So here’s a few firsts for the cog. It’s a mobile card game.. Yeah… I know… “wtf happened” right?  -_-  Bear with me, there is a good reason. The game is called Urban Rivals. The official site is here. Trailer below (yes.. a trailer for a mobile card game…).

Wow.. I’m sure glad that trailer was packed with actual gameplay and didn’t bother with movie clips.. ^^; You can play Urban Rivals for FREE on either the PC version or the mobile version. From here on I’m going to need to assume you have a basic understanding of either the Pokemon TCG or Magic: The Gathering AND a basic understanding of poker.

Urban Rivals is a simple battling TCG where players pit 4 characters against each other in quick 1v1 matches. Cards are played face-up with fixed stats and abilities visible by both parties along with a secondary pooled-resource called “pillz” (like a mana pool) which is fixed per match. Pillz are used by players as a multiplier on their card’s power and are “bet” in whatever amounts players see fit.

So why did I start playing this? During my day I sometimes find pockets of free time (bwahaha sif). Pockets that are too short to play anything serious, but long enough to consider playing anything at all. In these pockets I can now simply log in, tend to my farm, plant a few more… yeah… see what nearly happened there!.. ^^; My point is that this exact “casual pocket” of time probably would have been filled with a “ville” game clone by many people until now. An Urban Rivals match takes about 45sec-2mins. That competes with any of your compulsory “ville” maintenance micro times. :D It’s short enough that I’ve played someone in the space of walking 1 block to lunch. 1 block lunch pwnage! o.O

There’s enough of a system in Urban Rivals for me to feel rewarded as a “good” player. It’s certainly nothing near the complexity of Magic, but I definitely feel it’s a rule environment where I am rewarded  for being “good” by excelling. No blue shells here.

The silver lining is in the betting of Pillz. Even when an opponent might have better cards than me, it is entirely possible to out-play them with better fakes or reads of his play. Limping in with stronger characters or reading a limp and counter-limping (also constructing your deck to enable these kinds of strategies) all exist over and above the cards. Many cards with tiny bonuses might appear particularly weak initially until reaching a level of play where you can see the use for +1 attack in a battle. Many battles are lost by simply being read too easily, having the opponent manage their Pillz resource better than you, to have them finally comeback and win in the late-game.

I enjoy 1v1. It makes for the purest form of PvP. Chess, Go, Tennis, whatever it is, it’s only you and your opponent. It is never anyone else’s fault when you win or lose. Knowing that I am battling a human opponent live somewhere in the world each game is very satisfying. There are usually about 2000 concurrent users online each time I’ve played and I’m yet to spend more than 10 seconds getting a match.

TCG collectibility. 700+ cards. Check. Cards can also gain XP and level up actually changing their appearance and stats, which is a nice advantage being purely online affords over physical cards. Some nice card artwork and evolving story. Check. Slick microtransaction model for selling booster packs. Check.

So there it is. In my little pockets I find time to battle people. They often have deeper rosters padded with real money. Their cards are stronger. But I can still win. ^^ Why? Because I don’t care how deep their pockets run, they can’t buy a good poker face. :)

All the cool kids use French screenshots. ^_-

Is it a coincidence that just as I’ve been getting back into bullet-hell shooting games again, I stumble upon a bullet-hell shooter MMORPG?.. :D

The game is Valkyrie Sky. Website is here. Trailer below.  Take a moment to watch the trailer and clean your brains off the wall.

Before you get too excited about this I should mention a disclaimer. This game is being cancelled on December 14th, 2010 (the Japanese version has already been cancelled and not sure about the Korean version yet). I will cry in the fetal position later, but for now, the gameplay!

Q: “What score would you give this game?”

A: “Yes!”

Touhou Project (or insert your favourite Cave shooting game here) + WoW. That about sums it up. Levelling up, finding material drops, crafting gear, collecting phat lootz, fishing, cooking.. You’re basically playing WOW in between missions, then hitting up some crazy Espgaluda shooting action as the core gameplay instead of killing murlocs.

