I really wanted to like Fallen Earth. After the untimely demise of Tabula Rasa I longed for an MMO that did not contain haughty elves or magic missiles.

With its FPS/RPG hybridization, classless skill-based character advancement system, and real-world post-apocalypse setting, I was highly anticipating the opportunity to create a female Mad Max and make a name for myself in Grand Canyon Province.

Things started out well enough for Mad Margaret as I navigated her through the tutorial section of the game; a story instance that has the player running for your life from a “secret underground facility” as a disembodied voice gives you instructions on basic game play and story elements. Fun, informative, and what I thought was a taste of things to come.

Boy, was I wrong. Upon completing the tutorial you are dumped out into the starter area of the game where things quickly become buggy, bland and downright perplexing. Although the game’s graphics aren’t terrible, they aren’t exactly awe-inspiring either. For whatever reason, the interface was small, fuzzy and hard to read, no matter how much I tweaked my graphics settings. And it also wasn’t particularly intuitive, as I struggled to figure out how to switch weapons or access my character’s stat sheet.

The worst part of it all was how amazingly complicated the character skill system was. Skill attributes, that could have been described in just a couple of brief sentences, instead had paragraphs of text that looked like they had been written by an astrobiologist! When I play an online game I want to have FUN. Not feel like I’m preparing for a math exam!

* Actual text taken from the game. If anyone can explain to me in SIMPLE TERMS what all of that actually means, I will review the MMO of their choice in an upcoming post.