First, I'd like to say welcome to the end of the world! It's full of zombies, crows, and involuntary smexing teleportation time-space-warpination. I think I should forewarn you that I don't exactly have a very high expectation for the game and went into all of the beta's with that mindset. "I don't expect much, so I'm bound to be surprised by something!" Which I feel is the best way to go into any situation and will yield the least biased view. Alright, with that out of the we, on to the nitty gritty!

THE NITTY GRITTY

The Secret World is a modern day - all your nightmares from childhood are true - there is no santaclause - and the easter bunny is a large black man in a bunny suit MMO featuring a vast world, beautiful graphics, more skill combinations than a 7 year old can count. I think that's what the back of the box will say...What TSW actually is is a really big world made for a specific niche. I suppose this is a good thing and is probably what Funcom wanted, but what about those who aren't in that niche? Do they just have to miss out on, what might be, a spectacular game? Well maybe I'm stepping in some direction I shouldn't but I guess only time will tell who the game attracts, no?

So in The Secret World you are dropped into hell ! The walls are closing in around you and some asian girl goes down on you, or something like that. Each faction has its own beginning sequence that projects them into a specific event, generally a past event. That event serves as the tutorial for the player. Though it doesn't do all that great a job of teaching as it assumes you know a thing or two about MMO's. I can see new MMO players having a hard time getting their hands dirty in this. And it wasn't just that initial tutorial, just about everything designed to teach did a fairly poor job of doing so. Eventually the information was conveyed, but it took far too much effort for someone learning to play. Once you got the ball rolling everything was smooth sailing.

OMG, GODRAYS!

The Secret World is probably one of the most beautifully rendered games I've seen in a long while. Granted there are other upcoming MMO's that stack up against it and some that far surpass it (GW2, Tera, Blade and Soul, Archage), but for being made on the proprietary Dreamworld engine it does an incredible job of presenting strong visuals and giving the feeling of "we're all going to die!" My only complaint with the graphics was the color pallete. It got very tiresome after a few hours of play. Looking at grays, light blue hues, and whatever vomit color the zombie flesh was just put you in a depressed mood after a little while. Or maybe I should go take some crazy pills and be happy about the end of the world.

All of the post processing effects and environmental shaders fired off without any issues. The DX11 client seemed to be stable, atleast from what I expereienced, and the particles were some of the best I've seen in an MMO. Ofcourse there was the occasional glitch here and there, very rare, and some models didn't load immediately, but then again it is in beta.

WORLD OF LEFT4DEADCRAFT

So after stumbling my way through the tutorials I found myself in Kingsmouth a zombie infested town featuring that typical small town sheriff, the psychic who totally saw this sh*t coming, the guy who'd rather hold himself up in his junkyard where he'll surely die, and the badass old woman and her shotgun. Zombies everywhere, dead bodies, and whatever that thing with 6 legs was wandered aimlessly around the town eating...everything. I thought, "Oh cool! Zombies", until I got 6 hours and and found myself saying, "Oh...more zombies." Zombies are cool and all, but they're only fun for about an hour or two before it's time to turn off Left4Dead...I mean...The Secret World and play some Skyrim or something. It wouldn't be so much of a complaint if we weren't forced into this area for god knows how many hours... Even if you made it to the Savage Coast you were still bombarded with countless zombies. Whats more is they had huge aggro ranges that you couldnt see. So you just HAD to fight your way through the zombie armies to do something as simple as "go talk to this guy over there". It got tiresome and old very quickly. Now theres nothing wrong with bustin' a cap in a few zombies every now and then, but this was a bit overboard.

DIE DAMNIT, DIE!

The Secret World is hard! Yeah, It's really hard...like really really hard! And I don't mean hard as in difficult, I mean hard as in you're going to die alot and for unnecessary reasons. Now this same thing as mentioned about another MMO (yeah I'm about to bring it up...) Guild Wars 2, But the difference here is that Guild Wars 2 was difficult within reason. Things were challenging but not impossible to kill in some regards. TSW really doesn't do much to be difficult its just impossible in some cases. It's like the developers said "hey lets make this thing deal 13409127482387 damage and the player 2000 hp...Good Luck!" There were a few mobs in particular that made me sit and think about it. The Old School Magus'. You run into one of those and you might as well just die and respawn. Especially in one of the solo instances, where everytime you picked up an item off the tables they spawned. I ended up just taking the items, spawning them, dying, and running back to get the next item. On top of that the dodge function didn't do a whole lot to get you out of danger (here it comes again) Guild Wars 2's dodge function actually gets you away, like a dodge should. Hmm let me rephrase that; the dodge gets you out of the way, but the enemies move so fast that it doesn't matter.

"Dodge! ...oh you're right in front of me again...WHAT!?! I can't dodge again for how long!?!"

