I remember simple fun. Simple fun was 4 player Bomberman chaos. It was fighting over rupees in Zelda Four Swords. Lately, simple fun has been Spiral Knights. Simple 4 player co-op MMO fun. ^^ Official Site is here. Trailer below.

Spiral Knights’ features read more like a blacklist than a whitelist. No classes. No races. No XP. No leveling up. No skill trees or skills… and you know what.. ..that’s just fine. ^^ I wasn’t playing Spiral Knights looking for a ‘deep meta-game’ that would ‘encourage efficient micro’. I wanted some good old sofa style co-op. Hell, you can play the whole game one-handed with just the mouse! I was eating ice-cream while playing most of the time (ice-cream yay! o^^o).

Essentially, run around dungeons together with your friends hackin’ n’ slashin’ your way through monsters while solving simple puzzles and dodging traps together. Combat roles are defined only by what gear you equip. Anyone can play anything provided they have the items (and there is only a sword or a gun so even here it’s bare bones roles). There is still the joy of collecting phat lootz and crafting new items. Gear does have a sort of ‘meta level’, but it maxes out at 10 and you get there so quickly that we rarely paid any attention to it. As a side note, the less griefing that is possible in an online game the better. While griefing in Four Swords was sometimes funny, it was largely due to you being able to lean over and punch the culprit right afterwards, then get on with defeating Ganon. In an online environment, removing any potential for griefing at all is paramount as it helps focus everyone on getting on with choppin’ monsters and collecting loot. Short of someone AFK’ing, Spiral Knights has this nailed.^^b

There is also a larger macro level of co-op taking place in Spiral Knights. All players on the server are ultimately working together to unlock new mine shafts (dungeons) allowing us all to delve deeper into the earth. Mine shafts are unlocked by players depositing minerals down them which are acquired from their adventures. The combination of minerals used to unlock shafts affects their alignment with certain para-elements, which ultimately alters their content. Realworld time-of-day also affects what dungeons you might encounter as you progress downward (the world beneath the surface is shifting), so there is a good chance of seeing a lot of variety provided you don’t have a 7:30 bedtime (next year ima stay up to 8:30! ><).

Must give a mention to the excellent business model they are running using a free ‘energy system’. All players are given a free amount of energy each day which will let you do 10 dungeons soaking roughly 2+ hours of your time. Crafting items also costs energy, but is directly proportional to the level of item being crafted.  Dying may also cost you a tiny bit if no teammates can rez you, but essentially the game can be played unhindered for a few hours a night (more than enough for me in my lifestyle). Anything beyond the relaxing few hours a day though (or higher level gameplay) will eventually tempt you to purchase energy in bulk. It is an elegant implementation of a system I have seen executed very poorly in the past (not to mention names, a spaceship game where a collected fuel resource was required to move and shoot.. but moving used fuel so, it was a loop of searching to collect fuel, to search, to collect fuel.. ..and never get to shoot anything ever -_-).

Honestly, Spiral Knights is probably a little too simple for my tastes. Even at late game, there appears to be little customisation and what I would call “stimulating challenge”. As a way to enjoy killing a few hours at night occasionally with friends though, it certainly ponied up. It makes me wonder at the direction a lot of online MMO’s seem to be taking lately. Maybe there is finally a realisation that the generation which birthed and played the graphical MMO genre as students, have no less passion to play them nowadays but simply less time.  Well, it did feel nice to have a sort of virtual sofa where we could collect and sit together again, running mindlessly around whacking anything that moved without fear of consequence. Simple free fun. o^^o

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. :(

So I stopped playing long enough to write something..  No, that’s a lie really. Server is down for maintenance. The game is League of Legends. It’s free. Website here. Quick trailer below.

I’m going to assume that you, Dear Reader, are an experienced DOTA player, so you won’t find this to be a review. Just some of my thoughts on the deeper gameplay and how I see it as an evolution of DOTA, not just a homage (tsk tsk HoN).

- Spend less time doing boring stuff and more time doing fun stuff. Regen times on HP & Mana feel higher and items buff for more too. Means less time waiting to fight and more time fighting. Most fights are met with full bars as well, allowing for pretty intense action. Unlimited free teleports home. Cool, now I don’t spend half the game jogging home and spending money on TP scrolls.

-Less stun and bash. It’s no fun not being in control of your char at anytime. Being on the receiving end of stuns was frustrating and there seems to be much less of these skills and more emphasis on slows, dots, etc. No-one likes clicking to move your character and he won’t walk, gameplay or not, it just feels like you’re stuck.

