Lord MMO's Online Game Ratings

I'M VIRAL!

2011-12-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

with new tech comes a new way to review. Visit my Youtube channel to see live in voice reviews of my new games. Satisfaction Guaranteed.

A Savage Return

2011-11-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

With the inability to play Argo, Living After War still in closed beta, and lacking the ability (not to mention the desire) to play Fantasy Earth, I turned to Savage 2 – A Tortured Soul to satisfy my fix for a good MMO RTS hybrid.

For those of you that don’t know what an RTS hybrid is it’s a type of action game where either everyone or a single person can build structures to aid and support his team or fum buck them more quickly if he feels like griefing. Imagine you’re playing Age of Empires with your friends (I’m assuming you have some cause I’m a nice guy like that) except now picture that only one of you is actually playing and everyone else is scampering around as the ‘units’ that one person would normally be pouring out of the barracks, and that’s Savage in a nutshell.

When you enter the game you have a choice of either siding with steam punk like humans or (brace yourself for this) The Horde, a combination of animalistic like creatures ranging from wolves to bats to what I assume to be trolls. The two of them are in an epic resource struggle which takes place in the lands of (again brace yourself) NewEarth. Apparently the guy at the patent office went out clubbing that night and Savage just assumed “Well if here’s not here I guess the answer is yes!”

Aside from being a MMO version of Warcraft (because everyone knows that hasn’t been done before), Savage 2 –ATS has another major issue. It sells itself under the promise of being a First Person Shooter MMO, and yet the first thing you’re told when you enter the tutorial is “Don’t rely on your ranged weapons.” Does this make any since at all? It’s like if an MMORPG tutorial said “Whatever you do, don’t complete any quests.” Ranged weaponry is frowned upon at every turn. There’s no stat that supports it, and there is only 1 item that increases your ranged damage by a rather pathetic amount. It makes me wonder why they made The Horde (cough) put such a heavy reliance on squishy casters who are better off at range but are expected to fight in melee none the less.

As far as stat points go there’s no point in leveling anything besides Strength (which ups your MELEE damage) and endurance (Which ups health regen and reduces damage by a small amount) mana regen and stamina regen will both be more than covered by the items you buy and find on the field. The DoTA style of doing things which to me sort of comes off as lazy in any other form of MMO.

Yet for all its faults and issues I can’t hate the game. The RTS Hybrid is a unique miracle of gaming which honestly I think is way too few and far too far between, and I can honestly see myself playing it for quite some time. At least until I get enough money to afford Nuclear Dawn.

Savage 2- A Tortured Soul scores 6 out of 10

Another review sponsored in part by the “We want to be Blizzard” Corporation. Thank you for your funding.

A Call To Champions

2011-10-25T09:10:00.001-07:00

I invite the players of League of Legends to play a little drinking game for me. Take a shot every time Phreak says “tons of damage” in his spotlight….

What’s that? Drunk already after one spotlight? Well go and sober up and come back and I’ll tell you about a REAL MMO

Say hello to Champions Online, the most amazing super hero MMO ever made. Yes I have played and taken into account City of Heroes and that bastard child of a comic book and game known as DCU Online, and Champions Online is just all around better.

Mind you no game is without its flaws, CO may be free to play, but lots of good stuff you have to pay for, I had to take a week off of the game while I waited for the points to buy the class I wanted to play, but I can’t really blame the game for PayPal’s fault. None the less, having to pay for the good stuff is a No No for games no matter how good they are. On the upside, CO features an extremely lavish character customization builder. Even if you have to buy some of the REALLY good stuff, there are still enough options to build EVERY champion in League of Legends and still have enough left over to build half of Heroes of Newearth. The possibilities are endless and limited to only your imagination; needless to say with so many unoriginal people in the world you will see superman, batman, and everyone else from every super hero cartoon ever made.

