The Secret World
Available on: Xbox 360, PC
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The Secret World Review Journal, Part 1
MMORPGs aren't commonly known for their startlingly unique premises, so Funcom's The Secret World stands out from the start. TSW takes place in the current day, and holds that every myth, every legend, and especially every far-flung conspiracy theory...is true. It's all true, and you have to make sense of it all (along with your newly awakened paranormal abilities) as you join the fight against evil alongside one of three secret societies: the Illuminati, the Templars, or the Dragon. If that sounds weird and overwhelming, then you probably shouldn't have swallowed that bee. Err, long story.
TSW officially went live July 3rd, but we've been running around for two weeks now, along with everyone who pre-ordered it. Click on for the skinny, then check back for more journal entries and the full review next week. As you might've heard, it takes a while to see all the content an MMO has to offer – and we want to share part of that process with you before we make our final verdict.
We've now updated with our second week of observations from playing!
Make a face
Character creation feels a bit sparse, with one-size-fits-all bodies, only seven or so possibilities for the various facial traits, and a slightly better selection of hair and "make-up" choices. Luckily, Funcom did a pretty good job on clothing, so once you've saved up a little "Pax Romana" you can put together a more pleasingly unique appearance. Or run around in hotpants with your boobs hangin' out. As many do.
In recent news
You'll take on Filth-infested former commuters as your team struggles to contain the outbreak. As with many modern-day zombie games, it's pretty straightforward stuff, and thankfully skippable if you're already up to speed on how to play.
Not even trying
Here we are /handstanding in London, home of the Templars. That's their rather ostentatious HQ right there. TSW has a running joke about how the various secret societies don't actually do that great a job of keeping it all secret. We guess the Templars are going for that "hidden in plain sight" thing that's all the rage these days. The Illuminati HQ in New York is hidden a little better, but not much – they just tuck their base away in the sewers. We're not positive, but we think they also have a gift shop.
Get smarts
We also like to call lore pick-ups "smarts." It's our private little joke. We probably shouldn't have told you.
The iPhone: truly magical
Meet R. Sonnac. He comports himself like a "sophisticated boss" type, but he's really just the Templar version of Mission Control Guy. Whenever we finish a quest, we simply hit the "send report" button; he replies with a dry little bon mot, along with rewards like stat-enhancing bracelets and slightly stronger assault rifles. All of this apparently happens via our character's cell phone, which seems strange. We wish they could send pizza that way. On a related note, now we want pizza.
Stunned, silent type
Most "main" missions have cutscene intros, during which your character remains silent and never emotes. In the case of the Illuminati, that's probably due to botox, but we have no explanation for the flat affectations of Ms. Teatime here. Stiff British upper lip, indeed. We've ascertained that no matter how cool they look during creation, it's impossible to make a character who doesn't look dopey in the cutscenes. (Consider that a challenge.) In any case, the voice actors are almost uniformly excellent (go Google the Star Trek cameos!), so we seldom mind letting the NPCs monologue a bit.
Tools of the trade
Since we started as newbs, we decided to start with a solo-oriented Assault Rifle / Blade build we found online. Duly trained to engage in life-or-death combat (Tuppence is a fast learner), we received our first mission from our new-best-buddy R. Sonnac. A quick /wink at the dashing Mr. Sonnac, and it's off to the nearest Agartha entrance, which happens to be in the nearby subway. Muggles, avert thine innocent, stupid eyes!
Wait, Agarwhat?
In case you slept during geology class, Agartha is the mystical tree that grows inside the Earth, which, as it turns out, is hollow. Agartha's limbs act like high-speed transit lines for zipping back and forth between surface-level locations, and a steampunk equivalent of WoW's hearthstone lets you warp back to Agartha at any time. To start things moving, we set off for a town called Kingsmouth, off the coast of New England - seems they're having a little problem with Lovecraftian abominations. We're sure we'll be back by dinner.
Kind of a bad scene
Oh dear. Zombies are swarming everywhere, and the local sheriff department is barely holding out. And thus, our questing begins. A quest tracker on the right supports up to six missions at once (the master plot, one "main" mission, one dungeon mission, and three side missions). That seems low compared to WoW, but TSW places a greater storytelling emphasis on individual quests, so you'll never actually want to juggle 20 tasks at once. This is one point the game's sold us on. It's different, sure, but it works.
It takes two
Protect the barriers, the sheriff said. It'll be easy, he said. Actually, come to think of it, it is easy - these zed are cannon fodder, and most of the game's quests seem pretty solo-friendly. Twopenny has lots of AoE blade swipes and rifle attacks, and she can swap on the fly to easily mow down crowds of mobs. All well and good, but we really wish the action felt more visceral - we never really feel like we were truly chopping or blasting through undead flesh. That said, The Secret World has a lot of combat, so more on this later, no doubt.
To be continued...
Come back in a few days to get an earful about crafting, investigative missions, and how we accidentally discovered that we made a tank. And, of course, more non sequitur handstanding. See you then!
If you want to delve further into The Secret World while you wait for the full review, read up on
The Secret World Review Diary, Part 2
Welcome to part of two of our The Secret World review diary. In case the eerie, ancient voices in your head haven't told you, The Secret World is a present-day occult-themed MMORPG that went live on July 3rd. Last time, we rolled up a Templar character, Tuppence "Twopenny" Teatime, and set off to the haunted locale of Solomon Island, off the coast of Maine. We noticed she had a penchant for headstands.
This time we'll take a look at the game's crafting system, five-player dungeons, PvP, character customization, and other assorted tidbits. Give your Cthulhu plushie a rub for good luck and click on.
