I have long been a fan of the work that Trion Studios has done, this going back to when they first released Rift. They finally released the news of Defiance, both game and show and it seems to have been received very well so far.  It was the top viewed show on SyFy for it's pilot episode and the game has no shortage of players. All though I thought it was meant to be cross platform, I have yet to see anything like that in the game, as I have friends on PS3 and Xbox that play currently.

For character creation you basically get a pick from two races, you have everyone's favorite basic race for just about every MMO or game, the Human race, because who doesn't want to play as the same race they get to be in reality, and of course the Irathient, a species of alien that has come to earth to seek a new beginning.  This is really just for appearance, there are no special benefits to picking one race over the other like Warcraft or Aion might, no special starting area or anything, just your basic looks.

 The game lets you pick a class, though it has little to do with anything, since it's really just letting you have a starting clothing option and what sort of gun you might start with.  Example if you pick the "Outlaw" you will start with a pistol and a shotgun, but if you pick an "Engineer" you start with a pistol and a light machine gun.  It's all just a matter of play style and what sort of gear you want to begin with. Clothing options and Weapon options will come along later in the game or you can spend real world  money and gear up in different ways.

You start off with one of four Ego powers, Blur (Which lets you run 50% faster and hit harder with melee), Cloak (Just like it sounds, you hide yourself from sight for 15 seconds), Overload (Increases your gun damage) and Decoy (Which sends out a fake image of yourself to distract the enemies).  From here you gain points that you can spend, just like in any rpg where you level up, and increase certain abilities and make your Ego ability stronger.  Ego perks tend to cover different weapon types, melee abilities, how long or strong your Ego is and ammo related perks also. Personally being a sneak in most games, I went with the Cloak Ego ability, and tried to spend points to increase my damage at long range with my sniper rifle, followed with some perks for SMG's, and Pistols for cloaking at close range.

The game from there is really about preference as you adventure through the world, you'll find world events called "Arkfalls" where you might come across fifty other players already attacking a horde of Hellbugs, or you could somehow be the first there and you are all alone against a gang of Mutant Riflemen.  But never fear, no matter how soon you get to an Arkfall, other players will soon swarm to the location to earn their own share of the loot. Occasionally you'll even come across characters that are in the T.V. show which makes it fairly interesting during each weekly update.  So in the end, the game is very enjoyable to pick up and play for an hour or even seven depending on how much real life agro you have and is  always better played it with friends