Now then onto the plot; the tutorial sets you in a city under attack by evil alien invaders, this runs you through all the controls as well as the play styles before setting you into the games massive, unrestricted, invisible wall-less environment filled to the brim with your typical story quests which can unfortunately get kinda grindy… to party made instances and even (dare I say) “dynamic events” which put un partied teams of heroes together to tangle against rioters, jailbreaks, and everything else you can think of. They’re not as dynamic as what Guild Wars 2 has in mind, mainly because there’s no since of failure if you can’t complete an objective, partially due to the fact that most of them are UNFAILABLE. They could have done much more with that but I’m still not complaining because it was a lot of fun. I found myself playing each instance many times over and it never got boring.

If I had any advice it’s the obvious ones from a gamer point of view. Make at least every class available, cause paying for everything else is actually smart. Cosmetics is the quickest (and best) way to make money with a game, but limiting our creativity defeats the lavish customization options, and also give the dynamic events a sense of realism. If we fail to stop the jailbreaks make prisoners flood the streets and terrorize the city’s inhabitants. Give us a sense that what we’re doing matters for a reason other than we get extra loot and experience points.

I give Champions Online an 8 out of 10 I can’t wait to see new heroes in the lands of
Meleenium City.

Born of A Different Bloodline

2011-10-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

It seems until Guild Wars 2 comes out I’m doomed to continue to play through the demos that at this point I’m sure big brand developers are releasing for the sole purpose of spitting on my attempts to review games. Luckily one development team has seen the light and it’s their game I am going to review!

This was originally suppose to be a review of Age of Conan online, but honestly if you want a review for that go watch Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation review cause my opinions on the game are no different. (I’ll even leave the link to the video for you at the bottom of this review to entice you to read it. [To those of you looking at your scroll down bar at this moment turn around because I’m right behind you and I’m holding a knife]) If you just fell for the above statement then put down Silent Hill 2 [that means you Yahtzee!] and check out this game: Bloodline Champions.

BLC is a MOBA MMO similar to the DoTAs like League of [blaaaaahhh]. Think DoTA without the Minions, because that’s exactly what it is. In this game instead of controlling a champion you pick a “bloodline” to represent your fighting style. Bloodlines can overlap in an arena unlike the Heroes and Champions of DoTAs and they all have similar play styles only tweaked a bit so that they vary from blood line to blood line. Each blood line has a “spam” skill, a “heavy hit” skill, a “chase/escape” skill, and a specific condition depending on the play style. The fire bloodlines do DoT Ignite damage while the warlock champs siphon health and cause fear.

Despite the massive array of bloodlines they are all flawlessly balanced a word that is apparently is on RIOT Game’s naughty list since a flawlessly balanced game is something they seem to be almost intentionally avoiding. You can buy champs with ingame cash, or with real life money (which defiantly takes a lot less time) and you can also play 5 bloodlines free each week. Like HoN and LoL BLC has costumes for sale for real money. However unlike HoN and LoL you can buy not only skins for your bloodline, but also skins for your weapon. You can ever buy a gender swap to play as male versions of female champs and vice versa.

As I constantly stress in my action MMO reviews this is something that is LONG OVERDUE. I honestly felt like I was playing myself in the game and that says A LOT for a MOBA whose set ups are typically 100% linear short of a few minor cosmetic upgrades.

Bloodline Champions is AMAZING, it bets LoL, HoN, RoT, I even dare to say it will be better than DoTA2, because quite frankly it is completely unique and endless hours of fun, which is more than I can say for its “Ancient” counterparts.

Bloodline Champions scores an 8 out of 10 if you’re into MOBAs then add this to your collection ASAP cause it’s nothing short of spectacular.

(also before I forget here’s Yahtzee’s Age of Conan Review: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan)

I Feel A Little Rusty After This One

2011-09-21T07:04:00.001-07:00

I was really looking forward to Rusty Hearts, mainly because the trailer made it look so good I swear I was watching an Anime. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the trailer was actually almost completely in game content. Let’s get one thing straight right now, Rusty Hearts is NOT a game, it is an Interactive Anime, and worst of all it’s a Bad Anime. Bad Animes have clearly defined heroes, clearly defined villains, no anti-heroes, no changes of heart, and no story driving anybody forward. The heroes go one pointless adventure after pointless adventure and it all drags out a lot longer than it should. Like Inuyasha or Trinity Blood.