-Ability power. This is a good new design choice. No longer are INT heroes helpless vs DPS heroes who scale better late game. We used to actually yell across the LAN cafe, “if we haven’t won by lv15-ish we’re screwed!”. That’s no fun. Now abilities can scale and grow in power with items, just as physical dmg classes could before. That makes INT or ability focuesed heroes just as lethal now late game.

-Cut the fat. Same as grenades in TF2, LoL has gotten rid of denying creeps and towers. Yeah those of us that were good at it reaped the benefits but, it stops your teammates who aren’t as good getting denied against too. It balances out. Also no gold loss on death and a simpler fog-of-war. Less time fighting the engine, more time fighting the opposition.

-Hero playstyles. Far beyond just replicating DOTA’s skills, LoL has a lot of new funtionality in many heros which encourage a variety of playstyles to suit your mood. In fact, I would go as far as saying some of them encourage a whole new mini-game inside the greater scope. EG: Nasus is rewarded by last-hitting as many creeps as possible, Heimerdiner can build sentry’s to create new choke points and many heros have skills which encourage them to soak as much damage as possible in 5v5 fights but still be rewarded without necessarily hero killing.

-Less in-fighting. While it still goes on, a much better assist system means a better distribution of wealth per kill and less whinging about KS’s. Towers are now a flat 100g to everyone no matter where you were. Less jostling for tower kills, more pushing. The new Roshan is the same with team wide XP and gold.

-Accessibility. DOTA lives and dies by how many people are playing it. You need opponents. If everyone bails, the game can’t survive. The easier entry to the game is the more players we’ll have in circulation. The new shop system is great. Very helpful when purchasing (previously a big barrier to entry was memorising all the items). The ‘Death Recount’ explains exactly who killed you with what skills and damage percentages so you can learn and progress (TF2 killcam aww yeah), rather than just being pwned and not understanding why. Reconnecting to running games you dropped from? Hella yes. Lower system specs than other games (HoN, Demigod) mean more people can play it on their puta. Equals larger potential player base. War3 ran on anything, so heaps of people could join. Lol has good visual cues, what I need to be looking at pops, and still looks pretty. Oh, and free game. Yeah.

-Beyond 5v5. There seems to be a genuine interest to progress beyond the 5v5 format from these guys. They’re already experimenting with map layouts, income rates, building/creep strength etc. The 3v3 currently implemented has a much different feel with a shorter playtime (20mins) and more intense action. Serious attention is being paid to these new map designs as well. EG: in Twisted Treeline 3v3, tanks were proving too dominant, so the map was heavily tweaked to remedy this. Check out this design article.

I know I haven’t spoken about any of the persistence of the ‘Summoner’ persona, the runes, mastery trees, orsum looking shop and skins, BUT.. you can find out about all that in a regular review anyway. I’m glad that Guinsoo is doing well with this coz i really feel his design is showing through. Someone who wanted to break out of the War3 engine mould and evolve the genre`, not just copy it again.

Warrior Epic

After the initial tutorial, buying a hero and leveling it up, getting Prestige points to furthermore buy new characters has made me think of the DIABLO versions of the game.
Feels very much like Diablo, could be a new source for Diablo fans.

Each character has their own traits, skill points to pump and advantages and disadvantages.

Within the game, after the party and mission has been selected, if you are to die 3 times in a row, you become a spirit. Your spirit can be either revived in your Sanctuary at the Hall or bound to your equipment. This means.. if you die 3 times in a game, you loose the xp earned that means you are a bit QQ”.. have to spend some Prestige Points to revive it. During combat, you can use health pots and other pots, but to get these, you require to spend REAL CASH for these, which, i find it kinda ok. If you want to spend money to be the king, go for it.. but, for me.. i’d just play for its enjoyment factor.

There’s quite a few maps, missions, PVP, PVE and unfortunately, alot of noobs.
ie.. You are level one.. u dont run towards lvl 40 creeps thinking you can survive, just cause your lvl 40+ character is running you. Hahahaha..

After leveling a bit, found some interesting similarities..
High leveled pplz, running lowbies thru what seemed like a BAAL run.
From level 1, i got up to lvl 10 in 2 games.. .. wow..

You can sell your characters for ‘Gold’ (payed credits) so that you can buy items in the Item Shop.

