Since the release of Fallen Earth back in late Sept 09, I’ve been able to spend some time in this post-apocalyptic world and today I give you my Fallen Earth review.
Fallen Earth takes place in the wastelands of the Grand Canyon in North America and as with any post-apocalyptic game, food, fuel and resources are scarce. The game begins in an instanced tutorial that is meant to teach you the basic game play elements, which is accomplishes for the most part, although it is a bit light.
Right off the bat I could feel just how rough the game was and it wasn’t ten mins later when I started to run into some bugs. First my character was stuck in mid air and I wan’t able to figure out how to get the game to reset him, so I had to logout to fix it. The next bug was encountered on my first death. When you die you are automatically cloned and start in a clone tube, so after I died I was cloned back to life in one of these tubes, however was completely stuck and couldn’t get out. After a few mins of jumping and moving around I was able to finally get out, so at least I saved myself another restart.
Aside from those two instances, I haven’t really encountered any major bugs, however you will constantly see NPCs floating in mid air or buried in the ground. This really should be fixed by now, there’s no excuse to see that four months into a game’s release.
For those of you unaware, Fallen Earth is a FPS/RPG hybrid. It takes leveling and statistic elements of RPGs and combines it with an FPS style of combat. My problem is that if I’m playing an FPS I want it to feel like one. Fallen Earth does not feel like a normal FPS. Aiming is still based on your stats so it doesn’t really matter if you’re dead on with your shots, if your skills are low you’re still most likely going to miss your target. Fallen Earth feels like they took an RPG and incorporated a FPS style of combat, when it should of been the other way around.
Once you complete the instanced tutorial, you begin your adventure in a small intro town that will introduce you to other game elements such as crafting, mutation skills, attributes, etc. I was happy to learn that you can get your mount at level two and didn’t have to walk around for the first 20 hrs like most of todays MMOs have you do. You start off with a horse, but there are other types of transportation available, motorcycles, jeeps, quads to name a few and each has their own storage capacities that can be used to store weapons, armor or other items. Unlike most MMOs, your mount does not go with you when you die nor does it disappear when you get off. Where ever you leave it, that’s where it will be.
Like most MMOs, leveling your character is a major part of the game. With Fallen Earth it’s no different, however you will find that leveling your character is much slower than most other MMORPGs, especially early on. As you level you are given attribute points that you can use to build up certain skills and mutation. I believe you are given enough points to max our 3 different skills by the time you reach the max level.
The questing system is what you would find in any other MMO game. You have your fetch quests, kill 10 whatever quests, talk to this person, gather this, etc. The biggest issue with the questing system is you can only have one quest marker show up on your map at a time. So if there are two quests in the same location, you’d never know about it and would have to make two separate trips out to that location. You can of course scroll though your entire quest list to see where the markers are, however that is extremely annoying to do and if your in a bad spot can’t do it.
I’m not sure if that was done by design or not, but if you’re going to give the player tons of boring quests to do, at least allow us to see where they are all at once.
Once you have completed the quests in the intro town, about 20 or so, you should be around lev 5 and can now move on to the first real location. Again this was not a good first experience for me. When I entered the first major town, there were so many people that I completely lagged out. I dropped my graphics to the lowest levels and was still only getting about 5 frames per second. After about 15-20 mins of trying to gather some quests, I decided to quit for the day and try again at a different time. I’m happy to say the next time I logged in I didn’t experience the same issue and was able to finish collecting quests.
Aside from the normal everyday quest, there are PvP zones setup around Fallen Earth that are open combat areas. As you approach these areas you’ll get a warning message that says you are approaching a PvP zone and another once you enter the zone. Once inside you can partake in PvP combat as you would with any other MMORPG. There is no looting so you don’t need to worry about your stuff being stolen if you die.
Recently there was a graphical update and I did notice a better looking game afterwards, which was nice, but in the end Fallen Earth did not win me over. After this review I won’t be going back to the game. Aside from being extremely rough around the edges, the FPS aspect of the game wasn’t quite what I was looking for. The questing system seemed like your generic run of the mill quest grinding and I felt there wasn’t enough of a storyline to keep me interested.
I find it rather disturbing that the word “crafting” only appears ONCE in this review, and then only as a passing reference.
FE is 80% Crafting, 20% all the other stuff mentioned here :) .
