With Hi-Rez Studios' Global Agenda going live in a few short days, ZAM checked it all out to see if GA could be the next big MMOFPS.

The first game we played was like playing reverse capture the flag, but with a giant robot. Sound confusing? For both teams, one player would randomly become his team's "robot," and he or she would be endowed with enhanced shields and some serious punching power. The entire objective of the game was to get your own team's robot into the enemy base, where the robot would promptly blow up, your team would score a point, a new robot would spawn, and you would need to do it again (up to three times). The conflict, of course, arises from the fact that the other team is trying to get their robot into your base, and since these robots are quite powerful, many of these games degenerate into both robots slugging it out in the middle of the map until one of them blows up, and then other one makes a mad rush into the enemy base to get a point.

GA actually offers a fair number of PvP style maps, ranging from holding objectives to attacking and defending, or Team Fortress 2's "payload" style, where one team 'pushes' a cart towards an objective while defending themselves. In terms of PvE, players simply blast their way through levels strewn with robots, grenade launching robots and incredibly powerful "elite" robots that correspond to player classes, like the Elite Helos (the Soldier class), the Elite Alchemist (Medic) and the Elite Assassin (Recon).

The A.I. in Global Agenda's PvE maps is quite solid - when a robot is low on healthy, it will literally climb over boxes and try to take cover before it dies. The unfortunate part of this, however, comes when an Elite Alchemist and an Elite Helos come barreling through the door, tearing your team to shreds, and then retreating to heal to full.

In the end, Global Agenda is definitely a strong contender to become the spiritual successor to SOE's Planetside, if a little more action oriented and with less time required to progress your character (after level 40 or so, aside from cosmetic changes, there are no talent gains or new weapons). Truth be told, as the game is right now, it does feel a little bit bare in its range of content and its depth of true character customization. Recons have a grand total of three weapons, but two of them are sniper rifles with different debuffs (one lowers shields, the other lowers healing received), and the in-game UI is fairly sparse and clunky. On the other hand, Global Agenda is also one of the very few MMOFPS games that we've played that actually feels like it has an incredible amount of potential hidden under its feet. If Hi-Rez Studios can keep up the high level of enthusiasm that they've shown to their community throughout Global Agenda's development, we're willing to bet that GA may very well be the next great MMOFPS.