New World review – a shiny new player in the MMO game
Does it scratch that itch you’ve got in the back of your brain for a new MMO? Definitely. Will you be gasping in awe, wondering how Amazon Games has managed to reinvigorate the genre? To get more news about
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As soon as you get your first sword and shield in the tutorial zone, you’ll notice that New World’s combat differs significantly from most other MMOs. Rather than leaning on auto-attacks and cooldown-based abilities, New World employs an action-combat system that’s closer to Elder Scrolls Online’s bastardised take on Skyrim’s combat. The result is that swordplay feels so much more satisfying, and I’m no longer mindlessly clicking between mobs until the XP bar ticks over. It’s certainly not the first MMO to give the player a more active role in combat, but melee brawls feel tight and responsive.
The experience varies dramatically depending on which weapon you’re using. The greataxe’s swing is meaty and impactful, but somehow the greathammer’s size belies its range – it feels like you’ve got to get close enough to touch your opponent’s eyelashes in order to hit anything. The bow feels meek and lacklustre, but the rifle fires with a satisfying pop and little plume of smoke, which other players can see around you. My current favourite weapon is a high-level hatchet I found in a crate, which has a hefty strength bonus. I feel swift and nimble, darting around flailing with my swings as my friend aims headshots with his rifle. Each of New World’s weapon types are leveled separately to your character level, so you’re encouraged to try a few as you get your introductory loot drops. That can feel a bit like a downside when you receive a powerful rare rapier and realise that you have to start grinding a whole new weapon skill tree.
Frustratingly, there aren’t many skills to level per weapon, so while you have more control over combat, it doesn’t always feel like much of an evolution on the traditional MMO clickfest. There is an upside to this simplicity in that it’s easy to tell which skills your opponent is using in PvP, enabling both of you to read and counter one another.
Sadly, combat is further marred by the game’s wonky spawn rates. I’ve stood in a forest surrounded by players desperately trying to tag a deer or wolf before it dies to progress their quest, ten minutes before being ganked by dozens of rapidly respawning skeletons that appear in a flash of blue beside or behind me as I try to slash my way to a box of loot. Amplifying these frustrations is the fact that other players can ninja in and harvest the body of skinnable mobs – like bison, boar, or lynx – before you get there, leading to a frustrating clickfest as you hope to be the first to press ‘E’ on a slain animal. General loot drops are instanced, so it’s a little baffling that skins aren’t.
There are a few different routes into PvP. The simplest is to target a player out in the world and ask them to duel. These one-on-one bouts have an air of Dark Souls about them as each player attempts to figure out their opponent’s rhythm and style, but they don’t seem to serve much of a purpose beyond killing time while you wait for a quest-related mob to respawn.
World PvP is a different beast. Taking inspiration from World of Warcraft’s War mode, you can head to a town where you’re able to toggle world PvP on or off. If you enable it, you get a 10% XP boost as you quest around, which goes some way towards offsetting the risk of being hunted down by higher-level players or gank squads. I flicked the PvP switch on a few times as I explored and had a few impromptu battles that got my heart racing, but ultimately I always returned to town to turn it off so I could go about my menial gathering tasks without the fear of winding up with a dozen rapiers in my back.
The huge faction battles, where Marauders, Covenant, and Syndicate players duke it out over territory, have an impressive sense of scale to them. While tactics don’t appear to be a significant factor at this early stage in New World’s life, you’ll usually find dozens of players on the backlines firing arrows, bullets, fireballs, and healing orbs into a brutal scrum of bodies. These battles also produce a tremendous racket as cannons boom, muskets pop and fizzle, arrows whistle through the air, and warhammers and great axes poke out above the throng before plunging down into their targets with a metallic crunch.
New World review – a shiny new player in the MMO game