It is true however the 20% you mention is not really great, revolutionary or polished.
If you take away the entire , pretty deep and time consuming crafting+gathering system then you’re left with a game i’d also leave within the first 10 levels.
So i’d say the review is kinda missing the -core- feature of this MMO. Almost like reviewing WoW and neglecting to mention the Raiding content.
January 20th, 2010 at 8:37 amQuote
Guess you didnt play Tabula Rasa then. Almost the same principle in terms of combat.
You dont get out much do ya?
January 20th, 2010 at 8:39 amQuote
i agree with the quest tracker point you made and thats about it im afraid. Poor review
January 20th, 2010 at 1:28 pmQuote
Crafting is my least favorite part of any mmorpg and normally I don’t bother with it, which is why I didn’t mention it in the review.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:49 pmQuote
(I am normally too nice for my own good, I don’t enjoy putting others or their work down, but…)
January 20th, 2010 at 2:05 pm.
I bought this game only a little after it came out. I logged into Steam and the experience was sort of like going to the supermarket while hungry.
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Having been MMO-less for a while, and at the time, game-less as well, i bought this on a whim. Bad mistake. I did not last 12 hours before I was fed up and canceled my account. This was a few months ago, but it almost felt like the Anarchy Online beta. Of course it could not really be that bad, but that’s what I was reminded of. EVERYTHING had a sense of ‘rushed’ to it. Enough lag to make it hard to do combat, but hidden well enough to not notice in normal walking.
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Unfortunately I can’t remember many other specifics (have a feeling that its my mind hiding a bad/traumatizing experience).
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I’m sure its better now than it was, but it could be solid gold now, I refuse to even try to go back to a game that was released like that. I felt ripped off before I even had it for a day. This from a guy who LOVED Hellgate London despite all its problems.
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MMM rumors of HGL coming back… Hellgate Tokyo…
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I personally despise crafting but in FE it was actually really really fun. Its clear you didnt even bother to try it out. Terrible review.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:30 pmQuote
I recently downloaded the trial, and, to put it bluntly: it was crap. The combat was messy, and like the review said it didn’t work at all. I enjoy both FPS games and RPG style combat but this was just sloppy and overall underwhelming.
The crafting, the much touted feature, I found to be…pretty crap. It’s like WoW’s crafting, but with more items, less limits and much much longer crafting times, albeit you CAN do stuff whilst crafting.
The mounting was what I hate in MMOs: it didn’t add anything at all to the game, it just made playing it a whole lot more inconvenient. And the horses looked stupid as well, although I love that fact that you got it early on so kudos for that at least.
The stats AND levels don’t gel that well together. but it is a nice idea and with a bit of polish it would be great.
Finally, I never got the sense that I was being challenged to survive. There was a soup kitchen right next to my spawn point where the NPC handed me free lunch. Yeah. Surviving is hard.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:11 pmQuote
Too bad the original Hellgate was fail, and the new one sounds like an even bigger fail.. Thank god we have Borderlands.
January 20th, 2010 at 4:06 pmQuote
I think it’s pretty hilarious that people think it’s a poor review just because they are Fallen Earth fanboys.
I don’t think theirs anything wrong with the game, more genres, more MMO’s is good etc, but having played the beta I was also unimpressed with the level of polish and sluggish response.
Sorry, most people who play it will feel this way.
January 20th, 2010 at 4:38 pmQuote
‘Crafting is my least favorite part of any mmorpg and normally I don’t bother with it, which is why I didn’t mention it in the review.’
Your kiddin me? and you think this makes a good review? Can I ask what level you got to and what areas you visited in these many months you played?
The whole point of fallen is is to immerse you in the environment including giving you the scavenge and craft to survive mentality, but o9f course because you cant be arsed to do it you go off half cocked and give it a poor review.
Great stuff, you should apply to Eurogamer mate!
January 20th, 2010 at 4:50 pmQuote
Thanks for the review…
I liked it very much, unlike those angry fanbois that already play the game.
January 20th, 2010 at 5:17 pmQuote
@ Zode
Sorry but its nothing to do with being a fan boi its the fact it hasnt explored one of the biggest aspects of the game – crafting! or even discussed the combat system in detail. Is it so bad that you actually have to manually target and aim at head/body to crit rather than press tab 1-2-3-4 -3-2-1 rotation?