Returning to the point I made earlier in that paragraph, Rusty Hearts is not a game and is by no means a RPG, but I guess if I absolutely HAVE to give it a game label it’s an Action slice-em-up MMO and I use the term “MMO” lightly cause I hardly saw any other people while I played it. There is no customization at all; you are playing premade character and the game reminds you of this every time it can with bad unskipable cutsceenes and NPC conversations that are ridiculously linear and throw our your characters name (the name of the hero not your in game name) at every turn. The characters you can choose from are a male vampire, a male werewolf, a female witch and a school girl with a large pair of breasts and a lead fetish. You know, the Full Metal Panic version of school girls. Seriously how hard is it to make an Action MMO with customizable features? At the very least you could slap on a Male of Female option to the game, getting rid of gender lock alone would make the games just so much more amazing to play.

If there’s anything good to say about this game it’s that the graphics are alright, but this is an anime game so that’s to be expected. All the areas are dark and dreary proudly showing off the depressing 'Castlevania' setting of the world. The armor you find does nothing more than boost your stats, they don’t want you messing up the characters they worked so hard to make; heaven forbid they look any different for when Perfect World actually tries to make an Anime out of this like they should have in the first place. The weapons and skill animations look cool, but that's really not saying much. Every Hack-N-Slash "MMO" goes out of their way to make the skills as unnecessarily lavish as possible in hopes that the amazing combat alone will be enough to make us forgive and forget the fact that we're not really playing as ourselves, but hey newsflash that doesn't even come close to helping action MMOs get out of the very VERY deep rut they have dug themselves into.

I find it increasingly difficult to find mean things to say about Perfect World seeing as this is the same company that showed me the absolutely amazing WoW-Killer that was Forsaken World, but looking back I probably shouldn’t have started with that game as it forever set PWE’s bar just a little too high. Truly Forsaken World was their crowning achievement and starting with that I feel I’ve skipped the main course only to start with the dessert made by the Ace of Cakes; only to go back to find that the main course was prepared days before by the hotel staff and was simply reheated for today’s meal.

Anyway long story short, Rusty Hearts scores a 1 out of 10 It’s bad, don’t bother, find something else, yada-yada-yada.

An Ever Expanding Universe

2011-09-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

Big name companies like Blizzard seem to be in favor of Demos as of late. It’s almost like an apology letter to the people out there who are true legit gamers and not cultists, or perhaps it’s a brainwashing tactic in an attempt to real in more devout followers and earn more cash. But then again, I got to play World of Warcraft (the real one) and Lego Universe a bit and wanted to join neither so I guess either option 2 is not the case or they simply have no control over my strong anti-cultists mindset.

Any way I played WoW for all of a day which is hardly enough to give it a good review seeing as how big it is so here’s Lego Universe a game I played for three days.

(There's always something happening around you, even if you don't know it)

Make no mistake Lego Universe is fun; it is really, really, REALLY fun. However as long as it is P2P it will never be a legitimate MMO in my eyes. The story of LU is that an evil wizard saught to control creation through the use of a powerful magic that brought one's imagination to life. However this only corrupted the magic and as a result the "maelstrom" was created. A powerful force that is constantly churning out bad guys through the use of corrupted LEGOs. The whole experience is best described as an MMO version of Lego Star Wars, only with a significantly larger amount of customization. That’s one of the main things I am truly happy about when it comes to LU. The people demanded customization and LEGO more than delivered. A lot of the weapons and armor you find all do the same things stat wise so both weapon and armor choice is cosmetic and centered almost entirely on personal taste. There are no classes but you’re certainly welcome to favor knight in shining armor over sorcerer or techy, or better yet be a combination of all three. I was running around with a scythe and an owl on my shoulder and frankly I didn’t know how my outfit would look any more badass. Unless I found the LEGO equivalent to the Lich King’s armor.

There are no stats in game, but there are three bars you should constantly keep an eye on. Your Health, your Armor (gained from clothes and some weapons) and your Imagination.

