Fallen Empire: Legions

Title
Developer
Publisher
Genre
ESRB Rating
Demo Release Date
Full Release Date
Platforms
Official Website
Demo Download Size
Review Date

Fallen Empire: Legions
GarageGames
InstantAction
First Person Shooter
Not Rated
25th June 2008
Unknown
PC (Reviewed)
http://www.instantaction.com/legions
Unknown
27th June 2008

What did I think before playing?
I heard about this title through Penny Arcade. Legions is apparently the spiritual successor to Tribes; a well loved, jet-pack totting FPS that I have never had the pleasure of picking up. Legions is a web browser based game that is currently in beta.

What is included?
I noticed two levels available to play in two game modes, capture the flag and team deathmatch. There may also be more, and since this is a beta I would expect more to be added over time.

What did I think afterwards?
I had mixed reactions to this one. First of all I am very impressed by the size of this game in terms of feature set as a browser based game. It certainly looks likely to rival "full" games, with multiple game modes & maps, but more impressively the lobby system and general accessibility of the system.

• The whole thing is browser based, with just a plugin to install, (which means you have to acknowledge that annoying yellow bar in Internet Explorer; although the InstantAction website does a good job of informing the user of that.)
• The plugin will then automatically download and install any game files needed for any of the Instant Action games, including Legions, as soon as you click "play" on them.
• The player has a friends list and personal profile page which are all easy viewed, (by clicking on a player's name in the player list for the current game for example.)
• The lobby and party system seem well rounded. You can create a party to travel between games with and easily see what is happening in each game, (e.g. number of players, which mode and map.)
• Cleverly, to get players hooked, once you have the plugin installed you can use their game browser and party features all the way up to the play/join game button. It is only at that point that you download the game itself, when you have already committed yourself to playing. Luckily the download is quick.

But after all that praise there has to be some negatives. The game had a few issues taking my input, for example thinking my mouse button was always down which left my gun constantly firing and overheating. The game itself also suddenly disappeared a few times, leaving my mouse pointer constrained to a black box. I had tried quitting games & rejoining them or refreshing the InstantAction website, but the best fix was to close the browser, (sometimes forced to use Alt+F4,) and start again.
Because of all that I only got to play for a short amount of time. I was trying CTF on the snow map. The gameplay was a little frantic and required twitch reactions & skill to actually make a kill. Perhaps I was playing with a and set of new players since I found I spent a lot of time with the enemy flag back at our base waiting for our own to be returned. No one seemed to want to go and get it so I had to keep flying around and defending myself to prevent the other team scoring.
It will be interesting to see where this title ends up because the attempt to draw players in easily versus the hardcore nature of the gameplay are a little at odds, (but hey, hardcore players deserve a useful interface too!)

Would I buy the full game?
The game is free as far as I am aware, so why not? But I don't think I'll be putting any more time into this game. I have enough others all demanding my attention right now, but I could see this being a good "play anywhere", (dare I say, workplace lunchtime,) title for a lot of people.

Demo Pros
Ease of access, good feature set, free.

Demo Cons
Hardcore gameplay, (subjective, I know,) and bugs... but then this is a beta.

Demo Rating 8 / 10

Thoughts after playing the full game?
If I play the full game I will put comments here about whether I feel the demo was representative of the final product and if I am happy with the purchase.

Sales Figures
If I can find sales information about a game after it has been released I'll add that here. It may be useful to track demos to sales performance.