The Secret World [Game Review]

thescretworld.com

A massively multiplayer online role–playing game, The Secret World takes place on our earth, in our times, and yet is a tale of mythology and ancient mysteries. For there really is a world within ours, a secret world, where magic exists, monsters roam and ancient forces are fighting for the dominance of earth. It is a world of legendary stories, ageless conflicts and powerful cabals. In this world, even modern cities hide secrets. In this world, players can take part in the greatest conspiracies of our age, and battle the forces of darkness across the world and throughout time.

Attention!!! This is a Funcom game, folks. It's rated M for mature audiences. There will be "colorful" language, blood, gore and, of course, bare-chested females. None of it is particularly gratuitous or in-your-face--in fact, it's all quite realistic--but it's there. If games like Silent Hill make you squeamish, The Secret World may not be for you. 

The Secret World starts you off strong with story. You'll choose your faction from among three secret societies. The Templars are, of course, holy crusaders. The Illuminati are all about power and wealth, and don't care who they have to manipulate to get it. The Dragon seek to find order in the art of chaos. After you create your toon and dive into the game, you'll be treated to cut scenes that all essentially follow the same story, but with color and characters relating to the faction you've chosen. Once you've moved through the opening cut scenes, and a brief flashback experience that takes place in Tokyo, you'll head to your starting city: London for the Templars, New York for the Illuminati, and Seoul for the Dragon.

Illuminati outside the besieged sheriff's station in Kingsmouth.

After completing some missions in your starting city you'll be faced with one of the more daunting tasks The Secret World has to offer the uninitiated--choosing your weapon. While this may seem simple enough, it has long-range ramifications--the weapons you choose (you can equip two at the same time) will determine which abilities you can use. The game gives you a little guidance, but unless you're either intimately familiar with MMOG class mechanics and able to apply some informed guesswork, or you've done your homework in advance, there's a possibility that you could find yourself making some decisions you regret. More on that in a moment.

Character Development and Builds

The Secret World features an Ability Wheel--Funcom's over-achieving answer to skill trees. Essentially, the new character is faced with a dizzying array of about 500 options, each of which are accessible to any character. (In theory, you could learn every single one of those abilities given time and persistence. In practice, maxing out 2 of the 9 ability trees is probably more than comparable with a complete level-up experience in other MMOGs.)

It's entirely possible and, in fact, easy to make a bad, ineffective build in The Secret World. The game won't stop you from, for example, slotting no damage abilities as you spend Ability Points (AP) to purchase abilities and Skill Points (SP) to increase your effectiveness with your weapons and gain access to more powerful gear. Quite intentionally, there's no respec available - Funcom felt even an expensive respec would be game-breaking. Unfortunately, gameplay alone might not reveal early on that you've made some not-so-great build choices. In fact, you may not wise up to your relative ineffectiveness until you're getting thrashed in PvP or taking a beating in a dungeon.

Facing the Ability Wheel can be daunting. Premade Deck templates ease the strain a bit.


The good news is, Funcom made a wise design move with their implementation of the Deck system--a system of premade templates that let you follow a build roadmap. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the idea of creating a build from scratch, you can either follow a deck template or study it to learn how good builds are formed. Unless you've got build-making chops, this is likely the route you'll take, at least initially.

Combat

Your early experience in The Secret World will have you facing off against hordes of zombies and other undead creatures. And you'll probably have fun doing it initially. But if you're expecting combat along the lines of Funcom's Age of Conan, you're going to be disappointed. The challenge in The Secret World's combat comes with selecting the best combination of seven active and seven passive abilities to equip on your hotbar. Beyond that, it isn't particularly complicated. You'll use abilities that build resources, dodge your enemy's ground-targeted attacks, and then follow up with a big bang that consumes those resources. You'll throw utility into the mix as you're able. It can become repetitive as you churn through hundreds of mobs in Kingsmouth alone.

The Secret World does allow you to fight that repetition to some degree, though--you can (and should) eventually create multiple builds and switch them out as the situation demands. With a new build, at least you're working on spamming (albeit in a logical, purposeful way) a different set of abilities.

Fortunately, enemy encounters with all but the most run-of-the-mill trash mobs will throw challenges into the mix to keep you busy. Unless you're actively getting out of the way, monsters will inflict various states designed to afflict or even just knock you down and steal your lunch money. You can do the same to your enemies. It's a fun dance, if one more harrowing than complex, and you only really see it play out in dungeon encounters and world boss fights.

Missions and Story


If you love a good tale, The Secret World spins them brilliantly.


If there's one thing The Secret World does not lack it's a great story. Three secret societies with opposing purposes are forced to stand united against the encroaching darkness in a world where every myth, nightmare, and conspiracy is true. A good horror-themed MMOG has been a long time coming, and The Secret World delivers in spades. The story has depth and purpose, and missions range from the simple "kill off some zombies" type to complex investigation missions where players will have to put their real world puzzple-solving, clue-finding, truth-seeking abilities to the test. There's a mission type for every play style, and none of them disappoint.

All in all, gameplay is rich and complex--if you understand what you're doing, or take the time to learn, you're likely to play well and enjoy the hell out of your time in The Secret World. For every drawback, there's a counterbalance that mitigates it somewhat. The pain of being unable to respec can be avoided by using the premade Decks as a template and modifying your abilities as needed. The whack-a-mole combat is kept from being stale by employing interesting enemy mechanics, as well as the ability to create multiple builds and change things up a bit. And the story is capable of rendering the whole thing fun, even for those with unanswered gripes.

More information: http://www.thesecretworld.com/
Download Trial: Unknown

(+Shayalyn)