Defiance after a few hours

Running around in the futuristic/post-apocalyptic world of Defiance has been a lot of fun so far.

I've been enjoying learning the details of using the various guns and EGO powers, and am intrigued to see how Trion and SyFy are able to integrate the game with the TV show. Like any new MMO, I have run into some launch issues (specifically – crashes and disconnects) and while Steam says that I've played 23 hours, most of that time has actually been spent downloading updates. Even so, I have been able to get a few missions knocked out and started to explore the starting area.

As many reviews have pointed out, the PC controls could use some work – it took me 10 minutes to figure out that F6 led to the system menu where I could logout, and there isn't much of a tutorial – its an FPS so what do you expect. For the most part, though, everything behaves like most other shooters, particularly Borderlands (to which I have seen a few comparisons). Eventually I tried an XBox controller (I played Borderlands on the XBox) and it worked nicely.

One concern is that I already feel pressure to make progress through the story – the character selection screen talks about Mission Episode 1 needing to be completed before April 15th, and as a casual gamer, I usually take my time in games (I've only reached endgame in one game – WoW – and that was after many years). I wonder how this will effect future players who miss out on the initial launch.

In any case, I've got my goal set to be ready for the first TV episode, and already have my TiVo set to record it.