New World: Aeternum is bringing Amazon’s MMO to console but with all the hallmarks of the genre intact, including a grindy quest structure, rather dull combat, and tons of overly complex systems, will the port actually be a hit on PS5 and Xbox Series X | S? We played a small chunk over Summer Game Fest to find out.
When you think of MMOs, you don’t often think of consoles. The industry’s most successful games in the genre, the WoW’s, FFXIV’s, Guild Wars, and many others, all resonate on PC and for good reason.
Unlike smaller, linear experiences, MMOs are timesinks beyond compare. They’re games demanding dozens if not hundreds of hours over many years as you commit to the universe of your choice. With such a commitment comes a level of depth just not feasible on console, most of the time. You need more inputs, having more screens is preferable and communication is easier through third-party platforms. Put simply, MMOs are at home on PC.
Amazon Games is begging to differ, however. Three years on from the release of its New World MMO on PC, devs are bringing the game to PS5 and Xbox Series X | S with New World: Aeternum. We went hands-on with an early build of the console port and while the effort is commendable, we still left thinking it’s a sub-optimal way to enjoy the game.
Stepping into a New World on a new platform
An intricate character creator is where our Summer Game Fest demo started, letting us not only customize our look but pick from a number of preset character types. Some were more melee-focused, others prioritized ranged combat, while others merged them together. Opting for one of the latter, a class with a firearm and a sword, I was quickly taken to the game’s onboarding prologue, a handful of quick intro sequences to learn the controls and the flow of combat.
The first thing that jumped out was just how well the MMO’s gameplay has been adapted to fit a controller. It felt just like playing any other third-person action game from over the years, attacking and blocking with the triggers, interacting with the face buttons, moving and rotating the camera from a behind-the-character perspective, it all worked quite well.
Hacking and slashing through weaker targets worked just as you’d expect, moving through the opening region was smoother than anticipated, it all translated to a console experience, a rare feat in the genre.
Where things began to take a turn, however, once the tutorials wrapped and the scope of the full game came into focus.
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Still an MMO through and through
While a commendable job bringing a PC experience to console players, New World: Aeternum isn’t going to turn any non-MMO fans into diehards. It still carries over the typical qualities of an MMO that may fail to captivate new audiences.
Let’s take combat, for instance, a core pillar of the game. Attacking enemies is the bulk of what you’re doing in New World, yet with a controller in hand, combat feels rather lackluster here. There’s no weight to your attacks, enemies are either spongey or go down in two hits, you have an enormous health pool so there’s little consequence to making mistakes, and you rarely have to think on your feet. So much of what we played boiled down to just locking onto the target, slashing away, and moving on to the next.
This is only compounded by an extremely monotonous quest structure. Through our 45-minute demo, every single quest resorted to the following pattern: Talk to an NPC, head to a quest marker, attack some enemies or gather some resources, and return to the NPC. It’s fetch quest galore, at least to start the game, and it’s certainly a bore if you’re not messing around with a few friends, and not taking it all too seriously.
Naturally, it’s bound to be more exciting the further you get in, this was just the opening chunk of the game after all. But the hands-on session did little to hook me in for the long run.
That’s not to criticize New World, in particular, but more the genre as a whole. If you weren’t a fan of this typical MMO grind before, this console port won’t do anything to change that.
Ultimately, New World: Aeternum is an intriguing concept. Bringing a once-popular PC MMO over to console is a bold decision and one that could bear fruit if done right. But based on our early hands-on experience, it seems unlikely the console market will be flocking to this particular port.
It could prove to be a fun timesink with friends, as all the fundamentals have been nailed down for a console audience. But on the whole, I don’t see this port being the spark to reignite the previously beloved MMO.
