Guild Wars 2 review

I remember when the first Guild Wars game came out and what was so astonishing was that you got to go out and explore this huge and mysterious world without having to pay a penny beyond the initial installation disc.

MMOs were still relatively in their infancy and there was still an air of excitement and surprise in the new genre. Then a fantasy monolith called World of Warcraft swallowed all the headlines and most of our cash and the age of innocence was over. From the moment WoW hit the shelves, every games designer across the globe began dreaming up clones or imitations with the aim of grabbing a slice of the Blizzard pie.

While the original Guild Wars was quietly adding new chapters that seemed to be drowned out by the hooves of the WoW stampede, some new kids on the block started making waves of their own. All this year Skyrim has been supreme in achieving for offline RPGs what WoW had succeeded in doing online - creating a vast, sprawling and cohesive world that you could lose yourself in for months - whilst creating a gripping core storyline. No wonder, then that The Elder Scrolls Online will shortly cross the divide for good.

But then suddenly along comes Guild Wars 2 and that breath of fresh air we were hoping was going to be blasted into the lungs of the MMORPG community has become a reality. The land of Tyria plays host to five main races - the diminutive but powerfully magical Asura, the mystical plant-beings known as Sylvari, the natural hunters called Norn, the death-or-glory savage Charr and the common or garden Humans.

I chose the Charr because - naturally - I love a fight and as there's plenty of scope for specialising your features you won't run into many copycats in the course of the game. The graphics are simply drop-dead gorgeous and what I liked immediately was the fact that you can get in and out very quickly with minimal load times.

Essentially there are three ways to play - follow your character story by gradually building up your levels through quests, achievements, XP, etc.; going straight into PvP, in which case you instantly level up to awesome abilities and weaponry and can go straight into a decent slugfest with small teams of like-minded friends; or playing World vs World where massive teams battle across four giant maps in true global combat.

But even if you want to do most of the action solo, the game constantly asks you to get involved with other players. As you explore each map, an event will be announced and all players in the area are encouraged to jump in and help. Unlike in most of its rivals, Guild Wars 2 rewards you with points and treasure even if you only land one blow on a target, so it takes the selfish frenzy out of each contest. The result is a truly cooperative game where you're constantly rewarded for even small victories as well as for reviving fallen comrades and you're thus emboldened to take on greater and harder missions.

What's even more exhilarating is that all your actions have personal consequences and the dynamic events system which is at the heart of this game constantly adjusts and redefines how you progress based on the choices you've made. Defend one community and its enemies might redouble their attacks on you - support one clan and they might come to your assistance when you need them.

There's a massive array of skills, crafts, traits and weaponry that you can accumulate along the way and if you die you can either wait for someone to revive you or restart at one of the many waypoints scattered round the map. Exploration is also heavily promoted as XP is handed out for discovering points of interest and puzzling out how to arrive at key viewpoints on the map.

Of course some battles will have to wait until you've levelled up sufficiently but the main enjoyment of Guild Wars 2 is from taking a risk with a group of like-minded combatants and engaging in a fight that might normally be out of your range. What ArenaNet have managed to achieve here is to put the fun and the buzz back into multiplayer online gaming and if for no other reason, this should be your MMO of choice. RIP WoW.

And - yes - it's still subscription free.

Score: 5/5