Imagination is what you use to build things in the world. Ironically your ability to create comes solely from your ability to destroy as imagination is primarily filled by breaking stuff. It’s a nice concept and definitely keeps the flow going in a LEGO MMO which would quickly lose interest if one person built everything while you were asleep, and you logged on the next day to find all the puzzles solved for you and most of the quests impossible to finish.

This game also has a really weird name mechanic. If you’re a member you can input your name like any standard MMO, but if you’re F2P you make a name from a set of pre-selected adjectives. Normally this would be a middle finger from the game and would turn me off right there, but they have every adjective in the dictionary and the monkey dictionary to use which can make for some truly awesome names. I wasn’t complaining in the least as I walked around with the super awesome username “DarkNexusGoul.”(NOTE: As you’ve probably noticed by now I don’t make a habit of revealing my usernames, figured I’d make an exception since the name was premade…and awesome.)

LEGO Universe scores a 5 out of 10 the score having obviously been kicked down a bunch of points as I was only able to play a demo of it. Again, if the game was F2P, as it should be, it would have a MUCH higher score.

Ye Shall Be Vindicated

2011-09-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Modern day Action Arcade MMOs always seem to have these three constant things in common with themselves that always seems to (more or less) ruin them:

1) Gender Locked Classes

2)Lack of A Story

-and-

3) A reason to kill that always seems to be for a purpose much much higher than it should be.

Lately I’ve been playing the Action MMO Vindictus, and while it unfortunately has the first problem, problems 2 and 3 are blown clean out of the park. Vindictus has an amazing story that wraps around humanities desperate struggle for survival. There’s no IMMEDIATE reason to kill besides simple knowledge that it’s “kill or be killed.” The land of Vindictus is actually the same land as the popular MMO Mobinogi. It tells a tale of the dark horrific times before the ‘peaceful’ times of Mobinogi, back when humans were more masculine and blood wasn’t frowned upon.

Both the story and the graphics are absolutely wonderful however there is absolutely no immersion.

Nexon made the mistake of giving each character an entire back story as well as dictating their personalities. This takes away any creativity of the game and makes me feel like I’m simply controlling a character and not playing as myself. Vindictus seems like it’s going out of its way to be single player and honestly it’s not like other MMO arcade games where you have no problem finding groups and hanging out online. Vindictus is better played either by yourself or with friends that are actually in the same room as you because finding a group is impossible.

That aside the combat in this game is the best I’ve ever seen in ANY action MMO. The maps are littered with debris and as you fight with your enemy the world around you seemingly crumbles. Almost anything you find can be used as a weapon, ranging from pots and pans to the enemies corpses. Realistically depending on what character you choose you can pick up certain things. The agility soldier can only pick up light things and a few heavy things that will constantly drain his stamina till he berids of them, while the tank can practically pick up trees and beat people with them. The combat is actually quite realistic for an Action fighter and the use of environmental weapons furthers the sense of hopeless desperation the humans have in their fights. When you’ve beaten your way past endless hordes of enemies only to get to the boss, your character covered in blood and all his/her armor broken and his/her weapon(s) chipped and dulled, it’s comforting to know that for the crafty and the cunning a weapon is always right around the corner.

It’s got a nice weapon and armor creation system and unlike most other games it actually makes since. While you can buy the most vital parts of weapons and armor from shops like the Iron Ore, you get everything else from your enemies. Normally that translates to grinding, but it really only takes one or two runs through a dungeon to find the materials you need. If a replay is needed, you'll have no problem doing it as each map you play on is unique and has its own replay value. Unlike other games where you're sent to collect items for weapons and armor simply because the craftsman is to lazy to do so himself, the human race’s resources are extremely scarce, thus the need to collect items off of monsters (IE the "Farming" aspect of the game) is sewn right into the plot. I mean yeah there’s a marketplace but that’s just no fun, and from personal experience it will sometimes screw you as you can only equip certain equipment before becoming encumbered reducing your speed and effectiveness in battle.

I recommend Vindictus to anyone looking to get some friends together for an afternoon of non-stop action and violence; the likes of which no one will ever be able to surpass...Well at least not until Guild Wars 2 comes out. No offense to Nexon, but ANET just did a better job with the concept.

