Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In April, Global Agenda expanded its free-to-play model to encompass those who had bought the game digitally. It seems that this was a very good thing for Hi-Rez Studios because the game is due to receive its largest update yet and that too shall be free. To everyone, no matter how or when they joined the game. As well as adding plenty of tweaks and new stuff, a full list of which is below, the expansion will add an entire new open zone, the Recursive Colony. According to the press release this place is controlled by a “hive-mind faction of robots constructing robots”. That’s a lot of robots. Hi-Rez say this is the biggest update in the game’s history and it suggests free-to-play is working out, attracting enough new players to remain sustainable and turning a profit. It bodes well for other upcoming attractions that hope to thrive using a similar model, not least of which is the studio’s own Tribes: Ascend. Full details of the expansion, due this autumn, await.

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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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