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. ^_-

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

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. ><

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!!