Wildstar is more Wild than Star[Beta Hands-on]

I was given the opportunity to check out Wildstar during the last beta event that was held. From the hours I invested into the game, I can say one thing: this game is hilarious. I went ahead and created my own character rabbit-cat-thing, and needless to say, that was amusing in itself. First things first, one of the biggest and/or most important parts of a game in the MMO genre would be character creation. Wildstar’s character creation is fun, but not truly great.

 

Although you have a bit more freedom with your character’s face, seeing that you can tweak anything from the nose length to eye socket depth, everything else seems to have a preset template.

Since the majority of the game takes place on the planet of Nexus, I’ll go into a bit more depth about it. The overall feel of Nexus gives you the impression that it’s some sort of Guild Wars/Avatar hybrid, with an occasional hint of Borderlands; in short, the world of Nexus is quite well-designed. Whether players venture to the blue mountains or green forests, there’s enough for you to explore, and you most certainly will not get bored.

Given the fact that the path is extremely linear, and you travel from A to B, not A to F to Y to B, the world created by Carbine still feels very much alive, and this is shown through all the quirky wildlife living on Nexus. Nexus’ wildlife is even amusing—the way they move and react to you entering their ‘space’ is funny as all hell. What’s more entertaining than the wildlife, are the NPC’s—they’re absolutely hilarious. Seeing that one of the funniest games I’ve played would be the Borderlands series, I’m constantly reminded of it when playing Wildstar—there’s a similarly comedic dialogue, and it’s awesome.

Overall, Nexus feels vibrant from an aesthetic point of view, and it also packs a beautifully composed soundtrack); the main problem is performance, which is quite poor at the moment even on powerful PCs, and this isn’t really justified by an amazing level of detail.

Branching off from that, the combat system is definitely interesting, to say the least. I’ve found that with a lot of MMO’s, you simply just murder the crap out of your hotkeys, and that’s as complex as it gets. With Wildstar, although it’s not leagues more complex, things are somewhat more challenging. In regards to Wildstar’s combat, the two most important things you can keep in mind are: dodge and aim. Telegraphs, either from friendly or hostile units, are everywhere in Wildstar, which means that you’ll have to understand how to avoid or exploit them in the best possible way.

Don’t worry, you’ll still get to beat the living sh*t out of those hotkeys, you just have to aim your fury in a specified location, and dodge when that fury is returned right at you, too. Moves and abilities differ depending on what race you choose, but overall the combat is engaging, very user friendly, and just simply fun.

 

In terms of progression, Wildstar is a classic themepark and therefore questing is very important; this system doesn’t seem to differ from anything else we’ve already seen before. Although it’s fun unlocking new lore to read up on, players still continuously repeat themselves in each quest, but just with different NPC’s and objects. There seems to be a ‘wide variety’ quests, having story-specific ones, and class-specific ones, but this is ultimately a façade. Players travel, kill, loot, gain xp, and continue to repeat this cycle. It’s fetch quest after fetch quest, and the backstory of each quest isn’t nearly as detailed as those found in Elder Scrolls Online.

At first, you don’t realize this. But by the time you’ve invested several hours into the game, you begin to become aware of this cycle, and the game tends to lose it’s ‘spark’. Wildstar tries refresh this quest system by throwing in different plot twists every once and a while, but still, the awe-factor wears off after a while. Overall, it’s hard to recommend Wildstar, since what I got a taste of wasn’t the final version of the game. Wildstar seems to be a filler game that is fun when you’re not invested in something else.

But if you’re currently invested in other MMO’s (like ESO, etc), then it’s hard to explain why you should put down that game and pick up Wildstar—it doesn’t appear to bring enough new to the table. Of course, there’s a full fledged endgame system and some crazy housing as well, but the backbone of the game - questing and combat - isn’t exceptional by any means.

 

If you’re looking for a bright, hilarious game, and you don’t mind fetch quests, then Wildstar could be perfect for you; if not, it’s likely that you’ll have to try something else.