Fallen Earth Review

Mad Min-Max.

My problem was that I skipped the extended tutorial. How much tutoring could I possibly need? This was just another MMO, only this time wearing the togs of a Mad Max or Fallout universe. I'd been sat in my pants playing MMOs before this game was even a twinkle in the designer's imagination, and there was nothing, nothing, I couldn't figure out for myself. Right? Well, half right. I hadn't realised that the end of the extended tutorial delivered a free horse.

A mount at the end of the tutorial sequence! How many MMOs can boast that? None, as far as I knew, and so I padded away into the post-apocalyptic night, entirely unaware that my smugness would lead to suffering.

I barely paid that extended tutorial query a second thought as I paced about the starting town on foot, trying to find out why the food had been poisoned, and killing conveniently ghettoised local baddies. Everything seemed to be where I expected it. Dudes with quests littered the town, each crowned with a little biohazard symbol to signify their interactivity. It didn't take long to find a shop where I could trade in my loot for ammo and new trousers.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that levelling had been augmented with an "action point" system, in which you spend action points as you level (or save them up for later) which meant the XP grind was smoothed out with lots of smaller decisions about managing your skills and inventory. By the time I got to level five and was in a suitable condition to head out of the starting town to another nearby settlement to continue the larger quest-arc, I was rather enjoying myself.

'Fallen Earth' Screenshot 1

"The skies of the South West are spectacular..." 1000 Bonus Points for this reference, commenters.

I jogged down the town's craggy ramp, past the ruined airport, and out into the desert. After running for a while through desolate wilderness, and straying into a player-versus-player zone that gave me the jitters, I was passed by a man on a horse.

People on horseback and little quad-bikes had been appearing regularly as I'd explored my first shanty town of the apocalypse, and I'd not paid them much attention. After all, they were probably the same high level dudes that you see everywhere in other MMOs. But wait, this guy passing me in the desert was a lower level than me! I ran a bit further, past cacti and coyotes, slowly realising that the town just a few pixels across the map was actually miles away. As a pedestrian I was going to be on this journey for quite some time. I looked back at the rocky hillock from which I'd just come, and wondered if I should head back. Annoyed, I squeaked with indignation: "But I want a pony!"

Where to find a horse? I felt certain a long grind would lie ahead of me. Most games would demand a high ransom for such aspirational items as x-percent faster travel. Happily, there was a quick and convenient refuge, which was Fallen Earth's help chat channel. An astonishingly friendly and well-informed set of people were quick to diagnose that my problem was that I hadn't played the extended tutorial, before explaining that there were other ways of getting a horse. And so, having sold a load of loot and raised the chips (the game uses casino chips as cash) I was able to gather the appropriate ingredients and make a horse. Apocalypony, I call him. Thanks, help channel!

Let's rewind a bit. By the time I hit that extended tutorial option I'd already played through a substantial starting section of the game which teaches you about the world around you (looting corpses and so forth) as well as the rudiments of combat. This action-packed intro scenario also sets up the story of the shattered planet you're going to be riding forth into (assuming you get the horse), and your place in it as a clone. The central fiction is based around a clone vat system to which you are linked. Thanks to this cloning system you'll be able rise again if you die, unlike all the other normal people who inhabit Fallen Earth. As such you're both valuable, and anomalous, which I think is - like EVE's pod-pilots - a useful conceit to explain the immortality of players in an MMO.

That's not to say the world is without its dangers. It is, of course, teeming with encounters that will send you to the respawn tubes. Fallen Earth does allow you to fight a number of enemies in one go without too much trouble, as long as they're not much more than a level higher than yourself, and all the early encounters are easy, but it doesn't stay that way. Aberrant humans, rabid animals and mutants await as you delve further into the game.

Combat, which is first explained to you in that instanced tutorial adventure, is a not-that-great mix of real-time and stat-based. While it feels a lot like the standard timed combat that you see in most older MMOs, ranged combat does require you to shoot at your target directly, and to hit them. It's quite possible to miss if an enemy is moving, and the same goes for melee, in which you swing in real time, with damage being calculated by your skills and the weapon you choose to use.

