Holy Shtako I did not see this one coming! This is quite literally the first ever MMO that I have truly played, and quite frankly. I cannot get enough of it. I keep coming back over and over again just to get one last fix for a short while. Defiance is a good game, not a great game or a fantastic game. More like a very solidly founded good game! Defiance does not function like a traditional MMORPG game. It does not make you spam hotkeys to attack an NPC with complicated math problems. It functions like a real dedicated shooter with a hint of Borderlands in its loot mechanics and its shooting. The combat can be dull when you are fighting in smaller numbers. But once more and more enemies pour in, you will find yourself playing a bit smarter than running in screaming "ABLOOGYWOOGIEWOO!!!" That is how the game racks up its challenge. It does not rely on areas having a required level in order to survive or pass through. You can literally go anywhere right off the bat and not worry about seriously OP enemies. In the beginning, you create your very own Ark Hunter and select what class that you want to focus in. They do not restrict you to specific categories and weapons; they merely get you started in those areas. One deals with heavy weapons, while others deal in SMG’s and shotguns. You know things like that. The horse that you ride in on inexplicably crashes on a Terreformed Earth and sets you forth on a new frontier of possibilities. The first moments are strictly for training purposes and will require that you dial back your expectation and patience. The AI is dumbed down to insane levels and they will always miss the first shot, even though you’re standing right in front of them at spitting distance. Many people were making very rash judgment’s from this very early stage in the game. Namely the tards at IGN… Yeah it is a bit of a drag, but do you seriously want to just be tossed into the game Planetside 2 style with no help? They would just pin a $20 bill to your jacket and wish you the best of luck. The opening moments are just a way to take a bit of the bite out of the learning curve. You’re introduced to your EGO powers, your crap inventory system, power upgrades, etc. What they do not touch, (which is many things) is how you will be socially interacting with other players, or even how to upgrade your weapons with attachments. This also plays into your terrible inventory system that does a terribly terrible job at listing your inventory. The game hardly does anything to tell you how to upgrade weapons. Some of them go to specific guns, but yet they will not accept them. I am still having trouble with this, and I hope that there is a resolution. As for your inventory management; it basically is just a giant list of all of the items that you have picked up. They are not categorized and comes off as just a big whopping mess. What is also very frustrating is that some of the items that you have no use for are not given the option to drop. Or even sell for that matter; when you go to a kiosk, they are simply just absent from your inventory screen for some reason, but, when you exit and go back to your inventory POOF there they are sound as a pound. Now, an MMO game has the rare ability to become an ever better game over time with its consistent patches and expansions. As long as it has a solid foundation, then you are golden hopefully. Despite the complaints that I had now, and the ones that are fixing to come; Defiance is still a good game! Like what many people have been saying; “Defiance is not an ugly looking game, but it certainly is not a pretty one either.” They are kinda right on the money there. An MMO game has to make sacrifices on top of sacrifices in order for everything to work together and it is shown in the graphical quality. Sometimes it looks like a drunkard went jolly with a Johnny on the spot and smeared it all over town, other times this new Earth has a bit of character and shows a great amount of potential for it. As a compare contrast: the more north western region features a typical destroyed townish area with fire and blown up buildings. However, when you move further south and east the world builds in character and becomes a place that you can familiarize with. They can even strike you with some nice detail and interest. There is a Bar called The Crater where I usually meet up with other players and just mess around. It is a shame though that the overall color scheme cannot go past 100 different shades of brown. It would have been very glorious to see more vibrant colors and really see nature take over the planet. Give us a color palate like in Enslaved, or even Borderlands. Don’t just go off of a Fallout 3 vibe and smear it all over the place. Throughout the world interesting missions can come randomly or at your choosing. One moment I was riding my quad along a half destroyed freeway and I see several players fighting off an incoming mutant attack. Moments like these feel a bit organic and bring life into this always coop game. The main missions may also happen this way, thus making them go by faster and smoother at times. That is if you are not bogged down by lag. That is one BIG problem that I have with this game. When you are among a massive crowd of people that are all fighting to same enemy; such as these Arkfall objectives; your systems performance (or maybe the connection) plummets to crap levels. Hopefully this issue can be resolved with further patches, but as it stands. I am a bit discouraged to go near them when they’re crowded with hundreds of players. This also seems to happen when you are crammed into a small area with loads of NPC’s coming at you. That just may indicate that the game needs optimization or the system is biting off more than it can chew. An Arkfall is a random world event that occurs all over the map. These give everybody the opportunity to fight world bosses and claim large sums of cash and loot, I am very happy to say that loot cannot be stolen by other players who are faster. You’re given your own loot that nobody else can take but you. It truly is a sight to behold as you and hundreds of other players fight the same thing at once. Heck, if you look on the back of the box you can see the allotted number of players go from 1, to 10,000. That on consoles blows my mind at the moment! Like I said before, the Arkfall’s are random events. However, they appear to recycle some of the same bosses quite too often. I have lost count of how many times I fought this Hellbug that required me to shoot its maws. Arkfalls are not the only way to bring players together. Defiance has a plethora of coop side missions that can range from several minutes, to nearly an hour to complete. They do have a required number of players cap, so do not think that you can go in alone. They are best experienced with friends that talk! Further on, you are given PVP which lets you test your earned weapons on other players in your standard affair of Deathmatch, etc. It is not something to go shouting from the mountain tops about, but it is a welcome option as it always is in any MMO. The main missions for the games story are pretty surprisingly interesting. It is managing to slowly build a mythos of this new universe that I am soaking up with glee. The TV show may bring me more of that, but what I am seeing here is pretty darn good. …There is one thing that bugs me. Defiance has got to be the most unsocial game that I have ever played. Literally nobody chats anymore! The typing chat is none existent, and you never hear anybody talk. An MMO game is supposed to be social, but when is comes to the shyness of today’s console gamers. That got turned on its head fast. Oh well, what can you do? Many flaws indeed Defiance has. Its inventory is laughably terrible, and there are some annoying issues with performance and some stability. Heck, even the voice acting is pretty mediocre. However, I still cannot shake the fact that I am enjoying this game to massive ends! It is addictive and I do not want it to end any time soon. With further updates, and many expansions to come; I cannot wait to see this become the first flourishing MMO on consoles.