GameLight - The Secret World

Official Site: http://www.thesecretworld.com/
Source: Youtube Channel Funcom

The Secret World is an MMORPG portrayed in a gritty modern-world with fantasy-like themes embedded.  This past weekend was a free weekend that allowed all players to play "The Secret World" for free in celebration of one month of the game since its launch.  I actually had lost interest in the game ever since it showed its gameplay videos over a year ago; however, I am always willing to give games a try as they have surprised me in the past with some turning out to be some of my favorite games (Demon's Souls was one of them).  As to not drag this out, I'll get to the point and say that the game has long-winded cut-scenes and conversations with very little gameplay in the beginning of the game.  To give a gauge of how much:  I was on "The Secret World" for about 2.5 hours and only got to really play for about 15 minutes out of that entire time.  I had a friend describe to me that "they're trying too hard" and I see what he meant.

Essentially, the environment and story is very in-depth and the developers want very much for the player to be immersed into that world.  From the gritty streets of our modern day society to crazy world portals floating in mid-air, the game tries its very best to get the player interested in the world.  So the first few hours will mostly be cut-scenes of the characters explaining who you are, where you are, what you and the group you're in do, why you fight, but also tries not to tell you "how" to approach your goals.  The game boasts itself having freedom of choice and not being locked into a class.  You can switch between "class-types" by changing the weapons you wield, but you still fall into a certain "role".

Despite all the waiting I did hearing the characters jabber, the combat is actually pretty fun.  As an MMORPG, it still follows the point-n-click style combat where the player targets an enemy with a click or "tab" key and spams their attacks on them.  The difference is that the player's character will not auto-attack and must be able to cycle through their skills strategically based on their situation.  This means that the player will have to press keys 1~7 repeatedly in combat.  The player can also move while attack and can also do an action dodge with the "shift" key (this is implemented to upcoming MMORPG Guild Wars 2 as well).  With these little changes, players can no longer stand there and win by auto-attack like many MMORPGs have been designed to work in the past decade, but will have to move around a lot and avoid enemy attacks to survive.  Another fun aspect of combat is being able to take on multiple enemies right from the get go rather than being limited to fighting 1 enemy at a time.  I hated being static and taking forever on one enemy in a lot of the MMORPGs I've played in the past because it stayed that way throughout most of the game until you could participate in PvP, instances, boss fights and raids.  So it was fun running around, being able to effectively kite and dodge, and taking on multiple enemies.  After the 3rd large enemy, I started to realize the controls were a bit of a problem though.

Having to move, mash on the number row keys and pressing shift to dodge was actually not possible to do effectively in quick succession.  They should've made the game entirely "Action-RPG" rather than partial point-n-click/Action as it doesn't work very well with the combat mechanics they set up.  If the mouse were able to aim, the left-click to attack, the number row to switch to a different special attack, and the right-click to use that special attack, the player wouldn't have to keep leaving WASD (movement keys) to reach over for the number keys and having to keep mashing them.  The way it's set up now, the player has to juggle between using the mouse to look around, the WASD to move around, the number keys to attack, with a crazy left-hand dance between the number keys, shift, WASD, and spacebar for jumping up to higher places.  It just doesn't work very well right now and I can see a huge improvement to combat with a more action-orientated control scheme (though some may argue that it'd be too much like Vindictus, Dungeons and Dragons Online, or TERA Online).  Take note that I noticed this problem within the 15 minutes of combat I got to experience as the other 2.25 hours was spent watching cut-scenes and listening to conversations.

The graphics are pretty good, but the character creation did feel a bit limited compared to most MMORPGs nowadays.  The story as a whole is pretty interesting but the conversations and cut-scenes describing them were really boring.  The well engineered sound effects added a visceral impact to combat, but the controls kind of killed the combat in the long-run though.  And so in my opinion, the game as a whole doesn't seem to be worth the monthly-subscription unless you totally dig the game's mechanics and don't mind listening through a lot of yakking before smacking baddies.