'Fallen Earth' Screenshot 2

Zanesville ahead - one of the starting towns, complete with funny antenna thing.

This alone makes Fallen Earth a little more engaging to play than a batch of other MMOs I could mention, and the ability to choose between gunplay and close-quarters combat is brave, if not actually that dynamic or exciting. It's something of shame that enemies don't reward you with the same kind of diversity of behaviour. It tends to be little more than a single kind of attack, which you either have the hit points to absorb or not. That said, cover is "real" and you can run and hide from a sniper if you need to.

This clumsy hybrid of a combat model might not be perfect, but it does offer a portrait of the game as a whole. What I mean by that is that Fallen Earth isn't boasting up-to-date production values, or genuinely innovating within the MMO space, but it is trying to be its own game. This is not a clone, nor an attempt to be brutally commercial.

While it has some very real limitations - PvP is currently rather pointless, it's not particularly rewarding for team-based play, and the animation and other glossy elements leave much to be desired - it's a testament to the dedication of this small, independent team that they've managed to create something that is both firmly embedded within the MMO tradition, while at the same time feeling new. And it also feels honest: they've got a good idea about where they're going, and there's nothing cynical about what they've done so far.

(By contrast, I've felt that Cryptic's offerings since City Of Heroes have been very much More Of The Same, while Fallen Earth feels like More Of The Same, But Making An Effort To Be Different. Hell, go play the ten day trial and you'll see what I mean.)

The end game, it seems, will be one of PvP and very serious crafting. There's already a huge trade and production system apparent within the game, with players able to make everything from ammunition to mounts to armour. Books are available for your characters to learn this stuff, and then there's the collection of a whole range of different trade items and consumables. I can't recall a game that poured so much different material into my inventory in the first few hours, and it only seems to proliferate from there.

I imagine this is going to be an absolute goldmine for the trade and resource-minded player. It's not pretty, or framed with a good UI, or adequately explained, but it does hold a lot of promise. Combat-focused characters can settle for crafting their character via mutations: potent mutagenic alterations to your character that can make them hideously powerful in combat.

All this would probably been superfluous without competent world-building, and there's plenty of that here. The various settlements that are scattered across the game world each have their own character, despite the overall tone of the game being post-apocalyptic drabness. Nor is the game without a sense of scale. As I mentioned, having a mount is a really significant boon to travel. Even the first sector of the game is huge, and getting about on foot is improbably time-consuming.

'Fallen Earth' Screenshot 3

Surprise!

Something I should note, because it's a minor detail but kind of wonderful, is that mounts are persistent objects in the world. You'll probably want to leave your horse to graze at the edge of town or mission location when you are getting your business sorted, because that way he'll stay out of danger, and possibly even recoup stamina as he rests.

Probably the most important thing for new players, however, is that Fallen Earth is positively dripping in quests. You'll end up setting some objectives for yourself in terms of crafting and getting hold of mounts and armour, but nor will you be without something to do in the game world. For a small MMO that has just started its journey, Fallen Earth remarkably rich in things to do.

Fallen Earth wasn't in great shape when it launched late last year, but it's rapidly improving. The next two planned patches (1.4 and 1.5) are intended to expand on that, with a new region, new PvP objectives, and genuine support for clans (which is rudimentary at present, and one of the main things holding this game back.) All in all this is a bold project, and one that I feel like we've been waiting for. Expectation is a trickster, and I have to admit that expected far less than I got from Fallen Earth. For something so apocalyptic, it feels like it's got a bright future ahead of it.

7 / 10

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Comments (35) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • ChthonicEcho #1 2 years ago

    Wait, a re-review? I didn't even know this was released. Huh.

    I am not overly fond of apocalyptic or (most) post-apocalyptic settings. I'm much more interested in a dystopia, e.g. Half-Life 2's bleak and colourless future. There needs to be an MMO of something along those lines, with an emphasis on survival.
  • Oli Verified Reviews Editor, Eurogamer.net #2 2 years ago

    It's not a re-review, that was a mistake. Sorry!