Upcycling
The Secret World has a very unusual crafting system, where the basic idea is to lay out materials ("metal", in the case of weapons) on a grid such that the resulting shape resembles the item you're trying to craft. This cheat-sheet shows you the nine basic weapon shapes.
The quality of the weapon you end up with relies solely on the Quality Level (QL) of the consumable Weapon Assembly Kit you toss in. Higher-quality assembly kits require higher-quality metal, but that's easy to find compared to the kits, which drop as loot.
Instructions Not Included
Glyphs, which you can attach to weapons or talismans (armor) to boost stats, are the other major craftables. You construct glyphs by combining four runes and a Glyph Assembly Kit. The combination of runes determines which type of glyph you'll get, while the kit's quality level determines its strength. Once you have your glyph just drag it into the assembly grid along with the weapon or talisman you want to enhance.
The crafting feels confusing at first, and could greatly benefit from an in-game help system. But once we did it a few times it felt simple enough -- just gotta remember those weapon/talisman shapes.
The Answer Lies Without
One of The Secret World's selling points comes in puzzle-solving "investigation" quests. Some of the investigation quests in Kingsmouth sent us out to solve mysteries with only the barest scraps of clues to work from. An in-game browser is meant to facilitate the research some of these quests will almost certainly require. Unfortunately, these quests often brought our forward momentum to a screeching halt. It wasn't fun to run around fruitlessly for tens of minutes each time, so we usually just used the browser to google the whole solution.
Though we find them gimmicky and annoying in the context of an MMORPG, other players seem to eat these quests up. Luckily the "hardest" ones have been optional so far.
Calling MacGyver
Sabotage missions are a distant relative of investigations, and typically require sneaking into an area, disabling traps, and accomplishing various other goals without being discovered. While the MMORPG game engine can't deliver a Metal Gear Solid-level stealth experience, the sabotage missions are brief and different enough to provide an okay diversion from the more typical MMORPG quests.
This quest is also one of many that takes place in a solo instance. The game has a fair few of these.
Chic Freak
Some of the best armor sets in World of Warcraft made you look like an escaped Mardi Gras reveler. This got old -- there's a reason Mardi Gras is only one day each year. In The Secret World, most of a character's stats come from their seven equipped talismans, so their clothing is mainly for looks. As a result, you can dress how you like at any given time. We love this.
But that needn't stop you from looking ridiculous. Here Ms. Teatime models some badass toilet-cleaning gloves.
Go, Red Faction!
The Secret World is mainly PvE, but at any time you can sign up for PvP action in one of three different arenas. Fusang Projects is an ongoing territory-capture challenge, while El Dorado and Stonehenge are more typical deathmatch-type scenarios that kick off new rounds every 5 to 10 minutes. Winning in PvP earns your faction minor buffs until the other two factions undo your recent conquests. Jerks.
Killing Lumies for Fun and Profit (Mostly Profit)
Buff shmuff, the real reason to PvP is for the mad XP. The devs recently toned it down a bit, but PvP remains an excellent way to build up spare Ability and Skill Points, which are the currency with which you power-up your character.
We're basically terrible at MMO PvP, so had to take a screenshot to commemorate this third-place finish. Tuppence was so wired afterward she did like 50 headstands.
Wearing my Tank Top
The first major five-person dungeon is The Polaris, a massive cargo ship that met with a mysterious but likely horrible fate. Sure enough, the wreck is crawling with freakin' Cthulhus.
This is the second-to-last boss of the instance. Throughout these early instances we ended up doing a fine job of tanking; our blade/rifle build really seemed to rack up aggro nicely. Later on, though, we felt surpassed by people who consciously specced for tanking. The skill system lends itself to rather diverse builds, but most players assembling parties for the five-person dungeons seem hung up on enforcing the classic tank/dps/healer roles. It's too bad; it's not like these basic dungeons are so difficult that they require specialization.
The Most Beautiful Bricks
The Secret World supports both DirectX 9 and 11, and both are surprisingly taxing on hardware. With the fanciest stuff turned off, our mid-range Radeon 5850 typically gets 30-50 fps, with major drops in certain areas (London is the worst). Sometimes it looks pretty good (detailed interiors), while at other times we wonder why the framerate's not better (bog-standard MMO landscapes).
One of the engine's most novel features is DX11 tesselation, which adds more polygons to certain objects. In TSW, that mostly means brick walls. Turn on tesselation and any nearby bricks pop right out, which looks neat but exacts a crushing toll on framerates. And check out how messed up it makes this graffiti look. Tesselation still feels like more of a gee-whiz tech demo tidbit than a real feature.
TSW also supports a new form of anti-aliasing called TXAA, but only high-end Nvidia cards can use it right now. For the rest of us it includes the still-pleasing, high-performance FXAA.
Good Advice
No really, try it.
Finally!
Skipping ahead a lot, here we are in Egypt. The bright desert landscapes are a real relief after three zones (and three real-life days' worth) of dark, dreary Solomon Island. After Egypt you head off to Transylvania, which is as far as the game goes at this point. Funcom supposedly has a seven-year plan for TSW, though, so we're sure that players will be able to jetset further afield in the future.
Review Forthcoming
Shambala is a really pretty area you only stop by briefly. Hopefully it'll get the full open-world treatment of Solomon / Egypt / Transylvania at some point.
Anyway, that's about it for this review diary. We've played a heck of a lot of The Secret World now, and we'll feel comfortable delivering our final verdict soon. Check back in a few!
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| Available Platforms: | PC, Xbox 360 |
| Genre: | Role Playing |
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