Well, I’ve played it some more.

It hasn’t changed much, except that I’ve run into some horrible framerate issues. Really, really bad stuff. Very odd. It first happened when I went into the first town and I could hardly move around because I was getting about one screen update per second. And then back out in the field I had some issues – mainly when driving a long way very quickly. I think the game just can’t keep up with the amount of streaming it must be doing. Or something.

Also, the repair pads don’t seem to be working, which meant a lot of down time until I discovered I could get fully healed for two, er, whatever the currency they use is called.

All the quests are very standard “kill N of X” or “deliver O to Y” things. And I’ve done the main line of quests too quickly and am now on one where the enemies I’m meant to kill are impossible for me to hit. (I thought something was up when I got a quest reward that was two levels too high for me.) So I’m going back to find some subquests more suited to my level.

Something odd happened, though. I enjoyed myself. I killed a load of enemies. I had a very quick conversation with another player. I customised my car a bit. I used some skill points to get some healing and defensive abilities. I even got an apartment. And despite the lazy post-apocalyptic generic look of it, despite the frame rate issues, despite the non-working repair pads and despite the standard MMO combat I had a very good time.

I can’t explain it and I find it slightly worrying, because I feel like I should be slagging it off as lazy, uninspired rubbish. But I can’t help it. I enjoyed it.