Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Via the Eurogamer Expo, we got some time with Global Agenda. Here’s the hands-on experience, complete with some input from the developers themselves.

Global Agenda is a game straddling two worlds. It has two different payment schemes, and two different games within itself, almost. It’s a multiplayer third person shooter, with a class based system and jetpacks. But it’s also a huge sprawling PvE/PvP MMO, with the PvP driven by player Agencies that can form and break alliances on the fly in a bitter battle for territorial zones that grant bonuses and benefits. It’s also got some instanced dungeons thrown in there, for the uncompetitive among us.
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John was rather intrigued by Hi-Rez Studios’ shooter MMO Global Agenda when he saw it at E3. It has intrigued the rest of us too, but we haven’t yet had a chance to play it. You might get a chance though, as the very first round of beta testing is now in motion. On a handful of people will be allowed in for the first look this weekend, and we have a special code that will enter you for that first round draw. Clickwards for more.

UPDATE: This has finished! Winners drawn and below. Expect information today/tomorrow.

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It’s a Global Agenda visual festival! Five new videos have appeared, showing off various aspects of the online shooter-cum-MMO. Having had a play of it recently, it’s a game I’m really looking forward to playing more of, finding out how it transitions between the initial co-op shooty quests and the latter PvP game. Well, follow that link for all the details. Meanwhile, the many videos appear below.

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Global Agenda requires you to change your mind. Despite being built in the Unreal 3 engine, and despite looking really rather fine, it presents itself as an MMO. It’s a third person view of your character, with a tray of icons along the bottom of the screen, health and energy top left. But try and play it like an MMO and you’re going to end up dying rather a lot. This is fast, it’s proper action, and until you accept both genres melded into one, you’re going to be rubbish at it. Or at least I was. And then it clicked.

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Embedded below is a huge video trailer for the forthcoming action MMO, Global Agenda, featuring its executive producer Todd Harris. The video covers a huge amount of material, discussing everything from the way in which the instanced combat missions are linked together to divide 60-man PvP raids into half a dozen smaller, mission-based systems, to the over-arching construction of bases by player factions. Harris says “not just more power, but more options” when talking about player advancement, and then goes on to explain that newbies can compete with older players in PvP. This makes me like him. I’m still a bit foggy as to what makes the game “spy”, but the “fi” part might just work. Also: Jetpacks!

Global Agenda is scheduled for release in late 2009.
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2009’s set to be a funny old year for MMOs. On the one hand, we’ve got The Old Republic and Love on opposite ends of the spectrum, both promising important, enticing changes to an often static genre. On the other, there’s the distant thunder of how badly 2008 went for so many existing massively multiwotsits – last year cost us Tabula Rasa, Hellgate, Mythos and RF Online. So news of a promising newish name on the virtual world block is definitely good news. Especially one that’s got robots in.
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