It’s been a while since Global Agenda has reared its visored, high-tech head from behind cover. When we last looked at it it was too busy to stop for an interview, zooming by on its way to pick up yet another award for Best in Show at last year’s E3 Expo - before it had even been released. Now that the cloaking field has dropped and Global Agenda is consistently top-selling on Steam, we decided to head in and see what all the fuss was about.

Global Agenda bills itself as “spy-fi" which is a nice pun, but doesn’t really quite cover what the game is about. Take the strong class-based elements of Team Fortress 2, add a heaping helping of the physics and mission systems from City of Heroes, sprinkle a pinch of Tribes to taste, and blend wildly until the screaming stops, and you’ve probably just about covered the delightful hybridised gameplay of Global Agenda.



There are four classes in Global Agenda, each with a highly specialised role. Robotics are support characters who can deploy force fields and create turrets, Medics (unsurprisingly) provide healing and can also poison enemies, Recon can stealth around with a sniper rifle and a backstab ready to roll, and of course the ever-lovin’ Assault class has a gun the size of his entire body and more health than he knows what to do with. Your character can be either male or female and in a surprising and entirely welcome move, female versions of the characters are just as heavily armoured as the male ones and do not suffer from the standard Terminal Cleavage Exposure Syndrome.



When you load up the game for the first time, your character gets shunted into a series of single-player tutorial missions to give you a feel for the gameplay. The scripted cinematics are all done in real-time and are quite good for an MMO, giving you a chance to experience the story side of the game. From there you’ll get dropped into the central hub, where you can do all your trading, queue up for PVE and PVP missions, or just practice in the arena against other players in a no-consequences battle.

Missions are good, solid fun and their quick, instanced gameplay means you can jump in straight away and start having fun. If you’re after something of a larger scale the game features a Conquest mode, where you can capture and hold territory with your Agency (guild) building fortresses and vehicles to defend it and deploying your fellow players as tiny soldiers in your grand war, fighting in their own little instanced battles to defend your territory. Combat is fast-paced and explosive, with a good blend of twitch-based gaming and MMO tactics. The addition of jetpacks for every class makes even basic movement through the arenas fun, and lends an intriguing vertical dynamic to PVP combat.



There’s a lot to like in Global Agenda, but it’s important to mention that as MMO’s go, this is a game that is very obviously still finding its feet. Many of the shops in the central hub are shut pending later updates, there are some issues with the level grind at the high end, and the game is missing a sense of wholeness that many of the older established titles have. That said though - there’s nothing out there quite like this game, and it is early days. If you’re looking for a change of pace from the usual swords and sorcery, this might be the game for you (and with the game free to play up until level 15, it’s worth looking into!).

(Ed - Free? Sold! I'm now downloading this off Steam as you folks read this...)