Alright let me pause: So far it seems like I've thrown a lot of negativity at this game. This isn't really the case, I'm just outlining the concerns. The game is really a great game these few things are just holding it down mroe than anything else.

THE SKILLS ON THE WHEEL GO ROUND AND ROUND...

So TSW features this skill wheel....thingy. Basically you have at your disposal all of the available skills, only so many can fit on your bar, and you are free to put your skill points into whatever parts of the wheel you want; Whether it be shotgun, piston, blade, or one of the various magics(and whatever else was there). A friend of mine gave this system a very interesting name; he called it "Noob-repellant system". Essentially this is similar to the Guild Wars 1 system, except its on a wheel and you have access to all of the [classes] skills. There are so many combinations for so many differen't builds that there are quite a few who will put together a noob build. A good example is the build that was displayed inside the GW1 box, I'm sure we all know it, that was tested and proven to be absolutely horrible and was openly mocked by Arenanet. What this does is ward off noobs who will likely thing "Wow this skill system sucks!" when in actuality they just couldn't get a good build together. Thus we shall call it Noob Repellant.

The skill system itself is actually prettintuitive, there's a sort of tiering system that helps the player get into a niche and not have their skill set too far spread out. Players can place skill points literally wherever they choose. There are no restrictions to tell you "oh you have blade..you can't have pistol too!" So the player is free to create whatever character they want. Of course we'll see what we always see. Some super build will be created by some guy named xxTrollzoRxx or something and then everyone will use that build...because it 'works the best'. It will become the META and then it will be Build Wars all over again...okay maybe not all that extreme, but theres always that possibility. Some can argue, "oh that wont happen! Not to my game!", but its not the games its the gamer. Gamers will always want a way to standardize things. it's so they know what to expect. And generally if someone kills you with something a lot you tend to want to know what it was...and you'll most likely adopt it(or call it hax).

The skill system they have in place is a stellar system thats bound to turn heads and be a huge selling point for the game. Of course you will have noobs, not even Raptor  Jesus can stop the coming of the noobs, but atleast you have the freedom to be a noob and not have to sit on rails and follow the guy infront of you down a skill tree.

THE NEVERENDING STORY

The Secret World showcases some of the best story-telling, voice acting, and script writing in the genre! Okay, maybe not TAHT good, but it is pretty impressive. You feel like the person doing the talking is alive and is passionate about what they're saying. Characters feel life-like, and have deep rich personalities. All of the cutscenes did an incredible job of pushing the story forward and giving you a sense of mystery and making you want to go on and find out whats at the end of the trail covered in blood and dead kittens. Though some may not agree with the high volume of perverse overtones, and being groped by fairies, but it only serves to add to the universe. If something happens a certain way, it happens for a reason.

Now there is one major complaint that I share with many others. You have no choice in most things that happen to you. If you watch any cutscene in the game, your character stands there looking bewildered as some guy talks to you about how the bad guys are taking the hobbits to Isengard. Moreover, you never say anything. You just stand there and take whatever pre-scripted verbal abuse is thrown at you. Some one could come in throwing used condoms at you and your character probably wouldn't move. The lack of choice is a bit unnerving and makes you feel like you have no control over the outcome of your game experience. From there the game begins to feel more like an 'on rails' MMO than anything else it may be labeled with.

Though the story is well written and delivered on the best way possible, it just feels...lacking. I, personally, think giving the player a choice of responses, or maybe giving the player dialogue might increase immersion a bit. Even if the player cant choose what he/she says just having a voice means a lot to the player.

BOOM! HEADSHOT!

The combat in the game feels a bit akward and unpolished, but I'll attribute that to the game being in beta. Attacking enemies doesnt feel fulfilling, nor do you feel powerful. You don't feel as though you're making contact with the enemy when you cast spells and the only time you 'feel' the impact is if you have a gun of some sort and even then its hit or miss. The combat was simply underwhelming, though it did its job and served its purpose quite well, you just didn't feel as powerful as you would like.

Someone mentioned a few days ago that you are part of a whole, a small cog in a larger machine, part of one of three secret societies. The power of a single individual may not be as important as the goals of the whole. As well, there aren't really any 'heroes' as everyone is on the same playing field and all the same rank; So no one is intrinsically special.

CUT IT DOWN WITH...A HERRING!!

This section will be a bit short. I know The Secret World has no levels and no classes, but how on earth am I supposed to know what is okay and not okay to fight. Sure there's somewhat of a system in place to help you make the determination, but it's not all that effective. Especially when the game pushes you into this area that you have to do a quest in and you suddenly realize that the things here are kicking your arse. There's not a very clear way to tell the player..."don't do that...he shoots lazers...and they hurt"

GAMEOVER MAN...GAMEOVER

The Secret World is a pretty awesome game, if you don't mind looking at ruined cities and zombies corpses all day, and is bound to draw its own crowd and be a moderate success, but it has many flaws that I can only hope are adressed before release, but then again..... it's EA and we see what happened with Star Wars: The Old Republic (yeah, i said it). Let's hope EA doesn't suck the life out of another company, though there wasn't a whole lot of life left in Funcom. Hmm maybe EA should've been in the game too?