    It is kinda late though - the game was officially launched late last year.
  • stevetuck #3 2 years ago

    Whats the amount of players like on the servers? no point playing a dead mmo really :/
  • Grump #4 2 years ago

    Glad to see a review of this. For me Fallen Earth is the best of all the recent MMO releases. And i've given most of them a go - apart from Aion.
  • hello_fi #5 2 years ago

    Would have been a better game had it been on a decent gaming system, i.e. a console
  • skullstorm #6 2 years ago

    Yeah, it would definitely be up there amidst the plethora of truly great console mmo's...
  • figgis #7 2 years ago

    All one of them...
  • Powerslave #8 2 years ago

    just to note that the link given on the RSS feeds (linking to this page) is wrong. mods please fix :)
  • MrWonderstuff #9 2 years ago

    Gonna download the trial and give it a go on my ageing pc.
  • Gaol #10 2 years ago

    FOR FUCK SAKE.

    I thought EG had started to review MMOs on current status, rather than some ludicrous and highly subjective sense of 'potential'.

    "It's not pretty, or framed with a good UI, or adequately explained, but it does hold a lot of promise."

    No shit. This game is fucking atrocious. Its almost as bad as that free for all you made Kieron rereview last year. The review is, and nothing personal here, totally FUBAR. Half of it's a blog on how the owner got a horse early in the game, the other half seems to broadly criticize different features while saying 'that's OK, it's trying to be different'. No mention of the deeply flawed combat mechanics, laggy server performance, unoptimized game engine, Deus Ex era graphics, utter lack of a directed experience, brain-numbingly laborious crafting, hilariously bad animation, thousands of broken quests and bugs...

    Fallen Earth is so bad it's laugable. It's the sort of indie project that attracts a small but scarily hardcore bunch of players who then try to convert other people to the game with more passion than a jehova's witness. You can't take a harder stance on Aeon and Star Trek Online and then let this abortion get a free run.

    In the words of the WWE safety commercial:

    Please don't try this.
    Edited by 3 at 22/02/10 @ 12:32
  • Skurmedel #11 2 years ago

    Well, how good was WoW when it came out? I don't know, I still don't find it fun but it is apparently the pinnacle of MMO making... :)
  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #12 2 years ago

    I love the 'Indie MMOs are dead/niche' - you DO realise EVE 'died' in it's first year, hence why CCP 100% own the game they bought it from their publisher and it's took at least 2 years to build it up into one of the best MMOs out there, CCP was/is the king of the indie devs, depends what you want to class them as these days considering CCP are HUGE now.

    It's the 'die hard fans' that keep MMOs going and give the devs time to build the games up into great MMOs, it's just the rabid horde of armchair devs these days that expect every MMO to be massivily funded by some big shot publisher and expect all MMOs to be as 'pritty' as Final Fantasy and as 'complex' as Halo/Dragon Age (depending on the style of game).

    The irrony is the 'indie MMOs' have a bigger chance to be successful in the long term as almost everything they have goes into their games and it IS litterly make or break for them, unlike big name publishers that can just churn out a half arsed title and then just milk it dry and then dump it 2/3 years laster for the 'new' version with no skin off their noses.

    Bottom like is don't diss Indie MMOs , yea they aren't AAA but at least they care enought about the games to keep going to try and make the best game possible
  • Gaol #13 2 years ago

    @Kremlik

    Don't change the subject. Ths isn't about indie vs corporate. There are plenty fanatical weirdos playing the big corporate releases too.

    This is about EG giving an absolute cabbage 7/10.

    Oh and btw, just cause it's indie, doesn't mean the makers are automatically altruistic saints, unlike the evil money masters at Blizzards. They are all profit making enterprises, and they are all similarly priced products.
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/10 @ 12:46
  • Zapatero #14 2 years ago

    I'd like to commend some of the writing in the game. While most MMOG quest boxes get quickly shut, the ones in Fallen Earth are usually worth a read and might cause the odd chuckle.

