Fallen Empire Legions – InstantAction.com

I was browsing for a few flash games to pass the time during exam times, and a certain game that had me absolutely hooked was a game at InstantAction.com. It probably isn’t anything close to flash, but it is a browser based game. This means that if you are running Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, etc, you would be able to play the game straight from your web browser.

What is Fallen Empire Legions? It is a multiplayer first person shooter game (FPS) that seems to have a fair number of people playing. It isn’t demanding, it is available on a browser, etc. For me, this game obviously doesn’t replace my good old CounterStrike or Unreal Tournament, but it does a nice job of letting me game when I go to a friend’s house with no games. I can quickly boot up a game anywhere and start playing.

Upon your first visit at InstantAction.com, you will have to open an account, this account will let you play more than just Fallen Empire Legions, but also a variety of games (of which I will talk about later on). When you first join a game, and get it all setup, it will have to “download” the game. Depending on your connection it could take a little over 2 minutes or as long as 6 or 7 minutes. But every time you play after, the load portion takes no more than 30 seconds or so. A fair trade for absolute convenience.

The game itself has a few modes, most people are playing capture the flag, but there is also deathmatch. You can also play the game from classic FPS view with only the gun sticking out, or view your super cool units in third person view. The basic engine of the game involves units with jetpacks or engines of some sort that propel them either moving them at great speed or letting them jump high in the air. This portion of the game makes for really interesting gameplay, you aren’t so tempted to bring in absolute accuracy, and there is no such thing as headshot. Instead you find yourself in close combat with a few other units, jumping and circling at high speeds while trying to juggle rocket launchers, sniper rifles and machine guns. It seems absolutely essential to choose your weapons wisely and switch at critical points in a struggle. If you are looking at close combat with lots of jumping around, you will have to use a machine gun, at a slightly further distance I find the rocket launchers to be absolutely devastating. Obviously sniper rifles are for long distances.

The jetpack (probably not what it really is) lets you speed up moving forward. If you aren’t using the pack, you can heal. The game is fast paced because of a certain ability called overdrive, which lets you move at extremely fast velocities at the cost of precious health. You can find yourself completely isolated in the extremely huge battlefields, and suddenly 3 or 4 people come in with practically no health, but catch you unguarded in a split second.

You also have a fair number of classes. Some specialize is getting into places fast and leaving quickly (outriders; practically designed for the capture the flag mode), you have snipers, gunners, rocket launchers, etc. They are all fairly balanced in the sense that you need a team of people that use a few of each to be successful, but I feel that some of the more general units (the outrider is able to use a rocket launcher and a machine gun) have more of an advantage as the game focuses on being able to use weapons efficiently.

Fallen Empire Legions is an extremely balanced game with fast paced action, and pretty amazing graphics for a browser game. It doesn’t seem to require very good computer specs and the setup is fairly painless. It certainly doesn’t replace the great FPS games on the market, but lets you take FPS gaming to places you never thought you could (just two words here; library computers). I’m actually fairly impressed. I never knew browser games could be so advanced, and I look forward to playing some more of InstantAction.com’s games.