"EA's conspiracy to take out all the other game companies and then take over the gaming WORLD! Next target....Blizzard, MWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

-Cheers

Edit: cupcakes

EA  is simply publishing the game, they don't own Funcom or have anything to do with development of the game. So if this game ends up as a failure or dead it will be all Funcom not EA. This is not like BW / EA where name BW is just an illussion and all strings are pulled by EA.

Funcom is still independent company. EA is handling only sales and distribution, nothing more.

Hmm I promised cupcakes didn't I...

cupcakes

TSW is for niche crowd...someone said it to me. And I agree.

After last beta weekend. I actually looking forward to this MMO. Sure it's themepark, and a bit WoW-ish. But I'm sold on chicks with assault rifle firing on zombies.

Quest system still have the same old fedex mission and kill x/collect y thingy. But they introduce subterfuge and investigation types of quests. They need to work on subterfuge. But I really like investigation quest, I makes you really think and really look at clues.

All in all, TSW isnt for everyone. If you find it is not to your liking, just stay away. Also FINAL beta weekend starts in a few hours. I strongly suggest you guys give it a try, before commiting your cash to this game.

Originally posted by yaminsux

TSW is for niche crowd...someone said it to me. And I agree.

After last beta weekend. I actually looking forward to this MMO. Sure it's themepark, and a bit WoW-ish. But I'm sold on chicks with assault rifle firing on zombies.

Quest system still have the same old fedex mission and kill x/collect y thingy. But they introduce subterfuge and investigation types of quests. They need to work on subterfuge. But I really like investigation quest, I makes you really think and really look at clues.

All in all, TSW isnt for everyone. If you find it is not to your liking, just stay away. Also FINAL beta weekend starts in a few hours. I strongly suggest you guys give it a try, before commiting your cash to this game.

Agreed on all pionts...well I don't know If I'll buy it yet, but It is for a niche and is a great geame.

Well, this is a nice write up and I say this as a TSW fanboi  Wish we could see more constructive criticism on this site instead of "combat sux and GW2 has no monthly sub".

The old school magus npc's hit hard, but not even remotly close to what you describe as impossible and poorly designed by the devs. A matter of spec/knowledge of gameplay without a doubt. Or a case of your character not being setup for that areas "level" of mobs

Originally posted by Sameer1979

EA  is simply publishing the game, they don't own Funcom or have anything to do with development of the game. So if this game ends up as a failure or dead it will be all Funcom not EA. This is not like BW / EA where name BW is just an illussion and all strings are pulled by EA.

Funcom is still independent company. EA is handling only sales and distribution, nothing more.

The fact remains that EA sets hard deadlines for the game companies it owns even when games aren't polished or completed. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will affect the quality of this game when it gets released. 

Originally posted by Vaultar

Originally posted by Sameer1979

EA  is simply publishing the game, they don't own Funcom or have anything to do with development of the game. So if this game ends up as a failure or dead it will be all Funcom not EA. This is not like BW / EA where name BW is just an illussion and all strings are pulled by EA.

Funcom is still independent company. EA is handling only sales and distribution, nothing more.

The fact remains that EA sets hard deadlines for the game companies it owns even when games aren't polished or completed. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will affect the quality of this game when it gets released. 

 

I will just highlight the part because you clearly missed it.

Originally posted by Boldyn

The old school magus npc's hit hard, but not even remotly close to what you describe as impossible and poorly designed by the devs. A matter of spec/knowledge of gameplay without a doubt. Or a case of your character not being setup for that areas "level" of mobs

I had no issue with them either. I stopped reading after this.

Originally posted by MMO_REVIEWER

 

GAMEOVER MAN...GAMEOVER

The Secret World is a pretty awesome game, if you don't mind looking at ruined cities and zombies corpses all day, and is bound to draw its own crowd and be a moderate success, but it has many flaws that I can only hope are adressed before release, but then again..... it's EA and we see what happened with Star Wars: The Old Republic (yeah, i said it). Let's hope EA doesn't suck the life out of another company, though there wasn't a whole lot of life left in Funcom. Hmm maybe EA should've been in the game too?

"EA's conspiracy to take out all the other game companies and then take over the gaming WORLD! Next target....Blizzard, MWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

 

-Cheers

Edit: cupcakes

 

OP if you want to be a reviewer you can't say stuff like this. It shows a gross lack of knowledge at best and at worst purposeful misinformation. 

I urge you to change this or run the risk of lost credibility.

