Despite its 'mixed' user rating on Steam, The First Descendant has racked up over 10 million players in its first week

(Image credit: Nexon)

In the 1980s, British pop star Shakin' Stevens had a string of hits with what was essentially an Elvis Presley impersonation, leading the Chart Music podcast to nickname any poor man's incarnation of another pop star the Shakin' version. Tori Amos, for instance, is Shakin' Kate Bush.

I told you that so I can tell you this: The First Descendant is Shakin' Destiny.

And yet, according to the official Twitter account, The First Descendant has been played by more than 10 million people in its first week. "We've reached 10 million Descendants in just 7 days!" they wrote. "Thank you all for your tremendous support and love. It means everything to us. We will do our best to bring you great experiences. Can't wait to continue this journey together!"

Meanwhile, on Steam, the new shlooter hasn't exactly been rolling around in positive reception. Some user reviews are frustrated by the endgame grind, saying, "They want players to feel frustrated and confused so that they are incentivized to pull out their wallets in order to improve their experience." Others complain about having to install two separate anti-cheat programs, or simply sum it up as, "When Warframe and Destiny 2 have a child together but they don't treat him/her nicely".

Our own Morgan Park gave The First Descendant a go and came away fairly unimpressed. "I'm no Destiny faithful," he wrote, "but the handful of times I've lost a week to exotic grinding and raid attempts, it was Bungie's innate talent for excellent first-person shooting and eye for the little things—the kickback of a hand cannon, feedback on weak spot kills, bullet impact sounds, the confident priming of a scout rifle bolt—that kept me around. On that front, The First Descendant simply doesn't have the juice."

Still, it is a free-to-play game full of shiny, blandly beautiful people in the style Korean developers seem to specialize in—if you played Blade & Soul, Lost Ark, or Stellar Blade you're familiar with the look I mean. If for some reason you want to try it yourself, it's available on Steam.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.