Tweet
Defiance has contradiction built into its bones. A game that is also a TV show. A console shooter that is also an MMORPG. It's a game of rare ambition, eager to be all things at once. A game that would be a giant leap forwards, if only it could tie its shoelaces first.Defiance has problems. Played in the first few days after launch, it was a roulette wheel of sudden disconnections, intrusive downtime and near-constant server lag. To its credit, developer Trion Worlds has pulled out all the stops to get the game functional and only a week later it's already much more stable. But it's not fixed.
This remains a game suffering death by a thousand bugs. Players, enemies and scenery pop in and out of existence. The frame-rate hops up and down like a kangaroo on Red Bull. Sometimes your head or your gun disappears for 10 seconds after a cut-scene. Chat functions are all over the place. Sometimes a mission will require you to drive a vehicle, except the vehicle won't move. Sometimes the mission prompt simply doesn't appear, or it does appear and nothing happens. Inevitably you play it in a state of paranoia, waiting for the next calamity and hoping it won't be one that requires you to quit out and start over.
Read more…
More...