Fury Beta preview

Auran has let a closed Beta version of their new MMO Fury loose on the gaming public. James Matson was there to get a taste of the PVP action.

No matter how Australian developer Auran tries to market Fury, it’s going to be compared to every MMORPG game currently on the market. A quick browse around the net reveals this has already started to happen, and lately the term MMORPG seems to be a moniker slapped on any title which features a fantasy backdrop and online play.

But Fury is a different ballgame.

While containing elements that fit snugly into the massive multiplayer part of the genre – such as being potentially massive and certainly multiplayer - Fury veers wildly away from any substantial role-playing aspect. What we have instead is the PVP (Player-versus-Player) fanatics potential dream game.

Fury is all about combat, with the focus on stabbing, beating and frying opponents with an array of mystical weaponry and spells. While other MMO games have included a PVP component to their game with varying degrees of success, Fury diverges from this formula by stripping away everything else except the conflict. This game is what you’d be left with if you took the hulking slab of marble that is the MMO genre and whittled away the questing, the traipsing across vast worlds and to a large degree – the numbing grind, leaving a purely adversarial engine.

The plot centers around Altaia, a collection of kingdoms in danger of succumbing to the pervasive force of the ‘Fade’, an all consuming energy which threatens to plunge the realms into oblivion. The people of each empire know that the only way to fight the Fade is with the power of ‘essence’ – a naturally occurring substance which fuels protective magic for each kingdom. Unfortunately for the natives, their fighting skills leave a fair bit to be desired, so they need some champions to fight for them. This is where you come in, playing the role of one of the ‘Chosen’.

Thanks to the reality shattering effects of the Fade there are heroes floating around the ether who simply cannot die. The people of each realm – through experimental magic – can summon these Chosen to fight for them and claim more essence for themselves in a struggle for survival. What this translates to in game terms, is a mechanic of server versus server PVP action, and plenty of it.

In a nod to its Australian heritage, the current Beta contains two servers, Green and Gold – picture them as opposing realms – where players sign up to further the cause of their chosen server via team based or free-for-all combat. The intent for the final release is to include a server rankings ladder to demonstrate which realm is leader of the pack. If you approach Fury from the expectation of a conventional MMO, you’ll get the initial impression that it’s lacking depth. The character creation screen is missing multiple races or fancy appearance customization, and in all honesty just about every facial template for male or female avatars is offensively ugly. Soon though, you’ll realise ugly faces don’t matter because without the heavy RPG elements your character is just the vessel through which you’ll rain death on the battlefield. Fury is designed to throw the player into the continuous battles for glory with a minimum of stuffing around, and achieves this gracefully.

One of the few facial templates available in Fury character creation, this model screams Matt Damon in all the wrong ways.

Rather than pay meticulous attention to the tutorial, our hero would rather admire the sharp shininess of his blade. This does not bode well for future combat.