Reviewed: December 5, 2004
Reviewed by: Aaron Daigle

Publisher
Funcom

Developer
Funcom

Released: August 31, 2004
Genre: Online/RPG
Players: Online
ESRB: Teen

7
8
8
9
8.0

System Requirements

With the release of the Anarchy Online: Alien Invasion expansion, the people of Rubi-Ka suddenly have bigger problems than just the monsters and raiding parties sent by the opposition. They are besieged by an invading alien menace and in the race of their lives to repel them. Forget all that "fantasy" stuff from last year's Shadowlands expansion and prepare to return to the sci-fi roots that spawned the franchise.

For the most part, newcomers should expect a fairly standard MMO experience. You create your character, nothing too fancy here; pick a race, a sex, a head, a height and a build. Like in Everquest, the main thing distinguishing your avatar from the masses is going to be your equipment. (City of Heroes has spoiled us all sooooo badly when it comes to character creation)

The next thing you need to do is chose a class. Seeing as how this is the distant future, Clerics, Druids, Paladins and Wizards are nowhere to be seen; instead you have Soldiers, Medics, Adventurers, Fixers, and a slew of other futuristic professions to select from. When I started playing, I figured that most of these were simply the old standby classes with spiffy new names, a little research and experimentation revealed this was not the case however. If you are just getting into Anarchy Online, plan on doing some experimenting and more than a little reading to figure out which classes are going to best fit with your personality and play-style.

After picking a name, the Alien Invasion Experience begins when your shuttle is shot down by enemy fire just short of the landing platform at the spaceport upon clambering from the wreckage, you are sent off on a series of errands that act as a tutorial of the some of the game’s more basic systems. Your first contact the titular aliens comes as you are preparing to leave the “backyard” or newbie area you encounter Omni security forces battling the vaguely insectile green menace being disgorged on to the main platform. Slaying aliens will earn you Alien XP, basically a way to access several new sets of perks for your character, nothing too novel, but it does give you another set of variables to take into account when planning your character’s development.

The main things that Alien Invasion brings to Anarchy Online are the new Player Cities and the subsequent alien invasions of said cities. Cities can be constructed around a central controller by an organization (guild or clan) and their grandeur is seemingly limited only by the number of credits you can pour into the construction. Pools, shops, Cloaking Towers and all manner of other structures can be purchased if you have the green, er, silicon.

Now, once you have spent some time living it up on your new stomping grounds, things may start to seem a little dull, and nothing spices up a dull day like an extra terrestrial invasion! Get your people together and deactivate the cloaking towers. Within five minutes, life will be anything but dull as waves of invaders show up with murder on their minds. After fighting through several waves and beating on a big bad boss alien, you may get to take the fight back to them by boarding their ship and wreaking some havoc. To say fighting off these assaults in the shadow of a huge Independence Day type mothership is cool is sort of a massive understatement.

The first couple of times, I predict that your chin may have rug burns on it from scraping against the floor. Once the novelty wears off though, there really isn’t that much new here when it comes to the alien menace. Combat is still target and turn on auto attack, which I personally find pretty boring. Aside from gaining the nifty Alien XP, which really seems very similar to the Shadow points that are part of last year’s Shadowlands expansion, there really isn’t much offered in Alien Invasion that will likely draw in new players or even returning ones really.

Even with the new invasions and the player cities, Anarchy Online is still mostly a leveling treadmill. Sure now you can kill animals, mutants, dregs, robots and aliens, but it’s really all to the same end, to gain levels, money and equipment so that you can go out and kill bigger, badder monsters. Rinse, repeat.

Anarchy Online has far better visuals than it’s primary competition, Everquest, but when compared to newer titles like Star Wars Galaxies and the soon to be released Everquest II it’s not going to be wining any prizes. With a few exceptions the character animations are fluid and natural looking, though my studly male Adventurer had just a little too much butt wiggle for my tastes. If your system can handle it, cranking the graphics settings all the way up reveals the excellent lighting, sharp looking textures, and some really well realized landscapes of the world of Rubi-Ka.

From a design perspective I do have a few quibbles with the game in general. The lack of real customization in the character creation phase and the fact that any individuality you do impart in your avatar will soon be obscured by clothing, body armor and helmets.

On the SFX side of things, I like the serious tone of the combat sounds, meaning they sound sufficiently grim and brutal not cartoonish at all, gunfire in particular is, very sharp. There does seem how ever to be some disparity in the quality of the sound clips. Some sound like you are right there in the thick of things while there are a few that sound kind of distant and slightly fuzzy. Not perfect by any means but they do get the job done.

Pretty much everything seems to be aimed at appeasing the existing subscriber base. If you are just getting into the game though, you can pick up Alien Invasion which includes the original game the new expansion and the Notum Wars module for under $30, toss in Shadowlands for under $20 and for less than $50 plus the monthly fee, you can have access to every square inch of Rubi-Ka.