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Gaming Review

Guns, swords, magic and monsters all in a modern setting? How exciting

RELEASE out now

the Secret world


Cthulhian conspiracy? Zombie aliens? Hit them with sticks
onspiracy theories are thriving. Its probably a fallout of the horrors of the 20th century, the unbelievable inhumanity of man to man, that has led to the formation of quite so many conspiracy theories over the last fifty years. That, and the actual conspiracies: Watergate, the plot to plant exploding cigars on Fidel Castro, Vietnamese brainwashing, the unnecessary secrecy of every government and the amoral mistreatment of their citizens. The Secret World, like the X-Files and Buffy before it, feeds on these conspiracies, binds them together, and makes a coherent, paranoiac world view. For that reason, The Secret World is a deeply compelling game. Its set in our world, the modern world, within our distinct time frame. It features recognisably modern characters. Yet it also delves deeply into, and evinces a love for, the psycho-history of conspiracy, ploughing a paranoiac furrow all the
october 2012

The Secret World isnt the first game to feature Pripyats ghostly big wheel

VItAL StAtIStICS
Price xx Developer Funcom Publisher Funcom Multiplayer Yes DRM always-on internet Web www. thesecretworld. com Recommended specs Quad core CPu, 3GB RAM, GeForce Gt 545, Radeon HD 7570)

way back to the Mayans, the Viking landings in America and ancient Sumeria, and evinces a love for the deliberately incomprehensible tales of HP Lovecraft and his peers. If it were a foodstuff, itd be the richest of desserts. the game starts four weeks ago, when there was a disaster in the headquarters of the orochi Group in tokyo. no-one knows what happened, but something was released; the Filth, a black, infectious, pervasive ichor that corrupts and distorts. Some breach in dimensions was also effected, triggering eruptions of otherworldly power and monstrosities across the world, from transylvania to Egypt to the small American town of Kingsmouth. You (or rather your achinglymodern character), were asleep during the tokyo incident. As you slept, a glowing technorganic bee crawled into your mouth. You dreamt, of an otherworldly beach with red planets floating rapidly past and woke with unearthly

powers. After four weeks your flat is a wreck, ruined as you struggled to control your powers; but now they come easily to you. At which point, the recruiters come knocking. though it doesnt matter so much which faction you choose, what they give is colour and slightly different paths through the main storyline. they each have a different starting area, based on real world cities London, new York, and Seoul but are more compressed essences of those places. Each of them has a similar task for you; to travel through the heart of the world, Agartha, investigate the soaring paranormal activity and put it right. the first faction is the templars; hidden in plain sight in London, theyre dedicated to battling whatever it is they perceive as evil. the Illuminati, by contrast, are Machiavellian and amoral, seeking power by whatever means. Finally, the Dragon is mystical, sensual and chaotic, with obscure intentions.

The plot thickens

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the Secret world

oh yes, the ancient, secret art of hitting things with a stick until they stop being annoying and secretive

Some of the boss battles have a great sense of scale...

IF tHIS GAME wERE A FooDStuFF, ItD BE tHE RICHESt oF DESSERtS

... but its the story thatll have you coming back for more

Immediately you start the game, youre dropped into the world of your faction. we focussed mainly on the Illuminati, which resulted in us experiencing some of the games best speeches. whats common to all the factions (and, indeed, all the games characters) is the tendency to monologue. now, while this may sound similar to SWTORs plan to script and voice every single character, theres a difference. First, much of The Secret Worlds dialogue is optional and non-voiced its just there for colour, but theres a lot of incidental background. Second, the main quests are introduced by small cut-scenes, each of which is totally in-engine. this is both a blessing and a curse; they mainly dont break immersion, but if youre suffering from lag (a problem at peak times) youll be forced to skip them.

