Free to Play Games on Steam

Steam announced some free to play games this week: RPG / MMOs; Champions Online, Global Agenda: Free Agent, Spiral Knights and Forsaken World, and an action game, Alliance of Valiant Arms.  Free-to-play games usually include some sort of paid features.. extra skins, more equipment, or faster levelling.. or serve up adverts or limit the places you can go in the game while free.. so this announcement got my attention..

Champions Online requires payment to play past level 40, which at least allows a good trial of the game, in which you play a hero going up against Dr. Destroyer and his minions.. the game also apparently allows you to customise your own character, but more interestingly, your own customised enemy to harass you throughout your superhero career.  This sounds rather interesting, though.. another game with a big open world?  I need more free time 😉

Global Agenda: Free Agent‘s free version allows all the game’s content to be played, but you can pay to speed up levelling and purchase better gear more quickly.  I actually bought Global Agenda back in March, just prior to it going free, but having the option of adding it to Steam is a nice one.  This might also help me keep it updated, though I’ve not actually played the game recently..

Spiral Knights, is also fully free to play, but as a co-op game, this will require friends to play with..

The fourth MMO, Forsaken World, has races and classes as I’m used to with WoW, but with dungeons where the difficulty scales with the players’ experience, and weapons and gear which evolves and changes.. another one worth a look.

The action game, Alliance of Valiant Arms, looks to be another squad-based shooter with teams of 4 or 5 players per mission.  Players rank up as they play; the highest ranked player becomes the Squad Commander, hopefully meaning good players can lead others, rather than a recipe for griefing.. another one I’ll have to rope the guys in for 😉

Global Agenda

Shooter MMO Global Agenda was recommended to me at the start of the weekend.. and while I wouldn’t ordinarily pick up a game with little idea about it, developers Hi-Rez Studios had pledged to give all the proceeds of sales during the weekend to the Red Cross Japan Earthquake efforts.  So, I signed up and paid.. knowing that even if I didn’t like the game, at least some good was coming of it.

I had the choice of Robotics, Medic, Recon and Assault, and for my first character I went with Robotics, as I’d get to play with turrets, forcefields and drones..

The game starts off showing my character in a stasis field, in a facility under attack from soldiers who start to free me.  During the scuffle the chamber is smashed and I am freed, but all the soldiers are gone when I get control of my character.

This is where the tutorial kicks in, with directions for basic running and jumping to start with, then a cool jetpack which allows short flights, and my first weapon..

While I have the Mace equipped, I also have the use of a shield, which seems to last as long as my energy reserves, indicated by the blue bar near the middle of the screen.

I reach the top of the building as directed, and I’m told I have to dive off the edge.. a nice cutscene follows where I jump off as instructed, bare feet on view, and eventually crash through the window of a storage room.  Here I get a nice ranged gun, and in the next rooms I get to try it out on easy enemies such as Watchers and Sector workers who try to hide.. and Alarm Responders, who are a little bit tougher.  I also get a ‘Rest’ device, which lets me heal myself.. so far so good 🙂

I’m heading for the roof again.. right at the top I’m introduced to a one-way forcefield, which will let me out to face the first boss, a flying Guardian who fires some kind of homing rocket and wipes me out.  I get a fairly quick respawn back on the safe side of the forcefield, and head out to finish the Guardian off.  Here, I was surprised to find he hadn’t been reset, so it only took another few hits to kill him.

My reward was a cutscene of my escape via train ride.. on top of the train, of course!  My stop is an armoury.. more weapons?  I level up at this point, and am given an off-hand, which for me is a deployable force-field.. which comes in handy because there are plenty more security androids to fight through.  Each roof leads to another, with markers indicating where I can jump off, and use the jetpack to fly to the next place.  Limited energy means I can’t just fly around without thinking about it, which I guess stops it becoming overpowered, but I’m happy being able to jump around for the time being.

Next on the list is a suit, which comes with a robotic arm sticking up over my shoulder.. this turns out to be a repair arm, but isn’t explained at this point.  A few more rooftop fights later, and I find my way into another building, where I’m jumped by this rather cool looking Elite Assassin..

I was expecting a tough fight, but I defeated him rather quickly.. it is still tutorial time though.

Another level up, and I have a Personal Turret, which I deployed here purely for the screenshot 😉

My next mission involves escaping through the sewers, and I suspect that’s where the tutorial will end and I’ll get into the main game..