Gameplay

Beating back the demons of hell with hammer and gun.

When it comes to questing in the The Secret World there are several types on offer. A typical Action Mission, for instance, might involve erecting and defending a barricade against hordes of zombies before tracking the hordes back to their origin and defeating a powerful flesh golem. Investigation Missions, on the other hand, will have you hacking into computer terminals, rifling through old town archives, solving elaborate puzzles, and deciphering dead languages in an attempt to get to the heart of a particular mystery in the game world. Lastly, Story Missions advance the main game plot, and have you facing off against resurrected pharaohs, diabolical warlocks, and other suitably-epic evildoers.

In order to overcome said evildoers, of course, you will need to engage them in a bit of old-fashioned MMO combat; and to players of some of the more action-oriented MMOs that have appeared of late, the combat and gameplay of The Secret World will feel very old-fashioned indeed. By default, the combat is a traditional TAB-targeting affair: Attacks, triggered by pressing hotkeys, are directed towards the last enemy the player pressed TAB to target. The upside of this system is that your connection to the game servers has to be pretty horrible before you find yourself at too much of a disadvantage, because quick reactions aren't really called for. That being said, if the lag is so bad that the game looks like a Powerpoint presentation then you're going to have a tough time avoid the nasty telegraphed attacks that most enemies have, and you will probably die in short order.

With up to three equippable weapons at the player's disposal, the gameplay of The Secret World opens up a lot of possibilities.

Completing quests and killing enemies both reward the player with experience points, but The Secret World doesn't have any "levels" in same way that other MMOs do. Instead of gaining levels that boost the player's health, strength, and so forth, experience is converted into ability points that can be spent on unlocking passive and active abilities, and skill points which allow players to equip increasingly more-powerful gear.

In fact, it is gear that provides the best indication of how powerful a given player character is. Weapons and stat-boosting talismans (which essentially take the place of armour in other MMOs) are graded into tiers according to their quality. Players begin using quality-level one gear and end up using quality-level ten gear by endgame. Advancing beyond quality-level ten gear requires players to participate in endgame activities, such as the New York raid, Nightmare Dungeons, or PVP. Strictly speaking, though, players who only care about completing story objectives don't need to participate in any of the above, as a good set of quality-level ten gear combined with a strong build is sufficient.