I played the beta of Fallen Earth a couple months before its release. I wrote up a very basic overview of the game back when I was with Lagwar, but I came to not really enjoy the game. I thought the combat was clunky, the graphics were pretty meh, and everything reeked of Live Action Role Play. But since the games release, there’s been a flood of positive praise. Maybe my initial thoughts from beta were without merit. Maybe there were some major changes to the game since I stopped playing. A few days ago, I came across a banner on The Escapist which served as an open invite to the members of its community to try out Fallen Earth. The 15 day free trial was another of many that Icarus has been tossing out to potential customers over the last few weeks and I finally caught one. I’ve got about four hours under my belt, and figured it was time to discuss my feelings on the game. Whether you want them or not!

The first thing I’ll say about Fallen Earth is that it’s still not a very pretty game, nor should it be. In fact, to some degree, the look has grown on me. If you love your lush colorful Warcrafty environments or the high gloss and deeply textured look of Aion, you may come to find disappointment in Fallen Earth. I do think it does a reasonably good job of rendering a post fallout wasteland to its players. It may not have the same truly derelict setting that Fallout 3 had, but I imagine Icarus doesn’t exactly have the kind of financial backing that Bethesda has. Even given that consideration though, there are some questionable set pieces in terms of scaling. I was scrounging around a junkyard filled with some vehicles and noticed I was nearly as tall as a garbage truck. But looking past small issues like that, you’ll find a lot that works well in the game. While walking though a town, I truly do feel like I’m in a place that has been hit by a destructive force and the people around are merely trying to make due with what they have. The monorail system strings across the skyline in most areas as a constant reminder of what has happened to the world around you. Please don’t ever fix the monorail Icarus, don’t listen to Syp!

The character models still get to me though. They’re not exactly bad, but they just don’t seem to “fit”. I know I’ve mentioned this on the podcast, but something just comes off as campy with their look. Women look like they’ve taken the time to do their hair and makeup, and while that might be in an effort to further the human race; it doesn’t make sense to me in Fallen Earth. People should look like they came out of Mad Max all scraped and dirty.

Combat in a word: Wonky. I’m really at odds with it. It’s a third person (with optional first person) shooter style combat which does a dice roll when you connect with your target. You merely have to have the targeting reticule over your enemy and click to get a shot off, but it feels disjointed. It’s not the smooth feeling I get when playing TF2 or….really any actual FPS, but that probably asking way too much from a game in this genre. As someone who plays a bunch of first person shooters, it really feels half assed. But as I’m also someone who plays a lot of MMO’s, it feels different from the same old fighting we’ve been accustomed to.

The questing in the game is somewhat standard, but the text is short, sweet, and usually comes with a humorous twist. One quest I had on my second night had me take some supplies to a man at a camp on the outskirts of town. When I got there, he was standing in front of a fire, with his buddy sat beside him. After turning over the goods, he asked me if I could help him treat his friend. I accepted and was asked to pull a hot poker from the fire. The funny part was that after I retrieved the poker, I got a quest update to apply the red hot stick to the man in order to cauterize his wound. The quest was called AAAAHHHH!!! AAAHHHH!!!

Character advancement is one of my favorite aspects of Fallen Earth. It’s been said by others that you don’t look at your XP bar like you do in most MMO’s, and it’s true. I’ve played for about four or five hours and I’m only level 3. There just doesn’t seem to be this big rush to an endgame. There’s so much to do and learn, that you really end up taking your time. But that’s not to say you don’t feel a sense of advancement as you play. Every level is broken up into ten bubbles of experience. Each time you fill the bubble, you get 2 AP’s which you can apply towards either stats or skills. It takes 5 AP’s to move a stat up one point, but stats directly affect your abilities and the cap of certain skills. I found out the hard way that you don’t want to pile your points into skills, because you eventually hit the cap and cannot increase your skill levels any further until you raise enough AP to start increasing your stats. There is a ton of different skills at your disposal. I can’t even begin to imagine how I am going to spec out my character, but I get the sense that everyone in the game will be somewhat unique.

I specified after creating my character and going through the intro that I wanted to be located in a crafting hub. I chose this because I never crafted in my time playing beta. “Gasp!” Some of you Fallen Earthers are probably saying. Never crafted in Fallen Earth? How dare I? I saw a comment while online the other night that sums up the game rather well. One person asked if it was better just to go though the game as a gunslinger and buy all the equipment you need from crafters. He was replied to with, “You’re not really experiencing the game unless you craft.” That man was correct. I never crafted in beta and disliked the game. Crafting is sending me over the edge from skeptic to fan of Fallen Earth. The crafting system is the games strongest point. There is an amazing amount of gear you can make, and everything has a use. There are no junk items in fallen earth. Everything I’ve picked up could have been used for some tradeskill, or at least refined down to something useful. Some basic crafting components are available on vendors, but everything except some core materials (like minerals and raw foods) in the game can be created by players. If you are a person who likes crafting, then Fallen Earth could easily get its hooks into you and never let go. I’m only mildly interested in crafting and I’m hopelessly addicted to it.

So, where does that leave me? I’m still torn. To be honest, I figured I would play for a couple nights, be turned off like I was in beta, and uninstall the game. Instead, I’m kindof hooked. I plan on making the most out of the next week or so that I have with the free trial to make a final decision on the game.