Time to put our money where our mouth is – Defiance MMO Review

If you have been following our Podcasts (if not your a horrible person and should subscribe to our channel to wash away the horribleness.) We had been making fun of SyFy and Trion Worlds’ Defiance, a new TV show and MMORPG that go hand in hand with each other. When we first heard of this, our idea of the game wasn’t that great, a show no one knows anything about with a huge RPG world backing it up. We had a few questions about it, like who was actually the fan base? What happens to the game if the show gets cancelled? What happens to the show if the game doesn’t sell?

These questions were on our minds, but as we heard more about the show and gained access to the Beta we started to see everything piece together. With the show being created by a great team that brought us FarScape, Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar: Galactica, with the game being developed by Rift developers for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. At the Gameitall.com Podcast we knew the combination of a show and game working together is either going to be an Amazing idea, or absolutely horrible one. This is where we put our money where our mouths is and dive into the world of Defiance.

Defiance is set in the near future where an Alien collective call the Voltan have come to Earth looking for a new home after their solar system was destroyed. Mankind responding in fear and hostility causing an event called the “Pale Wars” forcing the Voltans and the humans to fight, this ended in the apocalyptic event known as the Arkfalls, which Terraformed Earth making the planet more alien. A few month later, at the point of exhaustion, some Human and Voltan started a ceasefire to help survivors affected by the war, this was known as the Battle of Defiance and is the main backstory of the series.

The main story of the Defiance game is focused around your character, a Ark Hunter that works for a technology experts with Von Bach Industries, set to find new technology from the Arkfalls that are still occurring in the San Francisco area. The story is focused in a Single-player fashion where you uncover information on new technology and are joined with many different side characters.

That is actually what makes Defiance really interesting, take a game like Grand Theft Auto, now throw in the amount of side missions and awesome story base missions, now throw in 1000 people playing at the same time as you to help you complete those objectives and you have the basic feeling of the game.

In general, the game is a third person shooter role playing game that borrows a lot from Gearbox’s Borderlands series. Armed with various weapons including shotguns, rifles and pistols, you are given a grenade modification tool to change how your grenades react, as well as a vehicle to summon at will. Your heads up display and powerups are explained by the E.G.O. (Environmental Guardian Online), a symbiotic, neuro-muscular bionetic implant developed by Von Bach Industries. These powers are focused on providing stronger attacks, the ability to sneak, and diversions. As your character levels up, you are able to select additional skills to upgrade your character, this includes taking less damage to increasing your ammo load, these are different depending on the skill you selected.

In order to traverse the dangerous lands of San Francisco, you are given multiple weapons to deal with creatures like Helbugs, mutants and various other baddies, as well as a Roller to zoom from place to place. Rollers, which work similar to mounts in World of Warcraft, are able to be summoned at anytime by pressing your up button. Different Rollers can be bought using in game money or with microtransations through the Defiance store in the menu. Most Rollers I have seen are based off of 4-wheelers and off-road trucks, with some premium rollers based off of Dodge cars, most do have different speed and protection against munitions however they all do the same thing, get you from point A to point B fast and alive.

The game has some interesting events added into it which include the Arkfalls, these are random quest that will provide you with bonus money and items. These missions are similar to the Raids that you see in World of Warcraft, in which thousand of players team up to bring down a giant boss. This is the amazing thing about Defiance as you get to see a giant war between players and some Voltan monsters like the Matriarch Helbug over the hill while you join them in taking down this huge monster. Other events are related to the TV show which includes Episode missions which takes the events happening that week on the show and making it into a quest for you to play.

MMO’s do not have the best graphics mainly because of so many players playing it at the same time. Defiance does fall into this category when your playing the game, it also is one of the better looking MMO’s we’ve seen in a while. If there was something to complain about though it would be the delay you experience between  conversations with your E.G.O. implant and loading your menu to switch weapons and level up your stats.

Defiance is not your typical MMORPG and that’s alright. It brings the MMO experience to console players quite well and has a blast doing it, with the show doing amazingly well for and being 3 episodes in. I’m interested to see what the next big step is for this game, if your looking for a great 3rd person shooter with great Sci-Fi elements and a great multiplayer, Defiance is the game for you.

And yes, SyFy and Trion Worlds, the game is awesome.