminal system. Normally when you die you revive in a cloning center. However, if you become a criminal you can no longer purchase new clones, and if you run out your character dies forever; permadeath. If you become the highest tier criminal no matter what you do your character will die forever the next time he is killed. Criminal points go up by killing allied players, or if you are caught smuggling illegal drugs. The law enforcement factions are the ones that can alter the criminal points, catch smugglers, etc. which makes for a very interesting dynamic where corruption plays a large part in the game. It should also be noted that as you rise in criminal rank you will be listed on the criminal pads in the game as 'most wanted' where many players can see your name, and attempt to hunt you down.
The game plays like a 3rd person twitch based shooter. There is hacking in the game, drug crafting, and a drug market. When an opposing factions controls a colony many doors and passageways will become sealed off and must be hacked to get through. The hacking is a new minigame that has yet to be fully revealed.
Face of Mankind has recently (Feb 20th) entered the closed beta stage for the redevelopment, and open beta will eventually follow. If you are a fan of a player driven world, scifi, or unique games in general you should definitely keep an eye on this one. To read up more about the redevelopment head to their official forums and read up on the development updates.
MMORPG.com writes:
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