And in a quest giver's monologue: 'Men queuing up to cross over, animals guarding the threshold, returning gods and demons. 'The city is a honeycomb of terror, each cell barely cognisant of the others' says one entry in your lorebook. The writing and dialogue are notably self-conscious. Most are provided by any number of mysterious citizens, who offer the most melodramatic of explanations for their needs. Some quests are doled out by objects you stumble across-a corpse sprawled across the road, or a computer terminal, perhaps. Even the so-called 'hollow earth' is real, serving as a central network of walkways that connect you to your various destinations, where police captains and academy administrators await delivery from their waking nightmares.

'Everything is real' a quest giver might tell you, and so it is: biblical plagues, haunted house horrors, and zombie invasions are threats-as well as symptoms of a greater power at play.

The Secret World doesn't whisk you away to a fantasy fairyland or a scorched sci-fi landscape, but occurs in an off-kilter version of our own planet. What makes this massively multiplayer game so unusual? To begin with, the setting is unlike any other MMOG. Now Playing: Video Review - The Secret World By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's

Secret world legends faction rank