Spins a good yarn

the blessing comes in that these parts are mostly impeccably written and acted; Ive never seen

no stereotypes were hurt in the making of the Secret world

better storytelling in an MMo, with an almost Joss whedonesqe mingling of dark humour and plain old darkness whether its the 3,000 year old camp mummy in a white suit and panama hat or the newspeak, pop chic of the Illuminatis youthful boss lady. Its cultural references are equally contemporary and oddly non-escapist for an MMoRPG, basing the game firmly in this world. nPCs talk about Silent Hill, Star Wars, fashion, Xbox when an nPC mumbles to himself eh, theyll nerf that or If you want to understand humanity, read the comments on Youtube, or Grab your surcoat, youve pulled or any of the hundred quotes from the Smiths in the London hub you know youve stumbled across

exceptionally knowing writing. Each faction has its angle, its own malign humour. Moreover, the camera direction in the scenes is exceptionally good, holding your attention much better than SWTORs stolid movement. though its mostly lacking the element of choice that SWTOR tried to bring from KOTOR, the player doesnt mind. It turns out storytelling is better when you dont control the outcomes and that we didnt want more choice or more voice acting or better graphics we just wanted the story to be better. the quests themselves are structured around the theme presented by the nPCs monologue. though they occasionally stray towards the standardised quest models of old MMoS kill ten of this, collect ten of that they all are uniquely coherent stories, from the simplest to the longest. Sometimes, the storyteller isnt even trying to give you a quest; theres one memorable quest where a biohazard-suited scientist tells you
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Gaming Review
Clearly nothing bad is going to happen here... oh no, definitely not

that you should, under no circumstances, go near these filth-infested pools. which is, of course, what the quest has you do. the way you gather quests is focused on stories too. You can have one story quest, one main quest, three side quests (normally just found lying around) and a couple of other quest types (stealth, investigation) running at once. By restricting your access to the main quests, the game both introduces an element of frustration: Do I really have to go back to the cemetery AGAIn? and focus, as you have no choice but to follow each sub-plot closely. Some quests are open world, some are group only, and some are solo instances; all of them feature multiple steps, which necessitate exploring the world some more. on top of this, there are genuinely tough puzzles built into many of the Investigation quests, which will require extensive use of the in-game browser; sometimes to research the answers, sometimes to just look them up on the wikis. For example, one quest involved googling for a fake corporations homepage, to find out the name of a dead agents spouse, so that it could be used as the password to his laptop, so I could find out the proper sequence to dismantle a device that was being used to attract monsters from the ocean. this is worth emphasising; having played MMos since the late 90s, Ive got used to skipping dialogue and not reading quest descriptions; The Secret World, uniquely, has stopped that. I click on a side quest marker, then automatically click accept then find myself having to
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Some scenes are incredibly eerie

onE oF tHE FEw MMoS IVE PLAYED tHAt I wAntED to KEEP PLAYInG
open my in-game journal to read the text. Similarly, though my hand strayed reflexively towards the Escape key during the major mission cutscenes, it rarely hit it, so compellingly told were they. of course, nearly all quests involve combat and that offers a few tweaks to the usual MMo structure of pressing buttons in particular orders. First, like Funcoms previous MMo Age of Conan, players are highly mobile, and the combat is flexible (particularly in the instanced dungeons). Second, the weaponry is all modern, so shotguns, rifles and pistols contend with swords, axes and magic. It does feel a bit odd at times, destroying unholy nasties beyond mortal ken with just a big hammer, but its fun enough. If you fail, there are convenient respawn points everywhere. Finally, while the levelling system isnt as open as Id hoped it would be, its still a classless, open world. From the very beginning you can train in any of the available weapon sets, but it takes deep specialisation to unlock the more complicated powers, necessary for effective PvP and dungeon diving. when youre playing in a group it still pays to specialise as healers, tanks and nukes but to get to the point where you can be an effective group member means acquiring skills to be other classes if necessary. Combine that with a simple system that allows you to swap between character builds whenever youre out of combat, and every character in the game can fill every role albeit, not always perfectly, because of the way youve built your equipment. the dungeon diving, though still bearing Funcoms innovative storytelling streak, is the most standardised part of the game but thats because it has to appeal to the group with the highest expectations, the people who have ground World of Warcrafts max level dungeons into dust for the past eight years. Despite that, Funcom has kept the number of non-boss enemies in these dungeons to a minimum, so an awful lot of dungeon diving is focused on perfecting team play. with no serious penalties for dying a lot and in-dungeon spawn points, you can repeat a tough dungeon until you get it right.

