Face of Mankind: Professional Murder Simulation

So, I've recently been on something of a crusade to find myself a good Sci-Fi MMO. As a result I've been picking up free trials, betas, the works, in great numbers, on my quest for a game that could muster something resembling the quality of WoW, but with a more sci-fi heavy focus.

One of my latest discoveries, is Face of Mankind, from German developer Duplex Systems. It's in Open Beta right now, and intrigued by the sci-finess of the setting, I decided to check it out, partly just because my attempt to beta test Matrix Online was a dismal failure.

I was very, very surprised, by many things. The game is, without a doubt, quite unique in its approaches, and seems determined to set itself apart from the rest of the pack. However, it seems to have suffered from a certain naivety when it comes to the evaluation of how many of these unique ideas, will actually work.

First off, it's an FPS. Plain and simple. It plays a bit slower than your typical FPS, requiring more time to aim, limiting strafing speed, adding a stamina bar. But the interface is stil lthe same mouselook + keyboard approach that will be quite familiar to FPS gamers, but probably a little bit alienating to those used to the standard point and click of an MMORPG.

One of the wierd quirks of the interface though, is that some of the point-and-click is still there. Your controls have two different modes. The normal FPS mode you'll be using for moving about and combat, and "interface" mode. This is accessed by hitting ESC, which prings up a mouse cursor and allows you to interact with on screen windows and widgets. But nothing else. You can't move, or even see much while in this mode, so if you get into combat, you're basically boned.

Visual wise, the game is hit or miss. The static environments are rendered well, and display beautifully even on lower end hardware, such as the machine I ran it on. But there's a sparseness, and emtiness to the environments that I didn't really like. Most of them are small cramped corridors, specifically constructed to channel you from one place to another, and little else. The entirety of any of the cities or colonies can usually be explored fully within about 10 to 15 minutes. There's little in the way of interesting sites to see. In fact, the sum total of all the areas is usual the stores and facilities, and that's about it. To top it off, most of the character models are rather poor on the art direction, looking just generally awkward and wierd. Overall, the look and feel of the game is on par with, say, a really good Unreal mod.

The sound is of decent quality. Simple but evocative incidental music accompanies the action, while pleasant female voices intone instructions at the various terminals you will be spending good portions of your time on. It all manages to be at least non-offensive, which is important in a game you could potentially be sinking massive hours into.

Now that the surface impressions are over, we get to the game play.

The RPG elements of the came will ring particularly shallow, to anyone familiar with the genre. Stats have been pretty much removed. Focus as far as character customization is concerned, is all on equipment. Characters have "levels" but the levels have little effect, except to serve as a ranking within the player's chosen faction.

There is a large variety of different factions to choose from, each with a different set of focuses and different allies and enemies among the other factions. These are, unfortunately, mostly meaningless, for reasons I will get into in a moment.

Once you are in the game you will realize that there is basically, three options as to what you can do with your time.

The first is mining & production, which consists largely of using various terminals on different colonies. Different colonies produce different resources, and of course the different production items require a good variety of them. All of this is done through computer terminals, pointing and clicking The result is something on the order of flying to different countries all over the world, just to experience their cybercafes.

This brings to mind one of the unfortunate drynesses of the game. Everything is done through terminals. There are NPCs in the game, but they literally exist for no purpose other than window dressing. Missions are player driven, and come to you by way of a computer interface. All sales and other transactions are performed similarly. The only reason your character even has to move for this stuff, is that the designers have made sure to seperate all the tasks to completely different terminals.

I will illustrate. Say I wanna make a gun to sell for some cash. First things first, I have to find the appropriate production module for the gun, and buy that from a Market terminal. Then, once I've figured out what materials I need to make it, I go around to various planets, using their mining terminals. This will extract the stuff I need, and place it in that planet's storage. Then, since I no doubt will have to go to multiple planets to get all I need, I have to go to the storage terminal and transfer all these materials to one place, probably the last stop on my quest, so that I will be able to then access them all from my production terminal, and thus, synthesize my gun. This gun will now also be planted in my storage. From here I go to another market terminal, and place the thing up for sale, and hope it sells.

If some guy comes along and buys it, from a market terminal, he then has to go to his storage terminal to retrieve his newly bought item, because of course, they couldn't have just had it deposit into your knapsack like every other game on the planet.