    "Suspicious cheese" always makes me smile.
  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #15 2 years ago

    @Gaol - How is that changing the subject when most of the comments basically flame the review and title screaming 'indies are shit' basically meaning that most ppl aren't happy with any game these days if it's not got the 'magical' X million playerbase.

    The game aye was a stinker on release, but it's improving a heck of a lot faster the the 'big name titles' that really only bother updating their games when their paychecks get lower, this game can be a gem in a year or twos time if this keeps up, thats unless they done royally muck it up or get bought out and then the game gets milked and dumpped (which seems to be a trend these days).

    Like I said many of the so called 'know it alls' out there expect AAA from people who have basically moraged their homes to get the game to at least a workable standard, personally I'd like to see them do a MMO from nothing.I'll personally be glad when all the 'MMOs make you cool' hype is gone in another few years and the true playerbases actally give their opions on the games not the rabbid ps3/360 fanbois that think 'skill' is bunny hopping with a shotgun in fps games.

    Added: oh and your 'indie = good blizzard = bad comment' actally FYI I think Blizzard have done an ok job with WoW, it's the elitest playerbase dragging it down plus I'm really hyped about Cata as it finally brings in some stuff that would have helped the game 4 years ago and basically throws out the rubbish then made me quit the game years ago, they've turned the game around to somthing fun.

    Indie devs aren't saits at all ever heard of Dark and Light? That was one of the biggest MMO cons in a long time and I personally don't like Hirez for basically having the cheek to clone TF2 then add basically a pinboard map that you find in Warhammer tabletop and slap on a sub to use it
    Edited by 3 at 22/02/10 @ 13:10
  • Tyranix #16 2 years ago

    Superb game that is far more ambitious than any of the corporate clones (and there are many) that have come out in the last five or so years. It's a little rough but the team are so dedicated it just keeps improving at a ridiculous rate.
  • Chazmeister #17 2 years ago

    Just wish my PC was up to the job of trying it, as it sounds right up my street.
  • _LarZen_ #18 2 years ago

    Didnt even know this was out yet! Gona download the trail later today tho :)
  • Gaol #19 2 years ago

    "Like I said many of the so called 'know it alls' out there expect AAA from people who have basically moraged their homes to get the game to at least a workable standard "

    So what, since these guys are such fucking martyrs to the great sandbox MMO dream, we should automatically inflate the rating and excuse all of the games's shortcomings?

    And you are changing the subject.

    This game is horseshit, and that's a fact. 'Masively Improved Since Launch' Horseshit 'with Great Potential'.

    But still Horseshit.
  • gmmonkey #20 2 years ago

    This game was a lot better than I thought it would be. I tried the trial in January out of boredom, and it was good but not brilliant. If I wasn't so busy in RL I'd be subscribing. It has an EVE online potential about it. I think we'll see a slow rise in population over time. It was a lot busier the game than I thought. The starter towns were rammed. Surprisingly there wasn't any slowdown. I think it's a bit of a marmite game. If you liked early swg, try this out. Also, I think it's one server. I'll be returning to this game at some point in the future when I have free time. To sum it up for me:

    + really good crafting
    + immersive sandbox world
    + large potential

    - animation and character models aren't the best
    - combat is a bit clunky
    - it's difficault to know what you're doing with your skillpoints early on without making the best of your character

  • Wendelius #21 2 years ago

    "This game is horseshit, and that's a fact."

    No. It's your opinion. Personally, when I played it late last year, I thought it was quite refreshing in what it tried to do and it had some fun content. Sure it was rough around some edges. But it was quite fun to go exploring the world. I'd imagine it's gained a bit of polish and/or content in the past 2-3 months. But even back then, it was not horseshit.

    Not sure why you are afraid of people trying or liking this game. But it's not as bad as you make it seem. I'd agree that it's likely to be a marmite game though.

    Wendelius
  • skullstorm #22 2 years ago

    Opinions opinions opinions.

    Reviews are opinions too.

    Stop throwing a fucking hissy fit.
  • EmiliasHorse #23 2 years ago

    Just wish Gaol would stop sitting on the fence.

