TV/game mash-up has mixed results
Name: Defiance
Publisher: Trion Worlds
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Genre: Third person shooter, Action RPG
Rating: Mature
What if you could take up swords against the Lannister family on Game of Thrones? Or solve mysteries with the NCIS crew? And then, what if you could watch the consequences of your actions on TV the next week?
That’s the premise behind Defiance, a collaboration between the online game studio Trion Worlds and cable TV’s Syfy network.
ALIEN APOCALYPSE
Both the game and the TV drama are set in 2046, some 30 years after aliens arrive in the skies over Earth. After a brutal war, the humans and aliens have settled into an uneasy peace, but alien technology that crashed to Earth has changed the landscape.
The Defiance game shows the effects of all this on California’s Bay Area, now a wasteland packed with mutants, cyborgs and overgrown, fire-spewing insects. Your character makes a living by scavenging from crash sites, and the search for a particular alien artifact brings you to the West Coast.
EPISODE ACTION
As the game’s sprawling map opens up, you choose from dozens of missions. Most can be handled solo, but you’ll sometimes need help from other online players for bigger challenges.
You will also discover missions that relate to this week’s instalment of the Defiance TV show. Both sides of the Defiance team, TV and game, have collaborated on building an impressive world, and I’m eager to see where they go from week to week.
CONTROL ISSUES
I was able to battle through the initial batch of episode missions in just a few hours, but there’s plenty more to do. As with any online shooter, you can engage in death matches with your fellow humans. Or you can enroll in the Shadow War, in which huge teams of up to 64 players each battle all over the map.
Such massively multiplayer epics are popular among computer gamers, but we haven’t seen many on consoles. I love being able to use an Xbox controller instead of a PC’s keyboard and mouse. On the other hand, I was frequently unable to log onto Trion’s servers during the first few days after the game went on sale.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
There’s also a wearying sameness to the missions, which typically consist of racing to a location, killing a bunch of monsters and retrieving some object. The action is intense and challenging, but it’s missing that series’ twisted sense of humour, and I’m hoping Trion delivers more variety in future episodes.
By Lou Kesten
AP
Vocabulary
- mixed (adj): having both good and bad qualities
consequence (n): a result of something that has happened
apocalypse (n): a situation causing very serious damage and destruction
brutal (adj): violent and cruel
wasteland (n): an area of land that cannot be used or that is no longer used for building or growing things on
scavenge (v): to search through waste for things that can be used or eaten
sprawling (adj): covering a large area
collaborate (v): to work together with somebody in order to produce or achieve something
weary (v): to make somebody lose interest in or enthusiasm for something
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