No Money Down
My first moments with Global Agenda: Free Agent were a bit misleading. The 45-minute opening segment chronicled my katana-wielding Recon soldier's sneaky, stabby escape from a Commonwealth (read: evil government that knows when you're sleeping, awake, might be Santa Claus, etc) laboratory via highly directed missions and even a couple fairly impressive cutscenes. I sliced and diced guards, free-fell from rooftops, and discovered science's final answer to all of life's problems: the jetpack.
The story starts out with a bang, and transitions to less-explosive text. Oh well.
Without
spending so
much as a single cent, I immediately had access to all 50 levels.
But then I arrived in the central hub of Dome City, and the mad dash
quickly slowed to a crawl. On one hand, I have to give Global Agenda
credit for generally leaving my wallet out of it. Without spending so
much as a single cent, I immediately had access to all 50 levels, every
weapon, piece of armor, and item (via questing and earnable in-game
credits), and a rather large post-apocalyptic sandbox to play in. In a
free-to-play scene often characterized by the abyssal divide between
the haves and the have-nots, Global Agenda's generosity is extremely
refreshing.So then, you may be wondering, what manner of magical monetary water wings are keeping Hi-Rez's head above water in this business? Well, that's where the game's pacing comes in. As a free player, my experience bar moved with all the momentum of a cat who's discovered a sunbeam shining on top of the laundry machine. At the 10-hour mark, I'd barely hobbled past level 18.
Techno-ninja Recons strike with the power of Futurama's opening credits.
It
was PvP and not PvE that really made this game for
me.
Normally, that'd be par for the free-to-play course, but Global Agenda
ropes off some of its best content based on level. So there's no PvP of
any sort until level 10 (which mercifully only took me a few hours to
reach) -- at which point GA's 10v10 variations on capture the flag,
control point matches, and escorting/attacking an explosives container
open up. Fortunately, those add some real meat to GA's
seemingly emaciated bones, as PvE -- while more efficient for leveling
purposes -- largely takes the form of incredibly tedious early
WoW-style questing. I came, I saw, I conquered 10 of so many same-y
robo-baddies. I'd have lost count if everyone wasn't asking me to do
the same goddamn thing. And then I trekked back to my quest-givers so
they could tell me to talk to their friend who's standing 100 feet away
from them. 10- to 15-minute four-person instances broke up the monotony
a bit, but it was PvP and not PvE that really made this game
for
me. Balancing is excellent, too, as there's no pay-to-win option in Global Agenda. That's because leveling up doesn't affect damage stats or health -- only the breadth of items and skills at players' disposal. So even when my character was level 20 and facing down a level 29, I didn't feel outmatched or outgunned. Best of all, between items and unlockable skills, the number of playstyles available for each class is nearly staggering.
You can't put a microtransaction price tag on a frown like that.
For instance, while I preferred to hang back and pepper foes with sniper fire until a herd of pissed off, minigun-toting Assaults came stampeding my way, I saw many other Recons stealthing about, backstabbing folks who were busy capturing points, and, well, getting the hilariously one-sided drop on snipers like me. I was also quite fond of my Bionics device, which -- depending on the situation -- turned me into a fleet-footed escape artist or a bomb-dropping, crowd-scattering speed demon. Honestly, between class interplay and the available class archetypes, the whole thing felt like Team Fortress 2 with jetpacks. And that's hardly a bad thing.
Insert Coin
Real
money, then, just speeds up
the process.
If you want something badly enough in Global Agenda, odds are you can
earn it the old-fashioned way -- you know, with jetpacks and guns shiny
enough to be from the future's future. Real money, then, just speeds up
the process. So I snagged Elite Agent status for a one-time fee of $20,
which let me sponge up double the amount of XP and credits, plus a
one-day "booster" for roughly $3.50, which upped my XP and credit gain
again by an equal amount, gave me an extra loot drop at the end of
missions, and let me whip out my jetpack in Dome City. Take that,
ground peasants. 
Shooting a man in the back is safer than face to face. Sniping him in the back? Even safer.
The difference was, of course, night and day. There's a certain Christmas-morning-like thrill to tearing through a single quest or PvP match and watching wide-eyed as your experience bar leaps up a quarter of a level. That said, leveling from 20 to 25 still took me an additional four hours, as PvP queues were all over the place (sometimes a few minutes, others half an hour,) and my Recon hit a few dead ends attempting to solo some of the tougher PvE quests.
All told, though, I had a pretty decent time with this one. It's definitely a much better team-based shooter than it is an MMO, but it's an impressively coherent combo nonetheless. I plan to play it a bit more for fun -- if only to check out some of the higher-end raid and arena-based content, which stays locked until level 30.
My team gives the other team a pounding -- for free!
Free or Flee?
You won't find any "Insert coin here or risk sudden, bone-crunching death" slots on Global Agenda's jetpacks. Every last piece of significant content -- levels, locations, weapons, armor, and abilities -- is available to even the most violently miserly among you. However, rising through the ranks can be a bit of a slog, and that $20 really takes the edge off.
Spy Guy says: It's great
to hear that High-Rez knows how to make a good free-to-play experience
-- this only makes me look forward to Tribes: Ascend more! On that
note, what other free games would you like to see Free Agent test out
in the coming weeks?
