Posted By James C. about 1 year, 11 months ago
Armor detail can range from standard space marine to ludicrous detail.
In relations to game play, I find little to fault in the case of design. The game is balanced in its combat, item licenses for new weaponry and gadgets given to agents are spread out evenly among levels, and the difficulty curve for new dungeons is understandable. Hell, I love the implementation of the PvPvE of the Double Agent dungeons. But then again, I never said that I found the design to be flawless. The crafting system, for example, is a very poorly described system as to what you can make, what you can use the items for, and where to find the materials required (all crafting mats are found in the operative missions and the introductory quest line).
In regards to how the game plays and looks, Global Agenda decides to not stray too far from average, both on the good and bad side of the spectrum. While the details of the shattered earth were somewhat impressive in parts, they were equally disappointing in other areas. This was one of the other reasons why I never tried the game out when it was first released last year, due to the fact that I had seen better environments of a futuristic wasteland in other titles. The first game that comes to mind that does perform superior to Global Agenda would be Fallout 3 and its absurd amount of DLC environment. Yes, I know that comparing the presentation value of an MMO to a non-MMO title is somewhat baseless, but the only parallel to Global Agenda that comes to mind is Fallen Earth, but I have sadly not played it.
Audibly, Global Agenda does well, but once again not superb. The futuristic weaponry makes hi-tech whirring and firing as they propel ionic death to their enemies, screams of pain and buckling armor plates can be heard as Assaults take the full force of the enemy team’s capabilities. The music conveys well with differing scenarios, as preludes to breaching Commonwealth bunkers are accompanied by doting spy music, while all out mercenary battles are showered with fast paced ballads for suspense and conflict. Voice over work, while somewhat scarce in most missions, is done to an above average standard, not missing a beat in in-game situations. Most of the voice work is perpetrated by your contact in the Dome City, the main hub of Global Agenda, as well as some key NPC’s in your quest line and the announcer for mercenary, arena, and AvA battles.
Players prepare for a raid on the dome city. Waves of commonwealth attack bots will stop at nothing short of victory.
In the beginning, I was immensely in favour for this free to play title. The game had a good sense of balance, a mediocre but unique storyline, and third person shooting combat with jetpacks. I mean, who doesn’t love jetpacks? However, my faith in this game was quickly besmirched by the sudden change in game play style, replacing open world questing with canned fighting with dungeon bots or other players. While they were fun at a time, the lack of any sort of “light and the end of the tunnel” to this part of the game quickly changed my mind as to offer recommendation for it.
While understandable to make the game profitable with Hi-Rez Studios and its publisher, the elite agent upgrade and Boosters end up taunting free players of much they were missing. While I understand that this was the whole idea behind the upgrade’s design, I still find the severe lack of attaining items in scenarios as a free agent to be a severe penalty.
Global Agenda tries very well to be what it is: A third person shooter MMO. I honestly believe that the free agent conversion will not change its fate. This game walks the typical line of mediocrity with a swagger you would find appealing at first, but quickly be annoyed with in the end.
A copy of this game was provided for the reviewer by the developer website. The reviewer spent approximately twenty hours playing the game and reached a player level of 23 out of 50.
Global Agenda, stated to being Team Fortress: The MMO upon its release in February of 2010. With a dwindling player base and the general dislike of MMO subscription fees, Hi-Rez Studios decided to adopt a free to play model in place of its massive demo, but can the dull brown of post apocalyptic earth shine?
Global Agenda was not exactly the greatest game to be released last year, but there was definitely a solid player base to the game. With Free Agent, it’s only going to get bigger from here! Read on for more info.
Global Agenda, stated to being Team Fortress: The MMO upon its release in February of 2010. With a dwindling player base and the general dislike of MMO subscription fees, Hi-Rez Studios decided to adopt a free to play model in place of its massive demo, but can the dull brown of post apocalyptic earth shine?
Global Agenda was not exactly the greatest game to be released last year, but there was definitely a solid player base to the game. With Free Agent, it’s only going to get bigger from here! Read on for more info.
Posted By James C. about 1 year, 11 months ago
Global Agenda: Free Agent Review
I remember what I was doing the day Global Agenda initially appeared in February of last year: I was not caring about it. While the underlying story did interest me a bit, I also knew that the game borrowed heavily from Team Fortress 2, a game that I was still enthralled with upon the MMO’s release. Another major factor was that my first belief that the game had a pay to play business model, something that I thought to be a major detractor from such a mediocre title in both idea and presentation, and the fact that a scant few of my friends online dared not even get close to this title.
