Anarchy Online: Alien Invasion review (PC)

Invasions usually end with the appearance of a capital ship that your party can board so that you can seek out the alien boss of that ship before the craft heads back to space (which otherwise kills your party instantly). Successfully thwarting invasions and capturing motherships lets your characters earn "alien experience," which is an all-new kind of experience point that lets you purchase all-new abilities, called "alien perks," for your character. This system is similar to the "perk" system that was added to the Shadowlands expansion. Defeating these creatures can also net you alien equipment, which can be crafted to form advanced kinds of weapons and armor. These additions are great if you're an experienced player with at least one high-level character--who's got some good support from other high-level characters from your guild. However, there are still ongoing debates about the frequency of alien attacks. Some players feel that attacks are too frequent, which causes many of them to become concerned about their cities coming under attack when they themselves can't play. On the opposite side of the fence, others feel that attacks are too infrequent in the game. Naturally, this balance is still being fine-tuned in the game.

Unfortunately, to build and maintain a successful player city, you'll likely need to be part of a fairly powerful guild and have access to a whole bunch of credits, because building a player city is extremely expensive, and it will be out of the price range of all beginners. And since most cities are owned by high-level players, invasions are mostly custom-generated for high-level characters, which means that your low-level characters won't stand much of a chance in most invasions. As it stands now, most player cities are owned by extremely high-level characters who are seeking to make their already powerful characters even more so, which presents an intriguing prospect to veterans, though it presents a potentially frustrating one if you've only got a bunch of low-level characters.

Otherwise, the expansion adds a great many new items, weapons, and armor, along with peripheral additions, like pet "leets" (if you preordered the game). Leets are Anarchy Online's perennial joke monsters, and they resemble hamsters that talk like the stereotypically obnoxious online RPG players who beg for money and can't type properly. The expansion also offers an all-new set of clothing. Anarchy Online was arguably the first game to really explore the idea of making characters with highly customized appearances, especially with colorful and sometimes goofy clothing, and Alien Invasion offers even more items and noncombat clothes that you can use to dress your characters.

Your characters can look brighter and sillier than before (if you wish), but the game's now-blocky character models and original facial features, along with many of its monsters and environments, are definitely showing their age--at least compared to the expansion's sleek aliens. Even player cities consist of buildings that can look a bit simplistic. But to compensate, however, the best ones are colorful and impressively huge. The expansion's audio doesn't offer much in the way of new content either, though there are new music tracks available for the starting areas, battles, and a few other locales, which fit well into the game but aren't distinctive or exceptionally good on their own. Disappointingly, the expansion offers few new sound effects, other than some new ones for aliens. Anarchy Online's sound effects are still effective and fit well with the sci-fi setting, but if you've already been playing the game, you've heard most of them before. Considering that some of the game's closest competitors--namely EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot--have already undergone or are undergoing major engine enhancements, perhaps the time is right for Anarchy Online to receive a face-lift of its own.

Because the retail version of Alien Invasion comes at a suggested price of $30 and includes the original game, along with the expansion, it's a decent value. It's perhaps disappointing that the expansion didn't also ship with Shadowlands bundled in, because if it had, the entire thing would have been a much more compelling and complete package. Anarchy Online remains a sometimes convoluted--but deep--online game that can be played in short spurts. However, most of its additions are best suited to expert players. As a result, the Shadowlands expansion seems more tailored to beginners or players who played the game a while ago but have now returned to it.