Fall In For Firefall Beta Weekends

Firefall. Among the made-up words I've met in my many travels, it definitely stands out as quite, er, aggressive. I mean, there's fire and falling involved. Both tend to perform their designated actions in fairly short order - leaving behind little question as to what happened and usually also some form of smoking crater. And yet, for all that, Firefall the game is taking its sweet time en route to release, polishing up an extended beta with no intentions of going live (or even into open beta) until its good and ready. But now, you can at least drop in for a brief stay in Red 5's colorful world of shooting and looting. And by "drop in," I mean never actually touch the ground for more than three seconds at a time, because jetpacks.

First off, you'll need to register here, which will put you in the running to take part in any of three upcoming beta weekends - the first of which will kick off in, er, hours ago. Each one runs 48 hours, though, so you might still be able to pull this off. I believe in you.

Each beta weekend will focus on a different element of the game. This weekend, for instance, is all about thumping. What will you thump? Why, the whole world, of course. That, as science has taught us, is how mining is done. But where there are precious minerals being ker-biff-thwocked out of a planet, there are of course monsters who desperately want to know what all the fuss is about. They are also hungry. You do the math. Actually, don't, because computations waste time you could spend not getting devoured by spike-legged bug monsters.

November 30th, meanwhile, will focus on population control - which seems to suggest more baddie squashing, except for the good of your fellow man instead of your space-bank account. Finally, December 7th will see the evil Chosen forces invade and try to fashion New Eden into the spitting image of old Eden - which is to say non-existent. It will probably be in your best interest to stop them.

So, who's jumping in? Also, has anyone jumped back in fairly recently? Firefall's been evolving substantially over the course of its beta, but has it been change for the better?