Global Agenda

I tried a Medium Security PvE level first, which meant joining a team of three other players and assaulting a facility with the aim of destroying a big robo-boss at the end. Advancing through the level, blowing apart bots and getting to grips with the healing grenades of the Medic proved engaging and fun, and the need to avoid a surveillance spotlight and, later, a surveillance drone was a nice diversion.

High Security PvE was a different story. It bodes well for Global Agenda that my incompetent team found progressing through the level's AI against the clock a lot like climbing a barbed wire fence with bare hands. This is also where I had my first encounter with a Hunter, a special type of AI bot which changes to resemble the class of his target then runs up and tears them apart. Since Hunters are highly resistant to gunfire, if you're targeted by one the best thing to do is run like hell while your team leap in with melee weapons, which also slow the Hunter down.

These special enemy types come into their own during Double Agent PvE missions, which, in a Left 4 Dead style, select one extra player from the mission queue to control the unique bad guys. Unlike Left 4 Dead, however, there are currently no precautions in place to stop the chosen double agent from strafing and weaving out of your crosshairs like a Quake player. No prizes for guessing which of the robots you're fighting is player-controlled.

Pleasant as all this was, PvP proved the better mode. The first mission I tried saw one team attempting to push a large hi-tech thing along a winding track to some arbitrary point close to their dropship while the other team tried to stop them. This was where Global Agenda started to come together for me - that player cap, which had seemed so disappointing at first, proved to be the perfect number, and there was a real energy to the match.

Everyone was racing to fill the roles of their class, throwing up and destroying static defences, dropping into fierce melees, setting off area-of-effect items and jetpacking into and around everybody else. The mass of health we all had meant there was a nicely territorial feel to the combat, with an emphasis on assaults and retreats. Every match spawned little rivalries and grudges, and I even found myself growing attached to the totally impersonal level-30 characters I was stuck with.

That said, a second PvP mission on offer seemed less well designed. One team was tasked with holding and capturing a warehouse, the other with defending it. Problem is, it's a lot easier for 10 guys to work together camping a room than it is for 10 guys to launch a unified, combined assault, and the way Global Agenda respawns you in batches wasn't quite enough to solve that. The mission devolved into a sad firing squad and their carefully positioned turrets eliminating enemies in batches of two, three or four, as the level's 15-minute timer ticked down.

But then, what are closed betas for but fixing stuff like this? The most important thing to take away at this stage is that Global Agenda's trying something a bit different, and it already has a solid foundation of rewarding team-based combat. Whether this game will be hugely interesting will come down to that persistent subscriber stuff - the chance for Agencies to capture chunks of a map, build facilities on them, fight to keep them, and all the choices and choices and features in between.

While all that's still totally under wraps, you'd think Hi-Rez Studios has got to be working on something pretty spectacular if it wants people to pay a subscription for it and (more or less) it alone. Or maybe they're just insane. Which possibly makes this game worth watching in either case.