Fallen Earth

The Fallen Earth world isn't a pretty one. The engine isn't the most advanced, and it's downright gloomy. The first town I visit is like a Wild West shanty, reasonably well-populated with NPCs and surrounded by deserts as far as the eye can see. There's a lot of desert in this world, inevitably given the narrative circumstances - and heck, it is Arizona. Sand, rocks, scrub, cacti, and more sand and rocks. I get the impression that later on you do encounter some trees and sunlight, but I didn't see any of either. In the town, I meet my first batch of quest-givers, dubbed, in a decidedly ugly linguistic turn, "Conversers". I soon have a selection of missions: your standard kill X mobs, collect Y items, travel and talk to so and so. Your mini-map helps you out, with target mobs showing up as red dots.

Crafting is at the heart of the game, and it's huge. You salvage materials from looting, farming and breaking down items, and when you craft stuff, you do so in real time. In fact, the game allows you to set up a crafting list, trigger it, then log off, items being produced over real time while you're skulking about in the real world. Fallen Earth will offer the apotheosis of crafting, and in terms of the game's setting in a ruined world, it does make absolute sense that you have to make everything from scavenging and trading. And that really does look like everything: you can make weapons, armour, and even vehicles, from quads to dune buggies.

As for said weapons, although there is melee combat, the main emphasis is on guns. In a first-person-shooter style, you can strafe, crouch, go prone and zoom in, but since Fallen Earth isn't an FPS first and foremost, the combat isn't as slick as you'll find in a full-blooded shooter. You hit the tab key or your middle mouse-button to enter Aim Mode, then use Ctrl and your mousewheel to cycle through weapons, and left-mouse to shoot, something you'll have to master doing while also using your skills and stances. There's no lock-on or similar nicety - accuracy is up to you, although unlike most FPS games there's a strong stat- and ability-based RPG element to the combat.

The control scheme feels awkward. It does, after all, have to solve the problem of combining two conventions: FPS reticule and accuracy, and RPG dice-roll damage calculation. As my health-bar starts draining disconcertingly fast, I curse the clunkiness, but part of that is doubtless unfamiliarity.

In class-based MMOs, that initial decision about playing warrior for tanking or hunter for ranged damage straight away gives you a framework, defines much of what you'll be doing with your character. Not so in a classless MMO like Fallen Earth. Personally, I'm a little freaked out on leaving the tutorial; Elena stops holding your hand, and you're faced with a barrage of choices: who you side with, what you specialise in, and how you spend your earned APs - Advancement Points - on skills and mutations.

It's eminently versatile, but it's initially deeply boggling entering an apocalyptic world where your crafting choices can take you into trade-skills like geology or mutagenics alongside more familiar things like amour-crafting and weaponry, and your abilities involve making choices about stats, skills (armour use, first aid, dodge, pistols, rifles, etc.) and mutations (10 paths, grouped into three types and influenced by faction).