Defiance

It’s easy enough to ignore the terrible story and get on with what Defiance does best: letting you bask in the glory of marauding through a vast open world with an army of players sitting (silently) by your side.

The 360 version limits interactions with other players and turns it into a glorified standard multiplayer title. If that's what you prefer, the 360 title is for you. However, MMOs should stay on the PC, and that is exactly the case with Defiance.

Despite the ropey opening few hours Defiance settles into its rhythm very nicely and becomes a game that is so easily picked up and played you cannot help but fall for it a little. Yes for every positive there are at least two negatives but ultimately it’s light, fun and most of all an experience that console players currently do not have.

Defiance has the honor of being the first open world shooter-MMO on consoles. The game absolutely has its fun moments, but there are too many technical problems that bring down the good fundamentals. The biggest evildoer is the framerate, that can get pretty nauseating during large firefights, and negatively affects the response time. Underneath these glitches hides a good and well thought-out game.

This is a great starting block for what future MMO gaming and online gaming could be like on consoles and while some seasoned MMO players may be left wanting more, for me it’s enjoyable enough.

Defiance may have you wasting away the hours, but this is not going to be the game to draw in new fans to the genre.

Defiance can be a fun game, though it is difficult to enjoy its many features when so many bugs run rampant. The visual slowdown combined with the Internet related issues creates quite a mess at times, but when the game is working I can appreciate its uniqueness.

Defiance shows sparks of great potential, which stays mainly untapped due to an overall lack of mission variety and a bad allied and enemy AI. Its bright spot resides in the good co-op experience, so you could consider buying it if you're planning to play with friends.

Do you feel like shooting something? Are you enjoying action games? Do you wish to be with other people in a world that's evolving not in the game itself but in its TV series as well? In that case feel free to try Defiance out. Just be expecting nothing more than some solid action that hardly holds your attention for a long period of time.

With its straight focus, repetitive missions and static world, Defiance shouldn't work as well as it does. There's potential here. [July 2013, p.69]

To their credit, Trion Worlds’ support has been admirable so far, and there’s hope for growth, but in its current state Defiance strikes a precarious balancing act between fleeting enjoyment and impeding flaws.

What Defiance lacks in finesse it makes up for in content. The game is brimming with stuff to do but sadly there's no variety what so ever. In the end there is just no incentive to continue playing.

Much like its own arkfalls, Defiance offers treasure, but you have to battle an array of bugs before you can reap it.

We see Defiance’s potential in the little interactions and grand moments alike, and while our first impression has been rougher than hoped, we’ll be back in six months or a year to see how the concept has been expanded and refined. It’s just unlikely that we’ll spend much of the meantime watching Defiance struggle through its growing pains.

The world of Defiance is singularly, spectacularly ugly. We appreciate that Earth's been terraformed beyond recognition - but who set the terraformers to "blurry; terrible water effects; mostly brown"?

Defiance isn’t a bad game, it’s just not all that fun to play.

Respectable PvP combat goes a long way, but especially when the performance issues rear their ugly head, it's not far enough to make Defiance a recommendable experience.

A great idea that falls apart in the implementation. It’s a deeply promising game that dies by a thousand small cuts and a handful of big ones. Still, Trion has built a solid foundation, and they’ve made it clear that they’re in this for the long haul, dedicated to growing and improving the game over time. And, you know, I genuinely hope they pull it off.

Defiance is an underwhelming MMO at best, but it does have one or two moments of distinction. The TV and videogame tie-ins largely fall short of the mark, and there are better online shooters out there to choose from. A curiosity in terms of media convergence, but it rarely troubles the definition of 'groundbreaking'. Average from start to finish.