By Nathan Grayson on July 31st, 2012 at 11:00 am.
The past few weeks have seen us take a whirlwind tour of Firefall‘s massive summer milestone update, and it’s been quite a ride. Laughter, tears, happiness, and muscular men with jetpacks have all flown freely in equal measure – but mostly, it’s wrapped day-to-day life in a warm blanket of stability. Empires may fall, stars might blink out of existence, and The Hobbit will definitely get hacked into three still-quivering chunks, but at least a reliable stream of Firefall videos gave our tiny, insular world some semblance of order. Today, however, the Recon battleframe’s here to deliver us back into the arms of cruel uncertainty with the final video in the class series – which, I suppose, is pretty fitting, given that the Recon seems to exist for the sole purpose of ruining everyone’s day.
So, among other things, the Recon can turn enemies into friendly fire sponges, take away their ability to be healed, detonate mines at any given moment, transform downed foes into bombs, and then teleport to (relative) safety when legions of vengeful reincarnations inevitably seek them out. Also, he’s primarily a sniper, because of course he is.
But what about actually, you know, trying this stuff out? Well, if you’re not in the closed beta, you have two options: 1) get in line or 2) wait until the beta tag gets dropped “sometime this year.” There are, however, no plans for an open beta, so don’t expect the floodgates to open any second now – especially not with such a huge, potentially balance-shattering update nearly ready for takeoff.
31/07/2012 at 11:20 Wounder says:
All the lies, wildly failed promises and perverse hostility from the writers here could be cleansed by securing a pallet of beta keys to give away. You do want to feel good about yourselves again, yes?
Assuming I’m included, of course. This sort of threat works on the intarweb, I’m told.
31/07/2012 at 12:01 ColdSpiral says:
I like the cut of your jib, Wounder.
Got a key for you, if you want it.
31/07/2012 at 12:05 Wounder says:
Err, yes. Yes, please. Alas, I’m completely failing to see how you private message folks.
31/07/2012 at 12:08 ColdSpiral says:
Find me on steam, I’m in the RPS group.
31/07/2012 at 11:22 jimangi says:
I got into the Firefall beta months ago, but I need some friends to play it with.
31/07/2012 at 11:55 ran93r says:
As my battleframe of choice, this excites me, oh and translocator!
31/07/2012 at 12:54 Daave says:
I think the coverage of Firefall is too much for something in closed beta. Every time I see a post I have to do a double take to make sure it hasn’t been released yet.
I don’t mind too much, but I would expect this level of attention for a patch of a live game rather than one in closed beta.
31/07/2012 at 13:25 EPICTHEFAIL says:
@ caption: Firefall: clarifying violence-related issues that the Bible was a bit too fuzzy on the topic of!
Also, OMG RIPOFF OF TF2 OMGOMG!!!11!!11!!!!!!!1one, and a balance-related epiphany originating from someone noticing that proximity weapons are never used in their intended manner in videogames. Ever.
31/07/2012 at 13:35 Jon Tetrino says:
Unless they start adding some actual game to Firefall before release it is going to fall over flat.
The new character builds and skill system will help, but outside of the (to be honest, rather lacklustre and overdone) PVP there is no game to take part in. Grind up some levels, grind up some materials… Nothing else.
Got a lot to add if they want to release this year.
31/07/2012 at 19:40 Beemann says:
The issue was that the core game mechanics (read: what’s being changed) were boring and derivative. Running around gathering standard loot drops, or crafting them yourself, in order to engage in some fairly standard PvE or some sub-par PvP was not going to keep the game afloat
So they’re changing the frames first, which immediately affects PvP, because it’s the big gamebreaker as far as PvE goes.
Once they’ve decided where the limits are, they can start rolling out PvE content without worrying about it being too easy or heavily exploited.
I’ll probably just stick to the PvP for the most part though, to be honest. Gonna round up some Global Agenda buddies and make use of that duelling system ASAP
31/12/2012 at 23:09 gallitin says:
Great game!
Found a good fan site as well: http://forums.firefallbase.com/