Was most impressed with how introducing classes to a bullet-hell shooter enriched the experience, and didn’t feel shoe-horned. It’s not simply, “you do more damage with your chain lightning than I did with my +1 sling”. While gear & stat related damage, crits and class skills are already interesting additions, it was how each individual class demanded a different playstyle from the player that I found enchanting. Mage typecasts have great AOE for cleaning up the small stuff, warriors actually have to weave patterns to engage in melee and hunters do high DPS to single targets (good for boss fights). This encourages good synergy when raiding in a party.

Wait.. raiding?.. wtf?! I’m raiding in a bullet-hell shooter?! Yep, up to 4 people in 1 stage battling their way to the boss for ‘phat loot dropz’. Obviously party class balance is important. I was also concerned about losing sight of  my character amongst party members, but an elegant solution is in place for this. When layering over the top of each other, all party members dissapear except for their weapon (staff, sword, bow) leaving my character clearly as the only visible one left. Playing a bullet-hell shooter with more than 2 people, (that has had effort go into balancing and role creation) was really a unique experience. It’s like “raidin’ in Raiden”. Yeah.. I went there.

PvP looks fairly unique as well. Both of you are essentially bosses flinging spectacular attacks at each other in what usually pans out as an epic Boss vs Boss battle. Vid below has a nice example of PvP with a Swordsman vs Summoner. Skip to 1:55 if you want to see the battle fairly heated up.

I can’t help but feel RPG’s have all but moved on from their classic menu-driven models now. Taking Final Fantasy as a model example of the past, nowadays you can do almost anything BUT select Magic->Firaga from a menu to enjoy the RPG experience. Shooting stuff in Mass Effect or Fallout, matching gems in Puzzle Quest or weaving in a bullet-hell shooter blends the RPG genre with almost anything now. That input for the ‘combat aspect’ has been revealed to be arbitrary. It’s that experience of.. well, ‘gaining experience’ and story progression which makes RPGs fun. Levelling, crafting, getting new gear, defeating the villian… who cares what my method of input is for doing these things anymore. I mean, at least I’m not just selecting skills from some sort of drop down menu and…. oh…. ^^;

And now the sadness. :( A game aiming at such a niche market crossover as “bullet-hell shooter + MMORPG + PC” clearly needs to have an equally modest scope for its projected player base. I don’t believe you can spend big budget MMORPG dollars on this and expect a return, no matter how good the game is. This looks like a pretty well funded game..  can almost feel a ‘suit’ somewhere in the background tapping their fingers and staring at their watch saying, “Well, we spent $10mil on this, where’s our 100,000 players?” Need to weigh the cost of the game against it’s potential appeal. From what I understand, the stamina system also drove away many players (when you lose stamina you can’t do missions anymore. Must grind fishing/cooking just to run missions else buy Premium food). I am stunned that a game which would already face problems with building initial interest would choose to exacerbate the problem with a stamina system as their main revenue model within their micro-transactions.

While I don’t know the financial specifics, I would suspect that less staff making this with no 3D world, just a lobby screen to enter missions/PvP & manage crafting/gear funded on 50% of the budget might still be running their servers (would be happy for anyone to post more information in the comments. very interested as to what happened.).. It’s a shame, as the core gameplay is really good fun. >_<

Gaze upon what was. :(

Scrolling is free.. or so that’s what they tell me. Sif..

SIF was made in 48 hours for the 2010 Global Gamejam using the Construct engine. Our page made during the Gamejam can be seen here. Gameplay was designed to be punchy and visually dynamic. We wanted it to be fun in the first 15 seconds (it was a gamejam after all. Lots of games to get through). The secret topic of 2010 Global Gamejam was ‘deception’. Click the link below to play from browser and enjoy. ^^

SIF: Scrolling Is Free

“Run and glide through the bamboo forests of this Asian inspired ink scroll. Defy gravity and don’t believe everything your eyes tell you..”

-Arrow keys to run.