Fast forward a year and a half later. The advent of free to play conversions with micro transactions of pay to play games is starting to become a very popular design switch, as Lord of the Rings Online and Champions Online seem to have shown various degrees of prosperity. Hi-Rez Studios, while adopting a very generous free demo in 2010, has completed its conversion to the F2P model with Global Agenda: Free Agent. It is a welcome sight to those who were eternally sceptical (like a certain Canadian MMO reviewer for Blistered Thumbs that isn’t nicknamed Oda) to check up what the game is ultimately about.
| PROS | Effective class balance, Lots of different game play modes, Free to play |
| CONS | Illusion of quest content, Lackluster presentation, Tedium sets in very quickly |
| WTF?! | Why kill off questing content so fast after offering it? |
Congratulations! After being vat born by the Commonwealth, a corporation conglomerate that takes over all governments worldwide, your player character is released by operatives of the Agency, a resistance group seeking to overthrow the Commonwealth worldwide and return to a more tribal way of rule. Once freed, you must escape the high security compound and regroup with the freedom fighters to help retake the desiccated world back from both the Commonwealth and the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world.
While the story of Global Agenda is very interesting at the get go, it quickly tapers off and dies after about less than ten hours. Now ten hours is great for some games, but I never said that the game ITSELF was ten hours long. If you want to get into the later parts of the game, be ready to spend a lot of time on it.
The Commonwealth will stop at nothing to make sure the Agency submits to their will.
Once the tutorial mission and the only major quest line in the game end, that is where the story ends and the real game begins. While the back story to this title is quite interesting (End of the world, rise of the Commonwealth, the purpose of war between agencies (guilds)), there is not a whole lot of in-game methods to learn about it. While the latter part of the game deals with Agency versus Agency (AvA) conflict, the “introductory” story to the game is quite weak.
Once the intro story comes to a close, the real game begins: Canned arena combat. But before we get to the game’s many modes, let us take a look at your character and what it can potentially do. At character creation, you have access to four different class types: Assault (Heavily armoured class, effective at short to medium range), Medic (Light armoured healer, can use poisons to damage and leech enemy health), Recon (Light armoured attacking class, can be effective at either extremely long ranges or in melee range, stealth capable strike), and Engineer (Medium armoured support, can establish fortifications for defense, push offense, and quick travel across arena maps, uses turrets for point defense).
I’m going to have to disagree with your “Avoid it” recommendation. I’ve been playing GA off and on since it went for purchase on steam about a year ago and experienced most of it’s evolution into what it is now. I think one of the main reasons why they put in the quests in the beginning of the game was to help speed up leveling in the earlier levels, because all the interesting stuff tends to open up around level 30. The fact that the game taunts you with “Oh you totally could of gotten this if you bought the premium access and a booster.” is a jerk move though. It can be a lot of fun doing the PVE with friends because the way the game plays, you have to work as a team to pass the stages else you’ll die again, and again, and again. Once you figure that out it’s a pretty fun game to play on occasion.
Personally, I say anyone should try this game out, especially if they can rope 3 of their friends into joining with them to make a balanced team to party with. Voice chatting is a MUST in this game. This isn’t what I would call a great game, but it is pretty good.
I wish I could say “how could you come to this conclusion!?” and be appalled, because I paid the full 50 bucks for this thing when it was brand new. I followed it with the purchase of APB… maybe I’m just an idiot investor?
At any rate, good review! Summed this atrocity up in four pages.
I’m going to have to disagree with your “Avoid it” recommendation. I’ve been playing GA off and on since it went for purchase on steam about a year ago and experienced most of it’s evolution into what it is now. I think one of the main reasons why they put in the quests in the beginning of the game was to help speed up leveling in the earlier levels, because all the interesting stuff tends to open up around level 30. The fact that the game taunts you with “Oh you totally could of gotten this if you bought the premium access and a booster.” is a jerk move though. It can be a lot of fun doing the PVE with friends because the way the game plays, you have to work as a team to pass the stages else you’ll die again, and again, and again. Once you figure that out it’s a pretty fun game to play on occasion.
Personally, I say anyone should try this game out, especially if they can rope 3 of their friends into joining with them to make a balanced team to party with. Voice chatting is a MUST in this game. This isn’t what I would call a great game, but it is pretty good.
I wish I could say “how could you come to this conclusion!?” and be appalled, because I paid the full 50 bucks for this thing when it was brand new. I followed it with the purchase of APB… maybe I’m just an idiot investor?
At any rate, good review! Summed this atrocity up in four pages.