Firefall preview: Shooting from the hip

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As I made my way across the show floor at PAX East back in March, my gaze was instantly drawn to the oddly familiar, large logo overhead that was bathed in a lightning-blue hue. The word Firefall was drawn on the the sign and instantly recalled the familiar Starcaft logo; the similarities stop there though.

FireFall is a PC-exclusive, class-based FPS…..Hey wait, we weren’t done yet! I didn’t get to telling you about how it’s completely free to play! As I mentioned in my previous story on Firefall last week, this title has adopted the recently popular freemium, or also commonly known as free-to-play model. This is a bold step in what could prove to be an outstanding experience, should the community latch on. This was my third opportunity with the game; the first two coming at PAX East and again at GamesCom.

My experience with FireFall at PAX was far different from my previous outings with the title. In the latest build, not only was the Engineer class finally revealed, but the MMO elements of the world finally came to life. This sudden change of pace for the game was welcome and certainly makes it more appealing due to the variety of added elements.

I began the game in the center of a tropical island resort where I stopped by a local eatery that housed a forging station, which allowed me to change load outs and upgrade my weapons, as well as a battleframe terminal where I could swap out my frame. Each class begins with three unique abilities that can be swapped out for additional ones as players progress. These are acquired in one of two ways: either as random drops after a kill or by purchasing them from FireFall‘s store with crystite, which functions as the title’s in-game currency that is dropped from enemies. Assault, Recon, Medic, and newly announced Engineer class were playable in this build. Naturally, I went with the Engineer.

As I made my way around the town, my commander, a svelte female, was instructing me of my first set of orders: eliminate three sets of enemies located immediately outside of the city. It was your standard “kill X number of rats” quest, although the chatter between my commander and another colleague was welcome considering they were both well voice-acted. Before I could even finish the second set of enemies, the chatter initiated once again; this time, however, things were different.

flying man!

Overhead, a fleet of enemy airships were coming out of cloaking to fire drop pods toward the village while friendly anti-aircraft turrets returned fire. My commander summoned me to return for the imminent attack where my goal consisted of defending the batteries powering the AA guns until they had fought off the attackers. As I made my way back to the village, the commander barked that I was taking too long and warped me, along with any other players in the zone, to the center. All of our quests were put on hold until we could ward off this threat.

Once I arrived at battery A, I quickly dropped my turret, picked up additional materials to upgrade it, and then build a transparent shield in front of it. As enemies approached, I switched to my machine gun to take them on, relying on my turret to support my endeavors. A nice feature to the turrets in FireFall is the ability to have them fire upon targets that you select. By hitting the F key while I was shooting at an enemy, my turret instantly changed targets and assisted me. If we were able to survive the attack, we would have been granted an additional weapons slot; unfortunately, neither of the two attempts we made were successful.

With a free price point, gamers would be foolish not to give FireFall a try. The closed beta begins this September late August and will be distributed through FireFall’s official forums. Should developer Red 5 be able to deliver all of their promises, this title will surely offer a solid alternative for players looking for some variety from Valve’s wildly successful class-based king, Team Fortress 2.

By at .

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Dave Voyles in PC, PC Previews, Previews

About Dave Voyles

Dave is based out of Long Island, NY and is currently working on projects using the Unreal Engine. He earned his degree in Communications from SUNY Oneonta and currently doing his MBA in Management of Information Systems. Dave is also Co-Coordinator for the Indie Games Summer Uprising on Xbox Live. You can follow him on Twitter, at @DaveVoyles

  • Anonymous

    Ooh, I hadn’t heard about them warping players to the middle of town during an attack, that’s a neat touch for gathering players.  I wonder what the range is on that.  Thanks for the articles, I’m always looking for more insight into this game.  Can’t wait for it!

  • Anonymous

    If someone’s interested, the game can actually be played as third person too. You can swap between first person and third person by clicking the mouse wheel. Nice to see lots of articles about Firefall, seems like it’s really getting the attention it needs.