-SPACE to jump.

SIF features:

-fast-paced platformer fun

-gravity inverting

-interactive tutorials

-checkpoints

-off screen indicator

-death markers

-score (speed based)

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Click to play

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Angels Online

From the producers that brought us Myth Wars, proudly presents Angels Online

This seems to be a fun, grinding game. The fun factor is all about the numbers (which, as i am concerned, i aint having fun)

I would leave my computer connected on just farm fishes or farm meat for my Chef professions.

ahahaahah

This is how it looks @ further Lvls..

But, as of right now, I look like this.

I’m inside a bucket / barrel and I have an arm that comes out and hits the monsters… w00t!

ahahahha…
But, imo, this feels like a heavily inclined grinding game.

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Rusty Cog Archive: 25/01/08

ARAD (Dungeon Fighter) is a side scrolling Action MMORPG.. it would seem that most common MMO’s are 3D.. but this game gives a whole new meaning to Side Action (Final Fury type) games a new meaning.
Originally, this game was called DnF, Dungeon Fighter Japan : Arad Senki.

So.. people probably refer to it as ARAD.

Here are some examples of this game.

I’m currently reading some forums, it would seem that more English Speaking players are on other servers..
As taken from this ONRPG forums.. most English Speaking Players (ESP) are found

Arad Senki (Dungeon and Fighters Japan)
Server: Diregie
Channel: 01 Elvengard

hmm.. i might have to take the move to there..

This is still pretty much my favourite COMBO HORE movie.

thanxs again to Br33ze for finding the related articles for easier reading in English.
Dungeon Fighter Quick Help-me @ Wikipedia.org

here are some pics Br33ze and I have been doing since the start of this ‘adventure’..
I was playing a mage.. but.. after seeing the ‘sick’ combo’s done in the last Clip.. i’m gonna go for a gunner now!!

Ok, the new game for trial time is what we have called ‘syntax error’.. lol..

no, only i get syntax error.. but.. the game is called “Tales Weaver”..

After watching a TV commercial, in Japan by Br33ze, he told me of a new kool game thats been out of some time.. (wow.. i’m soo contradicting myself) .. but back to the ball …

“Tales Weaver (Japanese/Korean Only)”

Hmm.. there are many forums out there trying to help the Non JP or Korean languaged people to understand this game to the full content.

However, only Br33ze has played it, and he’s not telling me much, cause.. i want to Experience it the Monke way.. (which will be uber nub) .. lol..

A Very Ragnarok feel to this game.. judging from the Screenshots….

It does posses an Unique battle system, where Linking of different Skills are supposibly more Rewarding for both the Game and the User Views.
There are quests for both the Character and Normal Plots.. which indicates to me that u will learn from both the character and how the world moves around you.. but.. i have to LvL up my Japanese ofcourse to fully understand and appreciate this beautiful game..

My Minor warning is .. that.. well.. the D/L is about 1.41gbs.. which means 400mbs of that is for Movies and Sound files (beautiful background music)

Hmm.. Kut-si-fied attacking creatures, backgrounds, damn.. my CPU could choke a bit during the first few minutes of every new map.. lol

Well.. at least its good.. i dont need to be uber Jap to play this because theres an english translation to the site called: Talesweaver.org

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Rusty Cog Archive: 30/11/06

Xp, more Xp…. and then some.

Myth Wars reminds us that all good munchkins do have somewhere to go… which keeps them out of our games. ^_^

Still, its got good potential for a BETA. Using beautifully hand-drawn backgrounds with animated sprites over the top. Battles are done the old Final Fantasy style, running around until you get randomly drawn in, and even use a similar ATB battle system. Plethora of skills, stats, numbers, pets, and who-knows-what-else. @_@

A good option for people on lower spec comps. Not so graphic intensive, and given that battles aren’t in real time, a slower connection won’t kill you.

Go on.. join the dark side. The dark… number crunching… side. (-_-)

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Rusty Cog Archive: 12/10/06