I do agree with some of the points he raises as I’ve made them myself on my own blog but its not a balanced review as it doesnt cover all bases an aspects of the game.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:54 pmQuote
@Pitrelli
January 20th, 2010 at 8:10 pmIts a FPS, didn’t know I needed to discuss the combat system in detail. You aim and click the mouse button, pretty standard.
As for crafting, I don’t like it and have done little to none in almost every MMO game I’ve ever played. Aside from the 4-5 crafting quests you are required to do in the intro town, I really didn’t explore it any further. However if you would like for me to comment on it, it seems like your normal craft grinding. Go collect X items and create something with it. While Fallen Earth might have a very indepth crafting system where you can create tons of items, I hate crafting. Its a grind I avoid at all cost.
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its not strictly an fps it incorporates fps strongly into combat similar to darkfall. However third person view is also avialable for both melee and ranged. It is also not just point and click you get special buffs and abilities as you gain in power not to mention mutations which figure heavily in sector 2. Your stance on crafting i find a tad strange since fallen earth places a massive onus on crafting and survival of the fittest. To put it in context it would be like me reviewing warhammer and ignoring pvp.
January 20th, 2010 at 8:54 pmQuote
The purpose of a review is not to cover ALL aspects of a game – especially a game as vast as an MMO. It is to give impression of the game upon X hours of play.
Which this has.
Most MMO players – (read: those who have played have played WoW, or even Aion) expect a bare minimum level of polish that Fallen Earth lacks.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:25 pmQuote
*sigh*
we will have to agree to disagree I guess, its all opinions afterall.
I lol’ed at your WoW comment – it had one of the worst releases in history…. if you werent there look it up or ask someone who was.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:34 pmQuote
I dont even play the game so to call me a fan boi is silly. I did however play the free trial for the full 10 days and came away with a really great experience. Is the game buggy as hell, but every MMO is for the first few months. Aion was out in Asia for almost a year before its West launch and it was still buggy. WoWs launch was a clusterfuck of epic proportions ( to the point where i left). And both of those games are brought to you by major game companies. FE has its share of issues ( might even be an understatement) but it also has some really interesting and potentially awesome features, open ended char development, wheel based faction, in depth crafting, interesting sandbox style one server world. Its obviously not for everyone, being a niche title and all, but they have chosen to try new things out and at least attempt to innovate the genre instead of yet another WoW clone. Which in my opinion is a good thing.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:10 amQuote
My suggestion to the reviewer is you need to refine your game review skills. If you are going to post a review, you need to look at the game objectively and look at all areas of the game.
“Crafting is my least favorite part of any mmorpg and normally I don’t bother with it, which is why I didn’t mention it in the review.”
So basically, you are reviewing the game for yourself. If you are serious about doing online reviews, you need to look at a game objectively, covering all gameplay elements regardless of whether you like it or not. Your review is rambling, not descriptive enough, and then just seems to cut off. You talk about “boring” quests but fail to mention any as examples. There is not even any mention of the open-world aspect of the game.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:14 amQuote
People seem to conveniently forget the fact that innovation does not require you to ignore polish and user experience. I’ve played a dozen MMOs dating back to UO and the best were those that covered all of the bases relatively well, not those that excelled in certain areas and ignored others completely. There’s a minimum level of quality that gamers expect that the developers haven’t met here, and focusing on a single (debatably) strong area of the game does not compensate for the rest.
And to those of you who are stuck on the reviewer glossing over crafting – you are the minority. I’d rather go to work and get paid than toil at crafting for hours upon hours producing virtual goods in a sub-par game. That’s not fun, it’s work with no tangible compensation. If that’s all the game has going for it, it’s not encouraging.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:22 amQuote
I always see people bitch about WoW’s release as being the worst thing evar!
I would be willing ot bet that EVERY person who thinks WoW had a crappy reelase only think that becase WoW was their first MMO.
In fact, WoW and EQ2 were the beginning of fairly descent releases for MMOs. They went pretty smooth compared to almost every single MMO before it. Sure there was overcrowding and population caps, etc. But at least the game itself was playable. That’s a lot better then most MMO’s before it Also remember , Blizzard was hoping they would do great and get 1 million subscribers at WoW’s peak. Not 1/4 of that on the very first day. Everyone thought it was beyond the realm of possibility to get the subs they got.
http://www.joystiq.com/2004/11/25/world-of-warcraft-sells-250-000-in-a-day/
January 21st, 2010 at 4:17 pmQuote
One more thing Mike. This game is meant to be different.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:42 pmMeant to be dark and disturbing. Its geared to ADULT players.