  • Senor Beans

    I really like the way that turret assist works. I’ve been playing alot
    of borderlands lately and the turret in that game is fairly spastic.
    Being able to control it to some degree sounds like a useful addition,
    and bodes well for the total gameplay design, I think.

  • Mackenzie Minnick

    Wow, new info on how the attack carries out! Warping in players is a great way to force cooperation :P I’m also glad to hear of a failed defense, as well as the reward for a successful one. I’m glad you had fun with the game. Please give us another article if you find out anything new! Some new screens and footage would be nice as well!

  • Mackenzie Minnick

    Yes, I had the same problem. I hated it when my turret would fire upon the scrawny little guy that I could have taken out with one shot instead of killing the Badass bruiser that was wiping the floor of my team.

  • Anonymous

    Well you can take control of the turret by hitting the f key when you are targeting an enemy. For example, if I am strafing an enemy and firing it at, I can hit F and my turret will instantly point its focus toward that enemy. 

    Warping in was a blast too, because you didn’t have to worry about whether or not teammates would hop in to fight, as they were all instantly transported over. Very neat feature.

  • Anonymous

    Sure Firefall may not be the first of F2P shooters, but first doesn’t always mean great. What makes Firefall so wanting to play is that not does Red 5 bring a unique concept with this game, but that they have also spent a great deal of time refining this game as much as possible with the desire to have the people playing this game to have an epic experience, up to the point where we will finally have an opportunity to play it for ourselves.

  • http://twitter.com/spazmcnasty spazmcnasty

    firefall is going to be a great game. I am ready to get my hands on it and answer all the little questions i have about it, and ya know….to be honest I am ready to see what will be in the store….since this is a free game.

  • http://twitter.com/spazmcnasty spazmcnasty

    firefall is going to be a great game. I am ready to get my hands on it and answer all the little questions i have about it, and ya know….to be honest I am ready to see what will be in the store….since this is a free game.

  • http://twitter.com/LordBaconz Alex Farmer

    Oh I didn’t realize the quest information was voice acted and to hear the voice acting was good is awesome. I’m really looking forward to this game thanks for the coverage. I hope to see more Firefall articles from you in the further down the road.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1434766757 Jarred Versical

    Had no idea that you could select your turrets targets by pressing F, that is an awesome ability for focus fire in PvP as well as being incredibly useful in PvE. Its also good to hear that although the controls are intuitive and easy to pick up, the PvE gameplay wont be a pushover. PvP is more my style but I love a good story and quests and would hate to have the ability to run into any amount of enemies and survive no matter what the skill level of the player is.

  • Anonymous

    The game devs keep giving out little bits of love each new review and play test I read. The abitlity to warp to to a town to defend it is so awesome. That coupled with the fact that the invasion force scales with the ammount of players in the town at the time of the invasion is sooo sexy.

  • http://twitter.com/Manuito83 Manuito

    Thanks for the preview… the last bit is confusing, though. I don’t think that Firefall can be compared to TF2 (I love TF2, but they are completely different). Perhaps it could be compared to Global Agenda, they are similar and in my opinion R5 will have a serious contender… but TF2 would need an open world with PVE to compete with any of the other two.

  • Anonymous

    And that makes me very, very happy! (same as Mackenzie up there, finally made a Disqus account)
    Thank you for your response :D

  • Anonymous

    there are inspired elements, and other elements similar out of necessity. The medic gun was a necessity because it was easier to have an autolock beam weapon to heal consistently and be useful. However, if anyone on your team gets between you and your target, the weapon will temporarily swap to them until they have gone by.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000024972824 Maarten Vermue

    Nice new information on the engineer there (I really like the fact that you can make the turret fire at the target you choose yourself instead of just firing on a random enemy)
    Firefall just keeps getting more awesome the more information gets released :)

  • http://twitter.com/kyleluzader Kyle Luzader

    Loving the new information about the Engineer. It looks like it will be an extremely fun battleframe. I can’t wait to get my hands on the game and get a feel for the dynamic events, missions, and PvP myself. Firefall looks like it will stand atop the F2P market going into next year.
    Thanks for the info!

