Fury: GDC 2007 Preview

JR “razor” Sutich took the bus to play Fury at GDC and files this report on the action oriented MMORPG. PvP is the order of the day for Australian developers Auran and they delivered a hefty dose to Sutich.

At GDC this year, I was afforded the chance to play Fury for the first time. I also got to ride on a bus that ran on 100% vegetable oil on the way to the demo, and that was a pretty cool experience as well.

Fury is a fast-action MMORPG that is being developed by Auran. The game is highly focused on PvP, and servers are pitted against each other in several types of matches. When you fight, you fight for your server’s honor, and the better you are, the better items, rewards and abilities you will have access to.

We arrived at a building in San Francisco that could have been the set for the red pill/blue pill scene in The Matrix. In the middle of a ballroom that was also the venue for the Cirque de Soleil-ish Gamecock party, I saw 8 computers set up running Fury. I couldn’t wait to play, and after a bit of game instruction they turned the journalists loose on each other.

Since one of the things about Fury that is appealing is the fact that you are not locked into one type of character class and can switch roles, I got to look at a few of the different types before settling on what I consider to be the most fun in any game. That’s right, dual-wielding offensive fighter. After setting up some skills that I thought sounded cool, I waited for the Deathmatch to start. After talking a bit of smack to a co-worker, we were spawned in an arena and the carnage began.

By that I mean I found a fundamental flaw in the game design, which is melee characters get nuked and kited with ease. Lesson learned, avoid casters. I spawned again and went after another melee type, but the nuker had found his easy prey, and it became me trying to kill other melees while being easy pickings for the nuker.

I looked through the skill list and didn’t see anything that was a root or snare, and the one attack I did have was a charge that closed the gap but the cooldown was such that I was hit with 4 fireballs between charges, so that didn’t work out too well. I’m sure that this will be addressed as this still looked to be an early build.

Early build or not, the games graphics were impressive, and the flow of battle was fast-paced. Almost like a FPS, so much that I caught myself doing a bit of jumping and circle-strafing. Attack animations were well done, and I had a favorite attack. Thankfully it was not only a debuff, but it charged a powermeter that allowed me to follow it up with another special attack, doing a great amount of damage. This is what allowed me to exact revenge on my nuker friend shortly before the time ran out on the DM. I didn’t come in dead last, and fared somewhere near the middle of the group.

The co-worker I was talking smack to ended up finishing at the top of the list.

Fury looks like it could turn out to be a really fun game and is definitely one to keep an eye on, especially for Guild Wars players who want a different PvP experience with as much adrenaline and strategy. I look forward to my next chance to play, and you can be sure, I’ll keep an eye out for nukers.

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