So, once you get bored with running around like mad, just to make a few bucks, you will want to start doing missions. Only there's hardly a damn one presently running at the moment. Missions are player-created and driven, by the higher ranked members of the different factions. So, of course, they have to feel arsed to even make one, and then you have to hope there are some scheduled to occur at this particular point in time. After which point, you have to hope people actually show up to the rendevous point, and that the mission actually starts when it's supposed to.

Again frustrated, we come to the third option: cold-blooded murder. This is where I get to the big, big wierdness of the game.

It's player-vs-player you see, but not just that, it's the only form of conflict contained in the game. There are no NPC enemies. No rats, or level one thugs to frag to gain levels. It's all about screwing your fellow man.

And of course, the player base has absolutely no problem with gunning your ass down in cold blood for no real provocation. It seems to be what all the players wind up doing eventually. Cold blooded unprovoked murder is what these guys seem to live for. The game has an atmosphere not unlike living in the middle of a gang war.

Players will hunt the streets in packs, screaming at any players that come by, demanding to know what faction they hail from, and just generally fragging anyone who looks at them funny. Often times they will form groups and camp teleporter exit points and the like, waiting for people to come through and blasting them before they've even escaped the loading screen.

In theory, there are limits placed on this. Killing players outside of a mission is considered murder, and earns you penalty points. Get enough of them, and you reach most wanted status, giving all other players carte blanche to blast you without consequence. In addition, there is a law enforcement faction, that in theory has the power to arrest, jail, or terminate criminals.

But in practice, none of this is enforced with any real regularity. It suffers from the same problem Sims Online did. If you expect your players to police themselves, they won't.

The law enforcement factions, by and large, engage in as much criminal action as any of the others. Many are just cheap thugs like the rest of the gangs, and the ones that aren't are too busy trying to stay alive to bother enforcing the law. And since everyone on both sides runs amok in an orgy of killing anyway, "most wanted" status is little more than a badge of honour, saying you've survived long enough to commit this many crimes.

The killing doesn't even always stick to normal rivalries either. Innocents are fair game, unarmed or no. You're not even really safe from your own faction mates, though they usually at least refrain from such killings, because it gives them the excuse that their murderous rampages are "just role playing", just because they have the decency to kill the right enemies.

One of the other side effects I've noticed, is that most of the factions are horridly underpopulated, save two. LED, the law enforcement, and the Brotherhood of Shadows, an anti-corporate rebel group, whose popularity stems from the fact that they have as enemies every faction in the game, save one.

There's also another aspect that makes this situation even more frustrating. The possibility of permanent character death. It's a relatively easy eventuality to avoid, you can buy clones for your character and insurance as well, that's fairly cheap, even early in the game. However, still being alive means little, because your character is defined primarily by his equipment, all of which will have been looted, although the game is usually nice enough to let you keep any guns you had equipped.

The whole environment just feels unsettling. Especially when you find yourself on the aggressor side. Standing witness while two of your faction mates are bellering at random bystanders. "What faction are u from!! I'll shoot if u don't answer! I'll shoot" OR having some wierd little kid following you about nipping at your heels suggesting "We should go kill someone".

I honestly got this nasty feeling in the pit of my gut the likes of which I would expect to experience if I every found myself in the middle of a street gang patrol. In the end, I just walked away from it, teleporting to a random location hoping my new "friends" wouldn't figure out where I'd gone to.

To be fair to the game, there do seem to be some players out there who aren't part of the murder squads, just going about their business, trying to make a living, avoiding the fights when they can. There's also a precious few individuals on the law enforcement end who really are trying to do their faction's job.

But mostly, it's just constant violence for the sake of violence. Playing the game, and reading the vitriolic attacks the two sides sling at each other on the boards, reminds me a little bit of real life conflicts like those in Ireland or Isreal.

It's almost kind of the charm of the game, this kind of constant bitter gang warfare. It gives it a very unique dynamic, that I would be hard pressed to find elsewhere. It's a uniquely viscious approach to player vs. player gaming.

It's a game with some interesting potential, but it's definitely not for everyone. The game seems to attract more of the CounterStrike crowd than the EverQuest or World of Warcraft crowd, and it shows.

It's an oddly compelling game, for all it's faults, and I'd recommend at least giving it a look. Be forewarned however, the game still has no manual, and the ingame tutorial is yet to be completed, so pore over the Help forums, and don't be afraid to ask stupid questions.

You can find the game at http://www.fomportal.com