  • http://twitter.com/kyleluzader Kyle Luzader

    Beta keys will become the new currency in the coming apocalypse.

  • Anonymous

    If you’re interested, R5 did a dev diary featuring the sounds. It’s highly amusing, and their music is done with an orchestra!

  • Anonymous

    I am so going to be an engineer. I can’t wait for this! [i]Smacks his head with a hammer[/i]

  • Anonymous

    I hear alot about this event from the writers of articles who tried the game at pax. It sounds to me they made sure everyone got that dynamic event. Makes me wonder just how often the attacks happen in the real thing. As much as I would like to fight them, I would hope not to often. Cant be defending the same town all day now can we :D

  • http://twitter.com/IanCoves Rowan Turner

    It’s nice reading your experiences and learning more about the game mechanics, sounds very easy to control the turret the way you want, very good if your selective with targets and don’t want to pull all the agro. So it seems you had to do the chosen dropship event in this build but hopefully it will be optional at release, so you can finish a quest first (if you wish) then make it back to defend the end. Good idea for this demo to teleport people to return to the action tho. I’m really excited to play already.

  • http://twitter.com/TheEternalJayde Your Mother

    I really hope they open a zone that allows us to really just go at it like idiots without a 5v5 ruleset, or a goal.  Just a place where there are higher rewards, and higher danger due to pirate armies playing around in there.  Pvp Zones man!  I want to be the scourge of these places.  Reknown for my cruelty in the face of our struggling civilization. 

    Also, I’ve heard the turrets were a little difficult to control, or hard to get used to at first.  I’ve seen a couple videos of people having this trouble too now that I think about it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=16805567 Travis Case

    The ability to focus fire your turret is awesome,  I had not read that anywhere else online yet…  I am loving all the new tid bits that are coming out as a result of the massive coverage FF is getting at PAX.  Thanks for the info!

  • http://profiles.google.com/tbliss Taylor Bliss

    One interesting thing that I noticed is that if I continued to use the same email, any items I had earned would be usable.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Sebring/1720374091 Ryan Sebring

    The more modes of game play, the better.  I wasn’t that excited about at FireFall’s art style at first, but it’s grown on me.  And after seeing some game play footage and loot, I’m sold.  As far as free 2 play games go, nothing will be able to contend with this.  When a game this amazing is free to play, you have no excuse not to try it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Sebring/1720374091 Ryan Sebring

    The more modes of game play, the better.  I wasn’t that excited about at FireFall’s art style at first, but it’s grown on me.  And after seeing some game play footage and loot, I’m sold.  As far as free 2 play games go, nothing will be able to contend with this.  When a game this amazing is free to play, you have no excuse not to try it.

  • http://twitter.com/thericksebring Rick Sebring

    I played this a ton at Pax, And also got interrupted on my mission in order to save the town. I realize this “slice” was built just for pax with that attack and all, But when we play it for real i would guess it would feel much more open and expansive. I had a great time with firefall and am very much looking forward to the game.

  • Anonymous

    I’m hoping they keep that feature in where it automatically ports you to the city which is being attacked. 

    That’s something Warhammer Online failed to do, so often cities would be under siege, and many players would be milling about on their own side quests.

  • http://profiles.google.com/tbliss Taylor Bliss

    The game was in the middle of the invasion portion when I was talking with one o the Firefall guys, and one of the players had opted not to warp back into town. Kinda funny when you think about it, forgoing the saving of this hub space, instead happy just to do a little bit of grind work. 

    Either way, there’s something about hub worlds and the inclusion of NPC’s that increases how attractive the game is. I look forward to it.