Puzzle quest

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the Secret world

GOODBYE SUBSCRIPTION MMOS


Much nonsense is spouted about Star Wars: The Old Republic and MMos in general, with analyst Michael Pachter having the latest say at Develop, If Star Wars couldnt do it, made by Bioware, then no one can do it. Bollocks. utter bollocks. utter hairy bollocks on a nonsense stick. The Secret World might well sound the death knell for subscription MMos (save for Blizzards slumbering titan), but both it and SWTOR are fundamentally flawed; SWTOR was a Jedi in leather elbow patches, while the much-superior The Secret World is too obscure and weird to attract sufficient mass market appeal. It just isnt useful to talk about MMos as subscription or not anymore. Lord of the Rings Online, ostensibly a free-to-play game, makes its money through optional microtransactions, subscriptions or an optional single-payment superveteran option. Its all about options. the key point is that subs arent going away - theyre just one amongst many possible payment options.

Hang on, when did I wander into the set of Tron?

I want to hug him, and squeeze him, and call him George

Leatherface is looking mightily pissed off. Quick, someone tank him.

the dungeons Ive been through have been two distinct versions of hell: fire, twisted biomechanical landscapes, giant demons with skincare problems; and a flashback dream to battles between Vikings, Mayans and American Indians, involving delving deeply into a filth-saturated excavation site, which was scarcely vertical.

Weak points

Just like the landscape outside, the secret history of the world are just the highlights. the areas available in the game are packed with content, much of it just waiting for you to stumble across it. there are a few quirks in the game. the tutorial system is nothing but primitive there were several occasions when I didnt know certain game systems existed at all. the crafting, though cleverly pulling in elements of Minecraft and Team Fortress 2, feels like it was an afterthought, but is necessary to succeed at higher levels. And the in-game shop is so hidden away I only found it when I accidentally hit a button on the keyboard. Similarly, there is PvP in the game, but its again hidden away.

the PvP takes the form of several ongoing fights across large warzones or so it seems to be. Players appearances are standardised according to certain archetypes, to make combat easier, and the whole thing has the feel of something similar to a Warhammer Online or Rift PvP arena. the sides that are currently winning in the various battles get bonus XP and stats depending on what your faction is currently holding. Going back to the in-game shop for a second. Like most modern MMos, The Secret World has an in-game real money shop that lets you buy cosmetic items for in-game use pets, clothing and the like. theoretically, this means that when The Secret World eventually goes free-to-play (which it surely will, and probably sooner rather than later), itll already have a moneymaking system in place. Again like most modern MMos, The Secret World has several currencies that players can acquire faction tokens that can be exchanged for top-end items, the normal Pax Romana that can be used to buy items and so on. Players cant however use real money to buy

important in-game items - essential if the PvP is to hold its balance. unusually, The Secret World is one of the few MMos Ive played that I wanted to keep playing after I finished the review. this isnt just because I felt like I had missed most of the content, or that the world and storyline was so rich and carefully crafted but because I recognised that this, mostly, was a singleplayer RPG. Indeed, this is a better single-player RPG than the ill-fated Kingdoms of Amalur that was released earlier in the year, which really should have been an MMo. there are elements of the game that work as an MMo the PvP makes little sense in a purely single player game but the only reason for this to be an MMo, really, is to charge more money for the tremendous amount of work thats gone into it. Dan Griliopoulos

Rich and accomplished with an impeccably written and acted story, but should this have really been a single player RPG?

october 2012

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