  • beatwolf #24 2 years ago

    maybe I should just check this out... but after spending about 120+ hours in Fallout 3's bleak and gray wasteland im not sure i would like to invest a lot more of my time in these colourless worlds..
  • Wash #25 2 years ago

    I'm actually quite enjoying the trial, following this artical. This could be for 2 reasons, 1 i recently had the misfortune of trying Mortal Online and 2, i prefer the setting to wow etc.

    Still... dunno if i'll pay to continue, ppl seem nice enough, if a little low in population...
  • joe90 #26 2 years ago

    @beatwolf
    That what i wondered.. the thing with WoW (for example) is the lush colourful areas, and the mixture of bland areas, eveything is not a shade of brown.

    Anyone actually played this? Its it as colourless as it would appear.?
  • Bravestinsane #27 2 years ago

    Combat, which is first explained to you in that instanced tutorial adventure, is a not-that-great mix of real-time and stat-based. While it feels a lot like the standard timed combat that you see in most older MMOs, ranged combat does require you to shoot at your target directly, and to hit them. It's quite possible to miss if an enemy is moving, and the same goes for melee, in which you swing in real time, with damage being calculated by your skills and the weapon you choose to use.

    ---

    The game actually needs skill wow!

    You know i think i might give the 10 day trial a shot sounds interesting!
  • Grump #28 2 years ago

    Apparently it gets lusher and greener as you move through the sectors.

    I haven't progressed from sector 1 yet. It's bloody massive! And to think there are another 2 (possibly 3) more to explore.
  • Creasy #29 2 years ago

    awful mmog just like any other (except eve and wow obviously)
  • lennon #30 2 years ago

    If my laptop is up to it I am going to try this.
  • darc #31 2 years ago

    Did he say "make a horse"??
  • Sharzam #32 2 years ago

    Makes me think of tabula rasa in terms of the game play, i really hope it doesnt have the same geomerty thourgh as i hated that small scale instanced feel.

    By the sounds of it, it is massive with lots places to see and terrain to cover. So gonna give the trial a try atleast.
  • Vyggo #33 2 years ago

    I played this for a bit. Really enjoyed it, but didn't run so well on my pc. The crafting/resource system is very interesting, but since nothing ever gets removed from the world (like in Eve) you are mostly just crafting for yourself. Which is quite fitting for an apocalyptic setting perhaps, but it does detract from a crafting heavy game if there is noone that wants to buy crafted stuff because the market is flooded.

    Could be that they made changes to this since i left a few months ago, but it doesn't sound like something you'd change after release.

    Edit: Related to the above point. The whole game feels like it can't decide if it wants to be like WoW or Eve, it tries to be both open-world and theme park. At the end, I don't think it satisfies fans of either of those.
    Edited by 1 at 22/02/10 @ 18:33
  • Trikk #34 2 years ago

    How the hell could anyone seriously enjoy this game?

    I was told about this game by a friend, it sounded awesome. Then beta came, and a couple of us got in and started playing. At first glance it was awful, truly awful. The controls and movement is the worst of any FPS I have played. It's quite an accomplishment to screw it up since there are countless games that does it perfectly that you can just copy.

    Trying to ignore that, you sorta get into the game play but it's just so bland and uninspired. ETQW has better character progression. In the end, the controls just killed it for me. I just don't get EG MMORPG reviews. It's like how the game actually plays is not considered at all, it's more important to have "story" or other completely arbitrary things for this particular genre.
  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #35 2 years ago

    @Trikk because as this article proves the beta doesn't reflect the rest of the life of the game, like I've been saying MMOs aren't static with 'what you see is what you get', they evolve, improve (yes sometimes they do get worse), as this article says beta stinkers turn into gems, and as I threw up EVE 'rose from the dead'.

    Like I've said many times now people need to step back and stop damning MMOs forever based on their betas, they aren't singleplayer titles and never stay in a 'as is' statis for long, re-reviews are needed not just by the gaming sites but the player as well, thats what trials and free comeback events are for.