First Look: Defiance Beta 3 on PS3

Alright, folks.  I was super excited to get to participate in round 3 of the beta testing for Defiance.   The NDA was lifted today, allowing testers to share their thoughts online... and Trion did a live beta stream of the PC version earlier today.  As for the PS3 version, I'm feeling kind of meh about it, but still hopeful that things will improve with the release of the full game.  Read on for my first impressions.  If you need a run-down of what this game is all about, check out their website for a synopsis (the coinciding SyFy series premieres on April 15th).


So, the game introduction  and cut scenes were pretty good and included a decent tutorial as your character emerges from the wreckage of a shuttle crash.  The controls are standard fare for a shooter game, no surprises.  Graphics are decent (see screen shots below) but nothing to write home about.  Your character is fully customizable, i.e., if you want to spend hours getting your face shape and hair design just right, you can do that.  I think my gal's purple hair is quite appropriate for a post-alien invasion environment, don't you agree?







  Pretty sure that like five bad guys materialized
near that building a minute after this was taken.

Where the f$&# did all those bad guys come from?!  So one of my biggest issues with the gameplay so far has been the inconsistency of the reference map, which gives you a head's up when characters--good and bad--are nearby.  It also provides symbols for nearby mission objectives, challenges, etc.  But that functionality does not work all the time, especially when it comes to showing where your enemies are located!!  More often then not, there were no red blips on the head's up display when all of a sudden, a whole group of bad guys materialized in front of my character.  And THEN, if that wasn't bad enough, the bad guys are still not showing up on the map for several more minutes as I'm trying to fight my way out of a total mess!!  And THEN, there were even a couple times where the mutant mob completely disappeared as quickly as they materialized.  I am not sure if this is a network connectivity/congestion issue, but our connection is on par with the average gamer so I imagine many other players have experienced this.  Watching Trion's beta demo, I see that the PC version has the same problem with the head's up display (though they didn't mention it).  Extremely frustrating.

I beat a bunch of mutants, and all I got was this lousy scrip.  Not sure if this is a beta thing, but man....being a little cheap on the rewards for beating up all these mutants, aren't we?  In my opinion, beating some of these missions is hard as hell unless you're moving around with a group of other players--you can form "clans"--which can still be dicey getting through some of the later missions.  That's right--I am not afraid to admit that I have found this game hard!  When your character is stuck in a bad way and is about to die, the most common option is to "extract" (you can self-revive once, but after that you must withdraw from the mission if another player doesn't rescue you).  When you extract, you get charged a lot of scrip, aka, main currency utilized.  It is so difficult to get through some of these missions that I keep spending all my hard-earned scrip to extract from missions, and then I don't have hardly any currency left to buy upgrades or new gear.  I don't care too much since it's just a beta, and I imagine team development will ease the "extract" issues, but I hope that this stinginess with rewards doesn't continue in the full game.

 

Vroom Vroom. Crash.  One of resources your character can access at will is an all-terrain vehicle. Trion has been advertising that a special Dodge Challenger option provided with a pre-order of the game. I've tried using the vehicles a couple times in beta, but they've proven to be about as useful as a box of rocks.   The controls are not terribly intuitive and it's hard to navigate long distances with all the post-apocalyptic litter laying around.   Most players were using them to try to run each other over, but not for anything mission-oriented.  I'll walk, man. Of course, if I do that, I'll get ambushed by phantom-mutants not shown on my map, forcing me to "extract" and lose all my scrips. 

 

...and how is this all working with the TV series??  The big sell for Defiance was that it's the first video game to be fully integrated with a TV series.  I have been wondering how this will be implemented from a practical standpoint, and in today's Trion beta stream, lead actor Grant Bowler indicated that the whole first season of the show has been filmed.  Then how can the game possibly have any impact on the show until the second season?  I think the answer (which Mr. Bowler so cleverly side-stepped) is that it won't be impacted by the game...it sounds like the game will have injects based on what is happening in the TV series, but again, not sure how that's going to work or how much value-added it will have for the overall gameplay. 

 

Ok, I'll stop being a Debbie Downer.  It's not all bad!!  The times that I have interacted with other players in a team environment has been truly fun.  Also, the AI for the bad guys deserves a shout-out....I have not seen the mutants stuck in corners or standing idly by while my character beats on them.  The above-average intelligence of the enemy makes the game all the more challenging.  However, that added challenge, combined with the shortcomings I've mentioned, could potentially make long-term gameplay frustrating. 

 

Bottom line..a hopeful "meh. " It was really the TV series - game play interaction that made Defiance unique, but absent that, the beta has given me the impression that it is a fairly run-of-the-mill sci-fi shooter.  I am looking forward to getting the full game in hand and seeing the series.  I'm not giving up hope yet! But I certainly hope the show makes it to a second season to actually see through the game's potential influences on the story line.  Only time will tell.