Background story sets Neocron apart from other massively multiplayer games. In Neocron, German developer Reakktor has created a highly detailed world with a setting as complex as that of a hard-core science-fiction novel. Anyone who enjoys good storytelling will appreciate the quality of the game's writing, which is so impressive in spots that it even manages to rejuvenate the hackneyed postapocalyptic sci-fi setting featured in Neocron and countless other games before it. Unfortunately, the game's design doesn't keep pace with its interesting background story. Reakktor may have created a captivating world, but it hasn't fleshed out players' roles in it. While the promise of political intrigue among colorful factions in a futuristic setting will draw you into the game, Neocron's inability to make a significant impact with any of these things will push you away.

Creating a character in Neocron is a complicated prospect.

Neocron is set in the middle of the 28th century, approximately 600 years after a nuclear war between the Federation of the Free World and the Chinese Empire turned Earth into a wasteland. This premise is really nothing new, but Reakktor has done a great job of freshening up what seems like a tired concept. Neocron's story, which is related in the game's manual, is very well written and makes use of all the traditional postapocalyptic story elements: much of the world is dirty and run-down, mutant animals and insects can be found everywhere, and civilization is confined to closed cities like Neocron.

Neocron's character creation system is almost as complicated as the game's plot. Reakktor and publisher CDV are billing Neocron as an RPG-shooter hybrid with the depth of the former and the ease of use of the latter, but that isn't really the case. There are a lot of details to keep track of in Neocron. Although the game has just four character classes--private eye, spy, psi-monk, and gentank--your choices are complicated, since each class has multiple job options and must also affiliate itself with one of a dozen or so political factions. So even though it takes just a few minutes to decide whether you want to be a fighterlike gentank, wizardlike psi-monk, thieflike spy, or jack-of-all-trades private eye, it takes a lot longer to pick a job, sort through nearly 40 skills, and read over the detailed histories of the factions.

The number of different factions actually makes for an intricate web of alliances and rivalries. Neocron features a "sympathy point" system that governs how you can offer your services to different factions. You can work for your own faction and its closest allies at first, and later branch out to working for allies of allies when sympathy points accumulate. Unfortunately, understanding how all the groups relate to one another will require a lot of reading, both in the game and in the manual. You can of course skim over all this stuff and get started in a hurry, but you'll inevitably end up restarting after learning a few things the hard way.

Your base of operations is your apartment. There you can access lockers, restore your health, get resurrected with the genetic replicator, use the mobile goguardian storage system, or log on to the citycom computer terminal to accept missions, check e-mail, and so forth. All major game functions are performed in this one place, and the citycom lets you keep in touch with the Neocron community, so the system works very well. You'll even get a different apartment depending on your class and faction--if you join the Tsunami Syndicate, for example, you'll get a place in the seedy Pepper Park district, complete with neon signs outside your windows. No matter where you start, it's fairly easy to find your way around town. Although there are five big city districts, you can call up the nav-ray system at any time to provide yourself with a dotted line leading right to your destination. Also, a subway provides rapid transit to and from all the districts, and antigravity tubes transport you between the city's many levels.

Killing sewer vermin is about all you do in the early stages of Neocron.

After you've dedicated all this effort to figuring out the lay of the land, it's hard not to be disappointed when you start actually playing the game. No matter which character class, job, or faction you choose, you begin with only a few options--and the most obvious of these is performing missions, brief quests that resemble the missions of Anarchy Online. Unfortunately, there really aren't many interesting missions. At this point, the only ones available are "runners," though they might as well be called "dull errands." Most of them are combat-intensive expeditions in which you kill irradiated vermin of one sort or another for a reward of cash and experience. It's about as interesting as it sounds.

Fighting a battle in Neocron is like playing a first-person shooter, meaning that you select a weapon, point, and shoot at your enemies. The most challenging part of these adventures is staying awake, as most enemies do nothing but sit there and alternately absorb damage and dish it out. Many missions have been made artificially time-consuming with long respawn times--for instance, you may need to kill five spiders, but you'll find only a few at first, and after you kill them, you'll have to wait for at least 10 minutes for more to appear. Otherwise, Neocron's other missions involve delivering packages from one faction headquarters to another, taking up recycling, or working on research blueprints. These missions are even more boring than the bug hunts, although they do help you learn the layout of the city.