The Secret World is… something. It’s an MMO that falls on the Guild Wars side of the mechanical spectrum. That is, a crucial, limited number of abilities you can access at any given time (but can switch) vs. the WoW-style of an abundance of abilities, but most of them range between situational to useless unless you spec into them. The GW-style tends to make combat much harder than WoW-clones, but also more interesting and engaging to play.

Much like Star Wars: The Old Republic, a major focus of the game is in storytelling. Where Secret World has a leg up is in atmosphere and the characters. I’ve yet to finish the first area (I’m in the third map for it), but I can tell you definitively that the characters you meet, what they’re doing, and how they interact with one another is so much more interesting than anything I witnessed in SWTOR.

However, and this is my largest issue with the game. It’s unoptimized as all get-out. Even after playing Archeage, I’ve never seen an MMO this bad. Just logging into the game takes 1.2 million kilobytes (on DX9 with the sliders on 0). And I’ve witnessed memory leaks drag that as high as 1.6 million. I say witnessed, because I know it can get worse, but I never got the chance to see how bad it can get before it crashed my entire computer. I now periodically monitor the game in my Task Manager and reboot if memory usage gets too high.

You’ll also have to frequently tab out or use the game’s built-in web browser to look up what you’re supposed to do, because a lot of the game’s puzzles are ridiculously convoluted. And can bug. I’ve yet to encounter a bug that halted progression entirely. But I’ve had to wait, or repeat steps, or in one instance even log out of my character and back in to get the mission to advance.

I got the game on sale, and it has certainly been worth the price in story and character interaction alone. And as I understand it the game used to be a lot harder than it is now. But it’s still pretty hard.

Edit: I’m looking forward to Bladestorm: Nightmare releasing on Steam!

Okay, so good game. Definitely worth the price. There were some issues, though. I’ll talk about it after the break.

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So, as an addendum to what I said about Shadowrun Returns, the last “dungeon” was crap, mechanically. Still avoiding spoilers, there was nothing I could use my deck on, so that was a wasted weapon slot. And on top of that you have to carry around this gimmick gun to kill these gimmick enemies once you’ve weakened them (which you have to kill in one turn or they get their power back). So my main character only had one real weapon.

At first I thought the final boss was going to be all Deus Ex-style, where there’s things set up for you to take advantage of depending on how you built your character. But nope. Can’t debuff the last boss at all. Nothing to hack. More and more gimmick enemies spawn the longer the fight goes. And they spawn faster and faster. I couldn’t keep them under control because of how many shots it takes with the gimmick guns to bring them down. Only reason I won on my third attempt was because of a lot of lucky rolls letting me just drop her quickly (and my S rank rig was really accurate).

BUT! The story was still really cool. And the campaign the game comes with is less of “this is it” and more of “this is an example.” Because it’s not really a standalone game so much as a level editor. And to that end, it’s great! I’m positive that other players are going to make some awesome content!

Just, you know, don’t forget about deckers in your last dungeon.

So, a while ago some pony asked me how that new Deus Ex game was. They wanted to hear about it after I beat it. So, here is every fault I can find in the game.

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