Living After War (or L.A.W.) is a game currently undergoing closed Beta by www.Alaplaya.net. I managed to snag a beta key and spent less than two hours downloading the 3.6 GB of the game offered. Immediately I noticed upon entering the nifty little slideshow/opening cinematic they chose to display upon choosing a faction, which is simply a difference between cryogenically frozen humans or humans who have undergone evolution and surgery to enhance their bodies for survival on the rather havocked Earth.
Wait, what? Let’s back up a moment. The game seems to feature a life of how Earth will be in 200 years past a war of mass destruction on a global scale. Exactly 5,036 humans escaped Earth’s devastation in a shape heading for space, and remained in orbit, cryogenically frozen for 200 years. In that time, the true humans that remained on Earth, at least those who survived, evolved into two factions. The first faction was the Nak, a humanoid species with interestingly feline ears atop their head. The other race was a rather power-hungry faction (All NPC, sadly) called the Shamak, whom have become carnivorous and are trying to control the Nak.
Immediately the game forces you to choose from being a cryogenically frozen human, or a Nak. I went with a Nak. It gave me a brief history of how the Nak became who they are, and immediately set me in a starting area. A ship had crash landed in a sacred Nak area and from it were pouring the surviving Shamaks. First you are tasked with killing a few of the Shamak (where I promptly died due to being outnumbered 10 to 1) and talk to your quest giver again. He then tells you to destroy the small ship and after doing so, you are entered into the normal world. Wait, what? Turns out the world you were in was an instance at that particular moment up until you destroyed the ship and talked to your quest giver. That meant no help from outside sources. However, upon going into this new world, I was dismayed to find that I was all alone. It’s quite a sad sight, but I’m sure the game will pick up in popularity. Being in closed Beta, it didn’t irk me that some of the game was poorly translated, even one such instance where a quest giver told me to “kick Shamak out.” It wasn’t so bad except to be a bit humorous. I hope they’ll have those issues sorted upon official release, or at least in Open Beta!
So some of you may be looking at this article going…What’s the gameplay like? I was reather fond of another Fallout-style MMO similar to Fallen Earth. Sadly, this is not the case. It is another hotbar skill-based game like WoW or Rift, or Everquest 2. If you don’t like this, or are already set in your ways on those games, I suggest avoiding it. I have to admit I’m wanting to play this game a good bit just to see the storyline. I have little interest, however, in spending however long I would need to in order to flesh out the entire story. Not without friends.
One important note however is that your choice in race (faction) results in you being able to ONLY play that faction on that server. As there is only one server on the closed beta, I’m going to have to hope to see more Naks running around the starting area!
Here’s to hoping to seeing others along with me for the ride in this newest Sci-Fi fantasy universe.