It feels really nostalgic, hm.. diablo..

Yay, a MMO where I don’t need to sink evening after evening into ‘the grind’. The game is Lost Saga. I dive in. I level up. I get gear. I fight team-deathmatch with 15 other crazy cats. Delicious. \^^/ Quick trailer.

The game has a nice blend of genre flavours that have seen it hold my attention for 2 weeks now (doing well).

1. Dive in & dive out action. No queuing, no raid scheduling. I can just start flinging cake immediately. ^^b

2. Character persistence. My stable of little warriors earn XP, letting me augment their skills to my liking. Higher defense, quicker run speeds, shorter skill cooldowns. And there is a buffet of classes to choose from.

3. Variety of game modes. Going beyond the expected team-deathmatch or capture-the-flag model (which refreshingly isn’t present), a banquet of different game modes are available which encourage different types of gameplay. Area control, prisoner capture, king of the hill to name a few.

Also must give props to their tasty looking micro-transaction business model. Characters are ‘rented’ for an ongoing cost of in-game currency. This cost can of course be forgone permanently for a small real-world payment. All the expected fruit (gear chests, cosmetic additions) hangs within reach of anyone willing to spend a few dollars.

So these things all go a long way towards satiating my MMO appetite. I feel other factors are influencing my enjoyment of this game though. DOTA and Smash Bros. I can’t help but see similarities in the way gameplay is presented. Plenty of heroes to choose from (they’re aiming for over 100 eventually), each representing a different play style for your mood that evening. The ways in which different groups of these heroes can compliment each other’s skills and combos is vast.

Delicious deathmatch action ensues.. and damn I’m hungry. ><

Wow… its been some time since either Bre3ze or I have posted a FREE MMORPG review, so.. here I will start off the ball rolling again.

I’ve stumbled upon Scions of Fate.. which was said to be released February, however, last year, when both Bre3ze and I found it.. it was still being translated into english from either Korean or Japanese.

Being bored as per usual and having internet *snicker @ Bre3ze* .. i decide to have another look to see if it was working and could be joined.

So.. here it is.. i’ll give u screenies and other stuff once i’m in game.

From the website found here @ Scions of Fate it is meant to be a Casual Action MMORPG.. What is this ‘casual’ meaning? I hope to find out more in detail.

It even comes with a warning

Hahahaaha.. damn, so those long hours of playing games are more harmful to my body than smoking? really?? .. nah.. ask Maung if gaming for multiple hours are Harmful for the body?

I can tell u more after a few hours of gameplay.. or if this was like Xiah.. probably about 20 mins or less…

This has got to be the BEST bug fix in the whole game..

2. Fixed the swear filter which didn’t allow players to type “hello.”

“Hello… how are you?” => “#$%#$… how are you”

hmm.. great.. ..

So.. another game utilising Pet system.. hmm.. coool!!!
Also, it has what seems to be a HARD TO UNDERSTAND enchantment system, where you need not only 35K gold but, you might also need some Ruby’s and other small minerals and items to make your sword or equipment more powerful. Woo..

Woo.. seems like a nice game..
hmm.. screenies..

Its soo cute and bubbly.. but i couldn’t create FEMALE character.. and someone took MONKE.. o m f g .. who takes my nick? grr.. they should be shot.. or deleted..

Meh.. oh well.. have to think of something more “Original” then..

Thats me, just started.. looks cute and bubbly!!

This is after 1 hour of pure grinding and geting KS’ed like hell in there!! damn.. Final blow = get item if any drops.. grrr.. (I HATE KSer’s)

Oh, btw.. a HIGHBIE.. and his sweeeet TIGER ride.. wah.. archer .. soo geng lah!!

Its a very ASIAN feel to this game.. (i wonder why.. )
hmm.. music is good.. and gets a bit on your nerves after the intial 10 minutes of the game, but besides that.. Techno Music and this game.. is good to grind with!

Alright.. found a minor flaw in this game..

Well.. its not really a flaw.. its more of a Pay To REALLY PLAY kinda flaw..

hahaahaha.. upon reaching my lvl 10.. and wanting to get a PET to play with, i did the quests to get a pet.

However, looking at the server, there aren’t alot of people with pets and even less that are really high level. Then, upon reading the forums to find out how to catch and keep a pet, it says something along the lines of

You need about 5 Million Gold to buy a pet from a Player, then 500, 000gold more to buy a Blossom Charm or something from a NPC which will realign its loyalty towards the current player OR you can spend NCash of 15,000 or somewhere like that to buy a new pet from EGG form.

