In Global Agenda (GA), you play a cyborg supersoldier (called Agents) in the 22nd century. After the Third Great War, Earth is controlled by a corrupt and power-hungry government called the Commonwealth. However, there are a few zones not under Commonwealth control, and Rebel factions have taken up arms against them. You and your fellow Agents were created to deal with the Rebels, but are instead “freed” and given the chance to help the Rebel forces. However, the Commonwealth also has Agents that were not “freed” to counteract the Rebels.
While Hi-Rez might call GA an MMOFPS, it’s actually an amalgam of an MMO, an FPS, and an RPG. Global Agenda combines those three genres into a refreshing and exciting game that requires skill and technique, with a bit of luck thrown in for good measure.
The fast paced twitch based gameplay from Hi-Rez Studios delivers a great experience!
Global Agenda has a variety of gameplay mechanics that separate it from most MMOFPS’s. One unique feature that Hi-Rez incorporated into the game was the use of Jetpacks. The Jetpack is an essential part of the game, turning the flat and linear world of FPS’s into a three dimensional world where enemies can be above or below you, tossing grenades from any direction. You could fire your gun, then jetpack to another roof, and continue the barrage on those below you. The Jetpack opens the game up to creative strategies, meaning you might be caught at a choke point in the map, but you can always find a way to break through, whether going above or going behind and taking out the defenders.
The Jetpack uses your Energy, which brings us to another mechanic that Hi-Rez uses. Your weapons and Jetpack share your Energy, and while you can invest Talent Points into certain Talent Trees to increase your Energy, it still requires skill to manage your energy. Also, you can only use one piece of equipment at a time, so that adds to things you have to manage. You can switch to your jetpack, fly up, switch to your minigun, and fire while falling, then switch back to your jetpack to slow your fall.
Yet another unique feature is the Conquest mode. While GA’s normal PvP pits 10 vs 10 in a random map with a random game type, and the PvE sends you and 3 buddies to take down a group of robots in a mission, the PvP and PvE are free. Conquest requires a subscription per month, and while the PvP is amazing, Conquest takes it to a completely new level. Agents can form Agencies, which are essentially guilds. From there, Agencies can group together under an Alliance. Conquest is Alliances fighting against other Alliances on a zone, fighting for control of Hexes. Each zone has a specified time schedule. The zone opens during a certain hour and closes a few hours after, and cannot be played in while closed, which means you don’t need to worry about losing your Hexes while you sleep at night.
So what does owning a Hex mean? You can place facilities on the hexes to extract resources, or ones that fire missiles to punch holes in the enemies’ shields around their headquarters so your 10 man strike team can begin their attack, or even facilities that can construct mechs and equipment for you to use in AvA to gain an advantage against your opponents.
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. As an Agent, you have access to four classes: the Assault, the Recon, the Robotic, and the Medic. All four classes play similar to their Team Fortress 2 counterparts, which is where the developers pulled ideas from. The Assault is sort of a mix between the Heavy, the Demo, and the Soldier. The Recon is more like the Spy and the Sniper, while the Robotic plays like the Engineer. The Medic, true to its name, plays like the Medic from TF2. As you level, you unlock new weapons and equipment. However, they might not be more powerful, but they might cater to a different use. For example, the Assault’s MagmaLance does explosive damage, as well as a Damage-Over-Time fire damage, but he can also use the Inferno Cannon, which is an upgraded version of his first weapon, the Mini-Gun, providing an alternative choice for your damage dealing needs.
The Assault is the main damage dealer and tank in GA, designed to destroy everything within his weapons’ range all while soaking up damage. The Assault has a myriad weapons, from grenade launcher and mini-guns to homing rocket launchers and Spider grenades that seek out targets. He can also equip extra shields that perform specific tasks. Absorbing 2000 Ranged Damage, or 2000 Explosive Damage, or even one that stops ALL damage for ten seconds but the user can’t shoot or fly, but it attracts all the turrets to shoot at him.
Right behind any good Assault is a good Medic. The Medic’s Heal Gun allows him to point at the Assault (or any other teammate) and simply heal them with a continuous beam of health. However, if additional heals are required, the Medic has various pieces of equipment that he can use to help, such as grenade that once thrown, explodes in an Area-Of-Effect Heal, or a skill that sends out a Healing-Over-Time wave that periodically heals any teammate near the Medic when he fires it. Or, if the Medic himself needs heals, he gets health when he heals other players, a mechanic that forces most Medics to keep their teammates alive.
And this is where Hi-Rez made a game-changing addition. The Medic can use various poison weapons that stuns and deals Damage-Over-Time to various targets through his melee weapon and other pieces of equipment. Known as Poison Medics, or pMedics, these Medics rarely heal, but prefer to poison as many targets as possible, and then use their Agony Gun on one, which increases the damage that the target takes by up to 30%.
However, if the front-line isn’t for you, the Recon is the lone-wolf class. Usually off on his own, with his high powered sniper rifle, he takes out targets from far away and provides support as well as information on enemy movements. Armed with various traps and grenades, the Recon can take out enemy turrets or rig a room filled with explosives as a surprise for an invading enemy strike force. And if he’s seen, he can quickly turn invisible using his cloak, and sprint away.
And finally, Robotics are the support class of the game. Usually armed with a shotgun and a variety of stationary devices as well as a few mobile drones, the Robotic creates and holds choke points, or defends a specific location from enemies. Their devices include various turrets, a healing station, a force wall that doesn’t allow enemy bullets through, a station that recharges the energy of everyone around it and a sensor to detect cloaked Recons that maybe hiding nearby. Robotics can also utilize drones, either one to hunt down turrets, one to see stealthed players, or even a remote controlled aerial drone that fires rockets. However, the devices take time to physically build, and both the devices and the drones need repairing if they take damage. Both of these issues are solved by a piece of equipment unique to Robotics: their third arm mounted on their shoulder allows them to build faster or repair devices quickly.
All in all, Global Agenda brings a new experience filled with fun and fast PvP to the MMO world. Character customization and level progression is not as deep as a regular MMORPG, and the shooter aspect isn’t as fluid as some MMOFPS’s, but Global Agenda feels like a perfectly blended mix of MMO’s, FPS’s, and RPG’s.