Laguna Hills, California based developer Red 5 Studios officially released their new massively multiplayer shooter, Firefall, today. The game’s launch marks the end of a series of delays which have plagued the title since its announcement in September 2010 which kept the game stuck in beta testing for the next four years following its five years of prior development time.
Firefall, the first major release by Red 5 Studios, is an open-world online shooter that incorporates traditional elements of role playing games such as classes and levels. The game currently features five classes, known as Battleframes, which each feature their own specialized mechanical exoskeleton and weapons. The Assault class is a balanced fighter that features a mix of melee and ranged attacks as well as speed, maneuverability, and some defensive capabilities, while the Dreadnaught leans more towards defense than offense but occupies a similar spot near the middle of the road. More specialized classes include the Recon, which utilizes stealth, mobility, and a powerful sniper rifle to dispatch foes from afar, the Biotech, which uses chemical and biological agents to cripple opponents and heal allies, and the Engineer, which constructs gadgets such as machine guns and force fields on the battlefield to support their allies. Each class also has three to four specializations available to them, which allows players to enhance one aspect of their abilities.
Players must then take their Battleframes to war in a far-future Earth, which, after being struck by an asteroid comprised of a mysterious energy source known as crystite, became overly dependent on the resource after adapting nearly all technology to use it in the years of recovery from the impact event. Faced with the possibility of their crystite supplies running dry, the governments of Earth formed a unified body known as the Accord dedicated to constructing a faster-than-light spaceship called the Arclight in order to protect off-world crystite supply lines. The Arclight, however, proved a fatal experiment that tore holes in the fabric of the space-time continuum, transforming Earth in the process and igniting a war between the remaining Accord forces, bandits and rebels who blame them for humanity’s new plight, and the Chosen, humans mutated by the crash of the Arclight.
Firefall is currently available for Windows PCs free of charge through Steam or the game’s website. If you’re interested in learning more, you can watch the game’s official launch trailer below or on YouTube.