I may have been initially skeptical about Defiance based on mistakenly hearing it was going to be a licensed game (in fact, it’s a tie in set at the same time as the upcoming show), but I knew that if Trion Worlds was involved in it, it would be a game worth playing. After ogling movies and screens on and off these past few months, I finally got some hands-on time with the upcoming third-person Action MMO and yes indeed, it’s absolutely amazing. If the demo I and everyone else I saw walking away from with big grins on their faces is any indication, Defiance will indeed be a genre pushing game changer upon its April 2013 launch on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

While the show will be set in an alien overrun St. Louis, the game is set in a similarly plagued San Francisco Bay area with content paced to follow the show’s narrative. Given that the show posits seven alien races arriving on earth almost simultaneously, there should be an interesting amount of player choice when it comes to character creation. Everything clicks into place as soon as you pick up a controller and get into the action. This isn’t a traditional click ‘n wait MMORPG at all and in fact, the game is an action fan’s dream. Slick controls allow for sprinting, weapon swapping on the fly and other moves you’d expect from a triple-A action title. The game just feels “right” all around, something you get with a dev team that happens to be a fan of shooters as well as MMO’s. Some have worked on blockbusters from Everquest, Borderlands and Trion’s own RIFT (which I finally got to play at the press event and came away very impressed with), so you can expect a supremely high level of polish to the final version.

In the demo, I was paired up with a fellow editor and a few live players at Trion as we tackled a few early story missions involving taking out a couple of well-guarded alien encampments. While legging it to the waypoint was an option, calling up a faster single rider quad vehicle made the trip much more enjoyable. The open world looks fantastic with its blend of modern day human structures and bits of alien plant life cropping up along roadsides. We blazed right to the alien inhabited farmhouse where a few turrets and more enemies made for a fine firefight.  After taking them out and deactivating some equipment, we headed to a second farmhouse and put down another horde of nasties. The game will have mission points represented as glowing beacons players will come across in their travels. Activating one will start a mission and you can invite your current team to join the fight.

One of the cooler elements in the game is how Trion keeps the typical MMO enemy spawning true to the game world. You’ll come across Hellbug spawn points or alien packs along the roads that you can ignore as you run over them in or on one of the game’s vehicles or you can stop and blast away at a few waves for experience, loot and levels. Here, the game takes on a frenzy fans of Sandlot’s Earth Defense Force series of games will find quite exhilarating. As I happen to be playing EDF3 Portable for the Vita at the moment, running around killing a few waves of ugly Hellbugs in a few varieties from tiny ankle biters, to larger poison spitting, and just plain pesky flying annoyances was great fun and something I could have done all day. But there was a seaside alien HQ to rout, so off we went.

That mission dropped in a few tougher to drop Elite alien types as well as a few meanies with full-body shielding that required some work (and a few sticky grenade gun hits) to dispatch. As a team-based game, Defiance flows wonderfully and as we were all working together, that bunch was toast without much fuss. My avatar didn’t die once, but that was definitely thanks to one teammate equipped with a nifty healing gun who ran about topping us up when he (or she) wasn’t putting rounds through anything enemy shooting our way. As you can imagine, RPG elements are here, but the game really doesn’t feel like your run of the mill MMO at all. Leveling is nicely integrated into gaining levels based on dispatching enemies which earns you Ego points and how you distribute those points to upgrade your growing set of skills is all up to you. Yes, there’s a ton of loot to be gathered in the form of weapons, ammo, and currency, so even if you’re going in solo, you’ll find the game quite rewarding to play.

PvP is here as well and the game handles this in a cool way, you can avoid it entirely should you choose to (I’m not a fan of this style of play personally), but if you’re wanting some combat action against other live players, just look for firefights breaking out in certain spots, run on up and join in when prompted. From what I understand, players doing story only missions will remain unmolested and can just ignore the rumbling rabble as they go on about their merry ways.  As for the show itself, well, that’s going to be the prime mover for some potential new players. Grant Bowler’s Nolan character shows up at one point after an important mission, but he’s not going to be a constant visitor to the game world as the game is meant to exist side by side with what happens each week in the show.

Given that syfy is investing a great deal of time, money and talent into getting the word out, there’s little doubt that Defiance will be one of the most eagerly anticipated sci-fi (the true spelling, as I simply HAVE to honor the late Forrest J. Ackerman who came up with the abbreviation) shows ever. As I noted above, the game is already a total winner – it’s up to the show to be as good as it gets so the game has an even wider appeal as it heads into what looks like a successful few years as one of the best MMO’s on the market. Back with more on Defiance in a bit – start carving out some time for this one, folks…