I have been gaming probably since before you were born.
And lets not forget that even the best games such as WOW took 5 yrs to be what they are. I was in wow at launch. Give FE 5 yrs and a bigger bottom line and it would kick wow and the rest asses. 4 months, 4 whole months and you start bashing it. A good solid review cant be written for an mmo in that time frame. This isnt a platform game thats complete. MMO’s are NEVER complete. Patches and Xpacs polish and make them the WOW’s of tomorrow. Remember that the next time you pull a review like the kane and lynch guy who got his ass fired from gamespot.
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I stopped playing this game after 1 week. Didn’t get very far and the game lagged a lot. Shooting stuff with squirt cans got a bit boring.
The game has future potential for sure once they work stuff out and let noobs use real guns.
January 30th, 2010 at 5:51 pmQuote
Know how I got better weapons in the game when I tried it out? Made them. Better than anyone else that didn’t make their own, at the same level. Same for mount. Same for armor.
Crafting in this game isn’t something you can just shrug off. It’s CRITICAL, unlike any other MMO I’ve played. If you don’t do it, or buy from people that do, you’re gonna hurt big time, to the point of frustration. And if you DO buy, plan on a LOT of money grinding, because it’s VERY expensive. Some people that I talked to compared it to EVE’s crafting, but I never played EVE so can’t comment beyond that.
I left the game for completely different reasons. There were several things that bothered me while I was playing it, but I got past them all and up to level 16, when everyone kept telling me about the REQUIRED PvP that’s in the next sector. At that point, all the frustrations I had been feeling with the little things came to a boil, and I just gave it up.
At this point, I had also been letting my crafting slack a little bit, and it was really hurting me in combat. I didn’t have the best armor, or weapons, and I was dying faster. Dying at all had been relatively rare up until this point, and occurred only when I did stupid stuff. I never got armor upgrades from crafting. The quest rewards were always something similar to something I had made a couple levels ago.
Saying that crafting is a grind is kinda silly, too. What about the Quest grind and leveling grind that’s part of MMOs? Everything about MMOs is a grind, and you’re singling out this aspect of it.
As someone else said, crafting was the only thing that kept me interested in the game long enough to get to level 15. I didn’t play it a lot, and all of that time was during their free trail when they first started, and another free week they had after the visual patch.
They’re trying to improve it, and I may actually come back to it in the future after some more upgrades. It’ll need SEVERAL patches for me, because one of the things that boiled up for me was all the bugs I encountered. Many bugs you could just log out and fix (don’t have to actually restart the game). Logging out took 15 seconds, and was pretty painless, although still annoying.
One of the appealing things, for me, was the free open world, where you could do anything you wanted, and they I’ll level however I like. I could use melee weapons AND pistols! I could use my pistols from a horse! I could do all of that AND craft. I didn’t have to make a crafting ONLY character as many people did, although specializing does help.
You can max 3-5 skill, btw, and 3-5 stats. If you max 5 skills, you can only max 3 stats, and vice versa. There are some nice websites out there that help you plan your character, although I didn’t care enough to bother with planning that far ahead. I was trying to have fun.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:20 pmQuote
Ah, well. Can’t edit. When I was talking about crafting, I meant I never got upgrades from QUESTS, not crafting. Crafting was the only way I ever got upgrades.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:23 pmQuote
I was actually looking for a review that talked about the game in depth, so I could see what sector 2 was like. The link I clicked was very deceptive. Overall, the review reads like someone that played a few hours, it wasn’t what he was expecting, and wrote it off. The beginning towns take me about 2 hours to do, so perhaps even less time was spent there.
As far as I’m concerned, the game didn’t get started until level 10ish, more or less. Sorta like how WoW doesn’t really get started until you hit level 80, or at least the 70s, or near whatever the current level cap is.
