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The Firing Line: Hands-on with Firefall's beta
I'm dying on the beautiful beach outside Firefall's starter town. As I lay bleeding from a hundred holes and generally making a mess of my shiny new bumble bee-colored battleframe, my avatar collapses to the sand and says the funniest thing I've heard in a while. "Grandpa!" This is delivered in his best rural Georgia twang, and it lessens the sting of my latest newbie move. The whole scene is Firefall in a nutshell: It's fun, frustrating, and funny all at once.
PAX East 2011: Firefall, the non-MMO MMO
Last weekend, one of the biggest booths to dominate the PAX East showroom floor was a game called Firefall by Red 5 Studios. This shooter game has gained a lot of attention in the past because it pulls elements from different games such as Borderlands, Team Fortress 2, and even Halo. However, none of the comparable games is an MMO. Thus, Firefall really stands out among its peers. There are mechanics of this game that really scream "MMO" to the average observer, yet there are very non-MMO designs as well. At PAX, I had a chance to sit down with Red 5's CEO, Mark Kern, to discuss many of the design philosophies behind Firefall -- in particular, I wanted to know why Red 5 doesn't label the game an MMO when it clearly features many of the hallmarks of the genre. "The potential of MMOs is so much broader than the tag would indicate. We are broadening that definition and taking a crowbar to it. If people want to call us an MMO, that's great. We aren't going to call ourselves an MMO, because we want you to think fresh thoughts along with us," Kern explained. I also had a chance to play this unique game, so follow me after the cut as I give my impressions of the game along with some key quotes from my talk with Mark Kern.