EA have nothing to do with the game itself and are just making sure boxes are on the shelves and discs are printed.  Its like a book that is published by Penguin for example it has 0 relevance to the writer or its content.

The game is made by FUNCOM who signed a contract with EA so they didnt have to bother with the logistics/retail.  EA may not publish a future expansion.

-1000 DKP

Seems like he just listened to what a bunch of people said and played 40 minutes of open beta.  Worst review I've seen in a long time.

You saying that Kingsmouth is nothing but zombies is enough to discredit everything else you said.

The review is not bad so far. Thanks for your response, but you shouldn't spread lies, like in your last chapter. And maybe try to get your character out of the starter-zones before you judge it with "only-zombies-around" misinformation.

What you say there is just not true and it gets very annoying to point out this fact each and every day.

when dos this game going to be f2p? well very soon i would try it later

---

Originally posted by gwei1984
The review is not bad so far. Thanks for your response, but you shouldn't spread lies, like in your last chapter. And maybe try to get your character out of the starter-zones before you judge it with "only-zombies-around" misinformation.

What you say there is just not true and it gets very annoying to point out this fact each and every day.

 

 

 

---

You and the poster above you, try to read his post. He NEVER said that there were only zombies in Kingsmouth. Just that they had a very large presence in that zone (and in the Savage Coast).

The review wasn't to far off from my experience but I missed last bwe so I look forward to better experience this weekend. 

Funcom should not have let EA put there logo all big on all the adds. Almost like they are trying to take credit for the game and there rep is well you know. Whats the point of even distibuting this game in a box it's going to need a huge patch most likely anyway, not like you can play without internet.

i think this whole game is noob repellant.  no the tutorial doesnt teach you everything, some things you have to learn through trial and error.  yes it is a little difficult, you just might die a few times.  people that started playing this genre with wow are probably gonna have a hard time with this game because wow is kind of mmo for dummies.  anyone though that played mmos before wow will most likely appreciate this game.  I know i love it because of its difficulty and I went into the game thinking its just another modern mmo its gonna suck just like wow and all the other new mmos.  I was pleasantly surprised.  its familiar enough for mmo players but yeah new to the mmo genre are gonna have a hard time.  anyone that doesnt like to read quest text or listen to quest dialogue is gonna have a hard time. 

btw if you get your butt kicked repeatedly by bad guys, that is how you know if you cant handle them.  just go back to easier mobs and easier quests.  but in kingsmouth I havent found anything that just beats the crap out of me, its a bit too many mobs at times but they are not impossible.  once again its like the old days, you have to wonder if that mob will kill you, not look at oh he is green to me, easy kill.  or he is yellow, gonna be tough but he cant kill me, or if red, then you ask fred to come help you.  more games need to keep this sense of wonder in the game, will this mob kill me or not.  if it does then you learn. 

ultimately though you lost me at you got tired of kiling zombies.  boggle, wth.   you got tired of killing zombies in a couple of hours.  not a true zombie lover then.  im pretty sure this whole game is gonna be a niche game, but i kind of hope people like it and it does get a good following, we need games that try to break away from the wow mold some, and tsw did that.  i think old school mmoers will enjoy the game alot more than the new age ones.

Originally posted by hardicon

i think this whole game is noob repellant.  no the tutorial doesnt teach you everything, some things you have to learn through trial and error.  yes it is a little difficult, you just might die a few times.  people that started playing this genre with wow are probably gonna have a hard time with this game because wow is kind of mmo for dummies.  anyone though that played mmos before wow will most likely appreciate this game.  I know i love it because of its difficulty and I went into the game thinking its just another modern mmo its gonna suck just like wow and all the other new mmos.  I was pleasantly surprised.  its familiar enough for mmo players but yeah new to the mmo genre are gonna have a hard time.  anyone that doesnt like to read quest text or listen to quest dialogue is gonna have a hard time. 

 

btw if you get your butt kicked repeatedly by bad guys, that is how you know if you cant handle them.  just go back to easier mobs and easier quests.  but in kingsmouth I havent found anything that just beats the crap out of me, its a bit too many mobs at times but they are not impossible.  once again its like the old days, you have to wonder if that mob will kill you, not look at oh he is green to me, easy kill.  or he is yellow, gonna be tough but he cant kill me, or if red, then you ask fred to come help you.  more games need to keep this sense of wonder in the game, will this mob kill me or not.  if it does then you learn. 

 

ultimately though you lost me at you got tired of kiling zombies.  boggle, wth.   you got tired of killing zombies in a couple of hours.  not a true zombie lover then.  im pretty sure this whole game is gonna be a niche game, but i kind of hope people like it and it does get a good following, we need games that try to break away from the wow mold some, and tsw did that.  i think old school mmoers will enjoy the game alot more than the new age ones.

Bingo.