Monday 14 May 2012

First thoughts on the Secret World

So the weekend has come and gone and I got about 9 hours playing the ‘The Secret World’.

I didn’t get time to do all what I wanted to do as the tentacles of the investigation quests wrapped around my ankles and pulled me under the dark brine. I don’t think I have spent so long in a game just thinking. The quest I started was ‘The Kingsmouth Code’, it took me from peaks where I thought I was Megamind to troughs when I just needed to bash my Neanderthal forehead into the keyboard.

TheSecretWorldDX11 2012-05-11 18-05-22-42
The quest had 5 stages to it from following simple signs, solving puzzles on plaques (see below), reading book passages in google, using the ingame phone book to find places, searching ingame for a clock to hacking into a computer. It’s like the game drew a line in the sand and dared me to cross it. I am looking forward to more of these on release.

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For me the game oozed atmosphere, the introduction had a few too many cut scenes (though they were well done) when all I wanted to do was play. But once I got to Kingsmouth I was able to look around and smell the zombie’s. The little town actually felt like a town and not a hub of quests for a level bracket. The Cafe had rock'n'roll playing in the background which was a bit surreal when a group of zombies followed me in.

There was also so much to see and do, I think they used the space in the town excellently. Every street I ran down threatened to pull me away from my current task to tempt me down another dark avenue. How can you pass a suicide note on the door of a bed and breakfast building.



The interface was slick and minimalist and felt as contemporary as the game. I liked the way the mission text floated above background. Though I do think the inventory could have done with a ‘X’ (close window) in the top corner. More than once I clicked on the ‘+’ and ended up with more inventory bags.

I’ll post some more later on in the week but for now I’ll leave you with a cut scene a particularly liked as the rasp made me want to cough a little.

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