#Firefall

Update: I found a link on the forums that’s basically a comprehensive guide to the game. Check it out.

Double Update!: Here’s a FAQ on the game itself. Arm yourself with knowledge!

Firefall is a multiplayer shooter from Red 5 Studio, one of those “supergroup” developers whose members hail from the bodies of other, lesser studios (Kidding! We’re talking Sony, NCSoft, Blizzard…you know…lightweights). I was aware of this game from PAX East 2011, but didn’t get to play until PAX East 2012, where each participant was enlisted into the beta program. I liked the game so much, I actually wanted to get the hell home from PAX so I could install and play.

The story behind Firefall, as it’s currently completed, is that sometime in the 22nd century, the Earth was decimated by a shower of asteroid fragments – the Firefall. After a series of events where humans were being humans, involving a lot of warfare and general dickery, a Japanese billionaire discovered Crystite in the asteroid fragments. This material could generate enormous amounts of energy, which the fragmented planet desperately needed. Of course, humanity then went to war over the Crystite until everyone realized that some day, the Crystite would run out. They needed to find it’s source, so they put down their guns and created a series of interstellar missions that tracked the source to Alpha Centauri A. Colonists were installed, and shipments of Crystite were sent to Earth. The history ends with the priming of the CMS Arclight, a massive warship-slash-mail truck that can use Crystite to fold space, shortening the time to Alpha Centauri. The company which controlled the Crystite flow realized that at some point, the colonists in Alpha Centauri will try to throw off the Earthling yoke in a bid for independence, and the Arclight is as much a show of force as it is a technological achievement.

But in the game, you blow shit up.

The best way to describe the game in terms of other games is that it’s a combination between the tactics of Tribes, the art style of Borderlands, and the multiplayer world of Global Agenda. You play one of five classes, which are dictated by your “frame”, a powered-armor suit. Any player can choose any frame by visiting a frame selection station, and each frame has it’s own level. Use a frame to level the frame, and with each level comes different unlocks, allowing you to use better weapons and better gear.

You collect Crystite, which is the currency of the game. You also collect a lot of other types of materials which are used in crafting. You can create your own gear from schematics that you find (or eventually buy on an auction house, I assume). The interesting thing is how you get the materials. I love this part.

It starts off with a scanner hammer. Yep, it’s a hammer. You hit the ground with it, and you’ll see a blue waveform shoot forward over the ground. This will reveal the location and concentrations of different minerals. Find a place to harvest, and you switch over to deploy a thumper. This self-contained harvester drops from orbit into the ground, and starts hammering the hell out of the ground, pulling up the materials into it’s hopper. Once it’s full (or whenever you decide you need to leave), the thumper folds up and rockets away into space.

Right now, players start in a PvE zone. I’m not sure what the plan is, but I think I’ve reached a limit of the NPC provided quests. But one can still go out into the wilds (the wilds of the Brazilian coastline, that is) to harvest – and to kill the natives, which are in the form of alien insects that somehow made it to Earth from Alpha Centauri (here’s where the lore shows it’s incompleteness). There’s also some humanoids-maybe-actual-humans that you fight on occasion, if you enter their territory. Use of the thumpers will bring out the waves of enemies of all kinds, and it’s your job (and your team’s job) to defend the thumper until it’s full, as the enemies can destroy it if left undefended.

Right now, the game is obviously in beta. The aformentioned lore isn’t officially fleshed out on the site, in the game a lot of the key-binds aren’t working for some reason, there’s lag and rubber-banding, and some of the female vendors in town have gruff male voices. War is hell.

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