Fallen Earth is a post-apocalyptic themed MMORPG that was developed by Icarus Studios. The game started out as an exclusively pay-to-play game and was recently picked up by GamersFirst. GamersFirst has since changed the model, with several tiers of premium pay-per-month models with it, which people have dubbed this sort of model as "Freemium" (Free game that offers premium services for more features). Since the game has made the switch, I got the chance to try out the game as a new player, and more importantly as a free player. So this review will not only cover the aspects of the game itself, but how the limitations on the free players affect the gameplay.
Character Creation
The character creation in the game is on the better side of ones I have seen in past games, that is not to say that it is the best character creation system out there, because it isn't but it is fairly well done. It is one of those that let you choose a fair amount of preset features and mix them all together to create your own unique character. There are enough features to edit that you can create a fairly unique character. You're able to choose from things like hair style/color, skin color, eye color, face preset, tattoos, piercings, face paint, ect. There is also enough presets to choose from each category to give you almost endless combinations.
This is proven more in the fact that I haven't see any "clones" out there other than the players themselves. Everyone I have run into thus far has looked different than anyone else I have seen, which is something I like in a game. I prefer not to run into the same looking character 500 times in the same day if I can avoid it.
Tutorial
The tutorial in the game is fairly well done and does give you the basics you need to know for the game, it also sets you off in the main story of the game. It starts you off outside of a pod with a quest of trying to escape Hoover Dam. From here it takes you through the level giving you the basics such as combat; both melee and ranged, how to accept and complete quests, use of skills and items, and basic scavenging. All in all it is a nice bit of information to get you going in the game. I still highly recommend anyone who plays this though, to not only use the info from the tutorial, but the info you can find online. The tutorial doesn't really set you up with character building as much as online tutorials will. (Obviously)
After the tutorial you are presented with a choice of which starting town you wish to go to. My first experience was, I alt tabbed to ask my friend in steam which town they choose, went back, found out it randomly selected some other town. Now that actually didn't break my character at all, since a nice thing about the game is while each town does specialize in different things, such as crafting, melee, rifles, or anything like that, the choice for the starter town does not determine the choice of your character. In fact you could go back to the other towns to do quests from them. So, if you want to join the same starter town as a friend, but want to play a whole different style, then you don't need to worry too much about it.