And reading more into this..
$1USD => 1,000 NCash

Damn, it was going to be a good game, till the point where items dont really drop much, Quests dont give you Gold, but gives u Bronze / Silver / Gold Chests, which contain RANDOM items upon opening it.

Grinding is one of the key ways to level up with only major quests at every 3 or 4 levels in between.

Hahahaaha.. it would seem that there are alot of level 1′s to level 30′s around, but only a few higher levels. It requires alot of grinding to gain levels and quests dont give you EXP, but gold and chest boxes or Items (depending on the quests and from whom)

Nevertheless, i will still continue to play this game, because of the cute and bubbly sequences and as a healer, I’m kinda pawning my health to monsters which i can heal back and heal other players.

You always need a healer in your party, right?

There’s something charming about the older style 8bit graphics. Their smooth untextured surfaces are non-threatening to me.. like a quiet, dark room… The game is Neverdaunt:8bit (N8 for short). Website is here. It still appears to be early in Beta. More like a tech demo at the moment, but the combination of graphics and mechanics bode well for something nice. ^^ Check out the current trailer.

That’s the word here.. “nice”.  You’ve built your blocky castle. I’ve got my blocky guitar. And we’re gonna rock out to the blocky stars in a low gravity kung-fu fight. The developer promises guns (projectile weapons), achievements and airships (aww yeah) for the future. It appears to be just the one indie developer at the moment cranking it all out, so he’s done well so far.

The game appears to have a heavy emphasis on player driven content creation. Oh noes.. but what if they make something that hurts my eyes?..

…inappropriate “pixel art”, and other nonsense are not censored in any way.

However, if someone or something offends you, players do have it within their power to reshape the world. If you see content that you would rather not see in game, use a bomb. If some player offends you with words, use a sword (or you could try using words, I’ve heard those are fairly powerful).

I think I just like that older feel. Not only the graphics, but the ‘wild west’ of the internet kinda feel. Un-moderated, blocky, broken and waiting to be tamed by.. well, me. o^^o

A very nicely done Diablo and WoW game.. comes.. a FREE game called Dungeon Runners

The voice within the game is exceptional, the movements are pretty simple, based off the WASD movement keys..

The action is very Diablo like, click click click etc..etc..

The questing seems rather easy.. just fight certain monsters at certain locations.. for rewards and exp and something new called Kings Gold. Where, upon further examination of the Kings Gold.. its like a token that can be traded for special items or upgrades.

After about 1hour of gameplay, learning the few basics.. the key strokes.. and realising that it doesn’t lag as bad as some games.. you need to RESET the instance if u want the kreeps to respawn. Also.. at the town, u have to click on join party, so other pplz in your party will be in the same realm as you. Very diablo like, where its one VS the creeps.. or .. pplz in a party VS creeps..

The inventory is a pain, very much like making things in D2 fit together.. so u can increase the capacity of your inventory.

It would prove to be better for you to PAY 2 PLAY.. for the extra items and minor server issue’s, however, i’ll be happy with the Free2Play version..

Hmm.. makes me wanna grab out my D2 and play that again!!
*~Yells~* Baal Run 021.. lets go!!! *~Yells~*

oh.. happy days!!

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Rusty Cog Archive: 30/08/07

Project Torque

Fishing Champion

Seems like we have been a little slow on posting new MMO’s out there.. so.. seeing as i’m out of w0w time.. i’m gonna elaborate on this a little more.

Been searching on ON RPG and found a little game that i would think that every japanese person out there will like.. a calm and relaxing game of Fishing Champion … ahahahahah

YEah.. fishing has never been more animated into cutsified kids catching bit walloping fishies..

This is me trying to Fish…

This is me trying to cook something to level up my professions.

~~~~~~

Dear Fishing Champ Community,

It is with great sadness that we are forced to announce the closure of Fishing Champ service and game servers on September 30th, 2008.
We would like to sincerely thank each and every one of you for both your interest and enthusiasm with the game over the years, and your support and time
turned this into an amazing player-community. You exceeded all of our expectations and were focused on actually helping one another play and enjoying
the game to the fullest. Until then, we appreciate everything you have done for and with us in Fishing Champ,
and wish to see you all again around GamesCampus in the years to come.

GamesCampus

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Rusty Cog Archive: 28/08/07