The Basics: It seems like no matter what happens in the coming years, the future is going to be a dark place where warring factions of humanity vie for survival. In Webzen's Huxley, all the usual planetary cataclysms have divided humanity into Sapiens (normal humans) and Alternates (mutants), each aiming to dominate the other, while a third race is emerging from the shadows just to make matters worse. Though things are looking bleak for humanity, it should provide a great time for gamers looking to blast each other into pulpy bits.
This is because Huxley is an MMOFPS, or massively-multiplayer shooter. Unlike the standard MMORPG, Huxley is being designed as a fast-action adrenaline-fest set in a persistent world, where battles have consequences not just to the player's ranking but their clan's and race's territorial holdings. Large battles and small skirmishes will be fought player vs. player while the PC handles the critters in smaller missions, and everything's designed with teamwork in mind. Strategy, communication, and cooperation will be required for survival in just about every situation.
It's not all death and shooting, though, as there will also be camps and cities where the latest new toys can be acquired. Experience will also allow players to grow, adding new skills and weapons to their arsenals. Render it all with the Unreal 3 engine for extra prettiness and Huxley is shaping up to offer some gorgeous and deep fast-action gaming.
What do we think? There's no question that moving fast and shooting things is fun, and doing it with friends is even better, but it's a bit early to make a judgement call on Huxley. While the idea shows lots of promise, details are still too vague to start singing its praises. Questions about how character development works are unanswered as yet, not to mention issues with keeping the warring factions in a balance of power without making it feel artificial.
Other potential hazards are the setting and character design. The "grim future" thing, while always good for a conflict, has been done to the point of cliche, and all the character art shown so far looks as generic as it get. On the plus side, while the well-dressed male soldier of the future requires full body armor, women can prance around in a high-tech bikini with no penalty to defense.
Despite these misgivings, the gameplay itself sounds solid. Mixing the dynamic, persistent world and character development of an MMORPG withe the twitch gaming of an FPS is a no-brainer of a concept, and should be a lot of fun if done even somewhat well. So long as the Unreal 3 engine can throw around large environments with lots of people moving fast, and do it on a reasonable computer, there's no reason to feel anything but optimistic about Huxley.
