This being my first preview review, I am excited and exhilarated to bring you guys an amazing inside beta look at FireFall. We are all sane enough to understand that making an mmo can be difficult when compared to the industry. When you think about it…you’ve probably heard the phrase “WoW clone” or some other quoted remark involving EQ, SWG, or EVE. But with how Red 5 Studios puts a new fresh outlook on free to play games, you’re going to be surprised.

When you login to the game you get the simple character creation screen. You get a good bit of customization when it comes to your character. So when you are done creating your character the game inserts you into the game with a small cinematic railroad ride. The surrounding landscape is beautiful, even at night you get that feeling its just majestic.

Making touchdown in Copacabana, you are treated quickly to npc dialogue and quest waypoints, where you link up with the SIN Network. The SIN Network gives you an overview unlock in your map tab.

Getting the first waypoint in the mission meant I would have travel a little quicker than on foot.

There are a few locations in Copacabana where there are what I assume they are called “Glider Pads”. Using them is simple and the physics of the game makes the flight seem real.

Now since I created and entered this character the world had been in darkness due to the time cycle. I estimate its about a 2hr rotation of day and night. So i I am going to push forward not spoiling what the intro quests put you through.

Eventually the game revolves its combat setting with resource gathering. As you level up, you unlock blueprints and schematics to research and develop. These blueprints unlock a variety of items from new armor, weapons, and ability packages. But in order to develop them you need resources that you gather from surveying the land with a scan hammer.

When you find an area of rich ore, you call in a “thumper”. “Thumpers” are resource extractors that land wherever you call it. When it begins the process of mining your ore the thumper attracts wildlife. The process takes roughly 5mins and the difficulty to protect the thumper increases with the size of the thumper you use. During the 5min process of extraction, you must protect your thumper from taking damage before it reaches 100% capacity. The process will come close to an end at 75% and will spawn a boss sized mob for the group to take on. In-game players group up in teams of 5 to complete these resource.

The controls handle really well and feel just right…with a click of a button you can also enter into first-person mode. It might give you that Borderlands feel with the amazing cell shaded graphics. The best part I love about this game is the ability to switch battleframes on your character at any battleframe station. You don’t get that feeling that once you pick a class your stuck with it. You are given the freedom to test out and find the combat frame that is to your liking.

The different type of battleframes are:

Assault-balanced frame for combat

Medic-combat medic specialist

Recon-sniper support

Engineer-controlled turret support

Dreadnaught-heavy weapon specialist

In Part 2 I will go over the battleframes in depth as well as pvp. Until then here are some extra screenshots.

^A PvE event

^pvp match where i ended up with 7kills 0deaths

^Full ingame map with SIN Uplinks ive unlocked…the more uplinks you have the more you see of the map