Absolute Force Online Review

Absolute Force Online is the latest title to join one of the most exciting online genres available today, the MMOFPS. Promising to deliver adrenaline fueled combat based on the highly popular Unreal Engine, Absolute Force Online provides players with RPG character progression and depth, combining it with the casual pick up and play approach of a modern day FPS game.

As you would expect in any game launching in 2012, Absolute Force Online does boast a pretty extensive character creation and customization feature. To begin with players can choose a basic character model and change some basic features but the real customization comes into play as you progress through the game. Winning matches, completing challenges and other objectives award players with in-game currency and experience points. Most items that you can buy in the store are level restricted, but as you progress you'll unlock a huge number of items. Whether you want to equip your character with the latest weaponry and grenades, or the hottest fashion trends, there are dozens of items available.

Once you've created your character the game offers an exciting variety of game modes. There are traditional options such as TDM and Bomb but there's also a rather intriguing option in the form of Zombie Mode. The Zombie mode pits Zombie's against players in a battle for survival. At the start of the round everyone has 30 seconds to run around, get into a defensive position or group up for an attack, the game then randomly selects some players to become infected. The zombies then hunt down each player until they're all infected. It sounds pretty basic but as it uses different models and attacks to the normal game mode, it's well worth playing if you grow tiresome of TDM.

The combat itself is fast-paced, featuring servers that allows for both Third-Person and First-Person although currently the FPS exclusive server is unavailable. In true MMOFPS fashion players can utilize a variety of weapons and grenades on the battlefield, but there's also a transformation system. Once players accumulate a certain number of points they're able to transform into what can only be described as an anime girl carrying two mini-guns. Communicating with your team, launching multiple transformation attacks at the same time can be totally devastating and does help to add a little depth to an otherwise regular FPS combat system

By far the biggest letdown with Absolute Force Online is the spawning system. It's about as old school as you can get, and not in a good way. You spawn in the same place every time on every map, that's it. This leads to a huge amount of spawn camping and quick kills and although the game allows newly spawned characters to do more damage, it doesn't really help when the entire enemy team is sitting waiting for you to spawn in. Despite the many positive aspects to Absolute Force Online this severely degrades the experience as each match boils down to whichever team can spawn camp the quickest.

Absolute Force Online does have a good amount of potential. There's a huge number of weapons and aesthetic items and the unique game modes do add a good amount of variety. However the awfully predictable spawning system ruins any real tactical or strategic approach to regular TDM modes.

Rating: 7.5

by Blaine Smith