I started playing WoW 6 months after it came out of Beta, and it was still having issues with rollbacks, crashes, and serious lag. I left and came back to that game several times. I was recently reminded of that time when my server experienced a rollback. It was NOT a welcome memory, and it happened in the last month. Not very comforting for a game that’s been out 5 years. Nevermind about all the recent lag issues many people have been having on my server, during the evenings. 5 years out and still having issues like they had when they came out of beta? Must be a fail game, right? Well, by your standards anyway.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:32 pmQuote
I started playing FE in beta 3 months before release and have stayed with it since. I very much enjoy the theme. The quests are the standard kill this , get this for the most part, but the writing and the storyline is very well done. Can the game be buggy and suffer from lag ? , yes . I have found however that the game has constantly improved, I recently put in a new vid card thats roughly what my old one was but with better drivers and the game runs great on high settings for me. It seems some folks have issue with lag while others sail thru without any problems . I enjoy the crafting but don’t belong to the you must craft school of thought when it comes to this game. The dev team is attentive to improving the game and have done a good job. The game is by no means perfect although for being 6 months old I can forgive alot. The Gm’s and community in general are very helpful and friendly compared to other mmo’s I have played. While there have been complaints about the learning curve I found it much quicker to pick up then Eve. I think the game might appeal more to older gamers as it has an old school feel to it.
April 29th, 2010 at 3:10 pmQuote
This game is retarded. It’s filled with bugs and ‘expansions’ give players new paint for their cars instead of real content. Also, the only real difference between a level 40 player and a level 4 player is gear; don’t think that because you’re a level 40 you’d be able to kill a level 15 boss easy. So leveling has NO value. Stay away.
August 12th, 2010 at 9:10 amQuote
Superb game. I can imagine if I tried this on launch I might have been very annoyed by bugs, as I’m the kind of player who likes a more “polished” experience. That’s why I waited to try the game now.
For me, personally, it’s a breath of fresh air. I’ve been getting REALLY bored with the “WoW clone” aspect of recent MMOs. Sure, WoW is a great game, a super-slick, polished gameplay experience.
But there’s also something to be said for MMOs that deliberately make life difficult.
Bottom line, if you’re an explorer/immersioneer like me, if you play MMOs to feel like you’re living in a different time and place, then give FE a try, I think you’ll find a home there.
If, on the other hand, you’re more of a “gamey” gamer, an achiever type or a competitive type, then maybe wait a bit longer while niggles and bugs are being sorted out. It still has the potential to be an achiever’s game, but it’s not there at the moment IMHO.
The good thing is, the game is continually improving and being worked on. It’s an indy game, like EVE, and I think it has the potential to do an EVE and actually gradually increase subs as time goes on.
August 17th, 2010 at 12:00 pmQuote
The game was a steaming pile of boredom. I ran two characters to level 10, the first took days as I crafted everything I could and had “top of the line” gear. The second took hours as I did no crafting whatsoever and simply sold all the crafting trash I picked up to vendors giving me a lot more time, and a lot more money. After equipping my second character with “top of the line” crafted gear, purchased from auction, I found the game was still boring, clunky and just plain boring. Combat is pretty much the worst I’ve ever seen, crafting is tedious and since so many players do it, I find it pointless as the in game marked is saturated with crafted gear. In summary, if Fallen Earth was a gesture, it would be a kick to the nuts. Flame away all you will about the “glorious crafting system” because you’ll all have forgotten about this game when the next off market mmo comes out.
October 14th, 2010 at 12:40 amQuote
if Fallen Earth was a gesture, it would be a kick to the nuts
That comment is added to my vocabulary as of now…xD
January 3rd, 2011 at 2:45 pmQuote
First of all. My jaw dropped when I read mike’s comment
“Crafting is my least favorite part of any mmorpg and normally I don’t bother with it, which is why I didn’t mention it in the review”
Oh man are you kidding me? Your supposed to look at reviews objectively! Not well i don’t like crafting or fighting or mounts so im not gonna bother with them in MY review. its not just YOUR review its OUR review. we are looking for mostly unbiased and objective information. you made this review like your telling your best friend about the game not people you don’t know who have different tastes then you! and im also surprised only about 3 of us caught what he said to.
For the most part you are right the game needed polish it was sloppy in some areas and the first person combat system with its rpg elements was….lacking. but give it a proper review man! not just your opinion. A mostly good review just more professionalism needed. and you kinda dug your own grave with that comment mike nice job
October 24th, 2011 at 7:55 pmQuote