 Preview By: Nick Arvites |
Developer: | Auran Games |
| Publisher: | Gamecock Media Group | |
| Genre: | MMO | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | Many | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | TBA | |
| Estimated Release: | 10/16/2007 |
I recently had the chance to partake in the closed beta for the upcoming MMO game Fury. Fury, in case it slipped under your radar, is an MMO game developed by Australia-based Auran and focuses on fast-paced PVP action. If your big draw to World of Warcraft was the PVP arenas, Fury will appeal to you. Basically, Fury cuts out the mundane hunting-gathering quests and Fed-Ex style quests in favor of a competitive PVP experience.
Fury starts you off in a tutorial level, where you learn the basic combat controls. By default, Fury uses a mouse-WASD combination to move and assigns the quickbar actions to the numbers across the keyboard. This can all be customized, naturally, but I didn’t really have a problem with the default controls. They worked, although I found myself just holding both mouse buttons down while steering with the mouse to control movement so my left hand was free enough to quickly jam the buttons. After you attack some practice dummies, the tutorial brings you back out and sends you around to talk to various school trainers. From these NPCs, you learn about the various powers of each school. While you choose one particular school to start with, you are by no means limited to this one “class.” Fury allows you to train into other classes, and you can learn hundreds of abilities.
The catch is that you cannot bring them all into battle with you. Your action bar has limited space, indicated by a number value that each ability contains. This allows players to custom build their character and save various templates to suit different abilities. The upside of this method of character building is that you lose the need to ever make an alternate character because your group needs a healer or a tank. It’s an interesting system, although it can get really confusing if you glaze over the tutorials.
Once you’re out of the tutorial zone (accomplished by entering your first real battle), you enter into the real gaming world. Well, world might be the wrong term for it. Fury is divided into two types of zones: Sanctuaries (trainers, auction houses, players, etc) and Warzones. The Sanctuary is sort of a giant walled-in courtyard with various wings for each school’s trainers, merchants, and the like. The Sanctuary zone is a bit overwhelming when you first drop in, as it dwarfs the tutorial area. The map feature is helpful to get around, and I found myself using it to figure out where the mailbox or a particular NPC was located.
The closed beta showcased three gametypes: Bloodbath, Elimination, and Vortex. Bloodbath is a free-for-all deathmatch, which pits players against other players in a fast-paced rumble inside a large map. This is pretty hectic, and almost has a Quake-like tempo. Many times I ended up dead immediately after I killed someone else. Elimination is a small team combat game, pitting teams of 4 against each other in a best of three matchup. Like many team games, this one is entirely dependent on how well your team works together and how well you function as a team. The Vortex mode is essentially capture the flag. Instead of flags, there are crystals scattered around the map. The goal is to capture 4 crystals first. The other team can steal captured crystals, so teamwork is a must here. Organized clans were the best at this gametype.
Fury does contain quests that generally involve essence. Essence is like the experience points of a standard RPG game, except these are earned by using a particular school of spells in combat. So basically, the way to improve your character is to constantly queue into Warzone groups and fight other players. This gamestyle may not appeal to the hardcore MMORPG fans out there, but Fury is fun and it should appeal to fans of games like Diablo. I knew many people who played World of Warcraft because they liked the PvP arenas and ladders, and these are the players that Fury will appeal to.
Since it is still a beta, I’m not going to judge Fury’s graphical and network performance in this preview. I expect some performance issues and latency issues throughout betas, and I did notice that the issues I did have got progressively better towards the end of the weekend. Overall though, Fury’s fantasy look is pretty standard for the genre, though the only race available is humans. You get the standard fantasy melee fare: staves, swords, smaller blades, and various types of armor.
I think the biggest noticeable issue I had was that I couldn’t queue into multiple gametypes. This wasn’t so much of an issue during peak times, but during offpeak times I found myself waiting almost 20 minutes to get a game in. While this did give me time to play around with my character build, it does get boring since there isn’t much else to do in the Sanctuary. The combat is the focus of this game, and as such is its real strength.
Overall, I enjoyed my hands on with Fury. It does many things right, and it provides a quick combat feel that I haven’t experienced in an online RPG in years. The character building is an interesting feature and allows the game to remain fresh while not forcing me to start an entirely new character to get a particular ability set. Fury is currently slated for a Q4 2007 release.
Posted: 2007-07-31 21:37:33 PST