Fallen Earth, where did you come from? I am pretty plugged into the grapevine through social networks and Internet friendships, but I must have missed your development cycle. I even played you in beta, but wasn't that impressed. But now... well, now is a different time altogether. So, Fallen Earth, let's look at how you play and how accessible you are.

To start, Fallen Earth is based in a post-apocalyptic future USA, and you start somewhere in the Grand Canyon region of the country. You know what that means: lot's of sand and barren country that is occasionally peppered by a broken-down car or shantytown. Think Mad Max, except less gritty and set in the grand ole' US. During the tutorial, you learn about cloning, combat, some crafting and how to chop some one's head with an axe. Basic post-apocalyptic stuff. I don't like to spoil any of the story within my reviews, but needless to say you won't be too surprised by the story.

Graphically the game is a little bland starting out. Later in the game, you will see the landscape become more lush and pretty, but for the first 5-10 levels, you will get very used to the color tan.

The character models are a little odd looking, but actually move quite nicely. In fact, some of the emotes and animations are the most varied and smooth I have seen in MMOs , and I can see now that the fact that the engine runs pretty lightly is only a good thing, allowing for more people to play this game on different strength PC's.

There is some nice voice acting from the NPCs, but only in the form of greeting and smirking jokes. It is actually quite nice to hear quality over the usual lame voice-acted accents that are featured in so many fantasy games, and to hear and read words that are "modern."

Even the curse-words are a good fit, and actually work well with the setting. Role-play is a snap and never feels clunky or silly, thanks to the "slightly futuristic USA" feel. Even the NPCs make pop-culture references, but it never feels as out of place as it does in a fantasy MMO.

Nevertheless, the game absolutely shines when it comes to crafting and leveling.

Crafting involves learning a recipe through a recipe "book", going out into the wasteland and gaining the "ingredients" in many different ways (many of them violent) and assembling the item. 95% of the items in game can be crafted by the player. That means that if you can see it, it can probably be crafted.

For example, I have been learning to craft items from the "Nature" tree, which means that I am making better and better horses to ride. The only part that I had to buy was an "untrained stallion" from the NPC vendor. The rest of it was pulled off strange plants, dead bodies and piles of junk. Once I hit the button to start crafting, the item is crafted in a window, even if I am OFFLINE. That means that you can spend an entire play session by finding items, only to log out while all the items are being made into wonderful gear, weapons, food and other things. It is as though they took EVE Online and crossed it with common MMO crafting, then added 18 tons of variety.

As you successfully craft, or as you successfully do pretty much anything, you gain experience, which eventually hands you more Ability Points to spend on any number of skills or stats.

If you want to increase your overall trade skills, you can increase a stat like Intelligence. You can raise other stats to help you carry more weight, or to hit harder. However, once you raise those basic stats, you can further raise specific abilities like "Rifle" or "Scavenging." You can pull down a sort of template from a drop down menu and it gives you an idea of where to put your points, but otherwise you do exactly what you want.

If you want to learn how to make your own bullets, you can. If you want to learn how to heal yourself and others, you can. The only concern is that eventually you will run out of ability points, so you will need to consider the future. Or not, if you are like me, and just go for whatever sounds fun.

The game allows you to do what you want and to craft what you want, but that is of some concern to me. In Ryzom, you had similar abilities to be very self-reliant, and that seemed to cause not only a weak market but also a weak virtual dollar. Money meant nothing, being that the player could easily craft everything they needed instead of having to go to other players for something they cannot make.

The game might make up for this, though, through its sheer volume of items that can be made and with the importance of "saving" ability points for later use or of specializing. In other words, players might not want to learn that basic horse recipe and would rather buy it from you. Of course, they could just want to be lazy.

I visited the auction house and was surprised to find that some of the more common items in my backpack were not as common to someone else. I sold them for a good profit and went off to find more. So far, it seems like the developers have done a good job of making sure that there is some interdependency among crafting specializations. That wool I sold might have been a component in someone else’s recipe that had nothing to do with the nature skill I needed to collect it. I am excited to investigate.

Sounds are nice, but sparse like the landscape. I am curious to see if the music opens up as the scenery does. A few nights ago, I found my way into a town that had a tree in the middle of town. A tree. I had never been so excited to see a tree, with leaves on it and everything. I have heard of entire forests awaiting me in later areas.

Now, having said all this (and there is much more to cover, but a novel isn't needed here) we need to look at how accessible the game might be for a disabled player. This is the tricky part, being that Fallen Earth is more of a FPS style game rather than your standard click-hit skill hotkey-loot type of MMO game-play. I opened up the hotkey settings and was happy to see that almost everything in the game is changeable among keys, as well as the UI being very flexible, re-sizable and color-changeable.

Would a player with one hand have an issue playing this game? Probably.

The only method I could see that would help players with mobility issues would be to hot key the attack button onto a keyboard key, equipping a melee weapon and chopping away at monsters. After all, many non-disabled players like my wife did just that. The game isn't so precise that smacking a monster slightly off to the left will make much of a difference, as long as you hit the thing.

But moving, attacking and the combination of those might be too much for players with much mobility issues. And the only way to move is to use the arrow keys or WASD, just like a first-person shooter.

This is very unfortunate, being that this game is so good. The development team has thought of so much, it is disheartening to see that they did not consider disabled players in that way.

Colorblind players should have no issues, being that maps and colors should be adequately adjustable. Deaf or hard of hearing should have no issues, either. The quests are in text form and easy to access and organize.

Overall, Fallen Earth is about as accessible as...well, as a combination of an MMO and a FPS. You do have choices, though, and I would bet that with a few adjustments the game could be played by almost anyone. Combat might be tricky, but luckily, this game can be played and explored without combat at all.

This is a game about choices. It is one of the first games that I have come across that says that combat is not the only way to go. In fact, crafting might be the star of the game. It is worth a look at, and it has slightly dated graphics to help older PC's run the game easily.

If you are after an immersive game experience, look no further. While there are some glaring shortcomings in the immersion department, like the fact that you cannot swim, the game makes up for it by having more systems that add more realism to the game than any other game I have come across.

The emote system is as deep as The Matrix Online, complete with emotional states. You can point in directions, dance a number of dances, or even travel at three different speeds: run, jog, walk.

Icarus Studios seems to want to give you so many ways to feel at home that it's easy to lose yourself. With the recent "social patch," players will even be able to hang out in camps they make themselves, complete with an NPC that comes to you for bartering. All this adds up to a game that greatly makes up for its lack of state-of-the-art graphics with an amazing array of items to craft, many systems for the role-player in all of us, and combat that is unique among most MMO's.

Now, let's see if we can get the developers to use some of that ingenuity to help with some level of accessibility.