Regardless Vindictus still scores a 7 out of 10. It has hardly any bugs and there are little problems short of the gender-locked classes and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

The Worst Best Anime RPG of The Year.

2011-08-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

During the course of my relatively extended vacation I happened upon an advertisement for Asda 2 the sequel to Asda story the romantic Anime MMO. At first I thought nothing of it but I soon changed my mind when I saw the “Most customizable character creation ever” tag, and I quickly thought to myself “my god if this means what I think it does then I just might have stumbled upon the greatest anime MMO ever!” (coincidentally that’s another claim the advertisement made.)

I downloaded the game and tried it out…and was swiftly disappointed by the LACK OF CUSTOMIZATION.

For a game that sold itself on customization there were hardly any hairstyles available, not choice of starting clothes or skin color, and only three classes. Don’t be fooled by the promise of 8, it’s just three classes and 3 subcategories for each class excluding the archer who only has 2. I mean come on, how hard is it to put “assassin” in there? There were numerous eyes available as well as the ability to choose your star sign, but come on it’s an anime RPG those things are the bread and butter.

The only real customization options of significant important are the costumes, and the choice of wearing your armor costume which has all your stats or your player costume which is purely cosmetic. This is something that every other game in existence has already done; only BETTER.

The graphics are the typical cartoony style, and the monsters have the “too cute to kill” aura (but it’s not as effective as other anime MMOs) The females all look sexy I guess, I mean the first chick you talk to is wearing nothing but half a gothic dress and a skull thong, but again it’s an anime MMO, to have anything less would bring shame upon your servers. Also the quests are stupidly easy, no challenge at all. I had a harder time playing FLYFF and that was a freaking cake walk.

So to summaries no this game isn’t good, no this game isn’t original, and no this game does not have the godly amounts of customization I was promised, I’m severely disappointed and to be honest this may have been the fastest review I ever made because I was able to pick up the game, play it, put it down, and write this all in one afternoon sitting.

Asda 2 gets a 3 out of 10 This game has done to Asda Story what Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Litch King did to WoW and if you so much as mutter the words “Improved it” I’m coming to your house and personally cutting out your tongue

NOTICE

2011-07-29T09:18:00.001-07:00

Due to the increasing lack of new MMO releases, I've decided to take a little break from reviewing. I should be back sometime around November if not sooner with reviews of Guild Wars 2 and hopefully Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Also if something else is released I'll be sure and attempt an effort at a review...but no promises.

Realm of Torrment

2011-07-29T09:12:00.001-07:00

To say that I wasn’t anticipating this game would be a complete lie; on the other hand to say I was looking forward to playing it would be a lie as well.

Realm of the Titans is a DoTA, remember how well that went last time with League of Legends? Though TBH my opinion of League of Legends I admit has improved as of late. It’s the only game that I gave a horrible review to that I still play. That statement is made all the more hilarious when I realize “Oh wow I’ve played this game longer than I’ve played some of the games I gave GOOD reviews” LOL.

RoT is best described as a Free 2 Play Heroes of Newearth. It is almost the exact same as HoN from top to bottom; from denial, to items, to how champions (*cough* excuse me I mean “heroes”) function compared to creeps. It does have a neet little system known as “titan skills” which is the games equivalent to the Summoner Skills in LoL, however instead of getting access to more of the skills the higher your Summoner level is, you actually get more skills the longer each individual game progresses. Another thing I really like is that you don’t have to pay real money for skins. They are bought with in game money, however you can only keep them for a limited time (max 120 days give or take a few) so be sure to only get a skin for your favorite hero.

Now I’m sure these questions have been going through your head since you started reading this review so I will now answer them:

1) Is RoT better then HoN? Hell yeah

2) Is Rot better than LoL? Hell NO

You can argue about it till the sun goes down but the fact remains despite being a DoTA, League of Extraordinary Individuals is a game all its own. While RoTting In the Ground and Heroes of Mars are both clear and obvious rip offs of the original DoTA of Warcraft.

That aside, The HuD if Realm is very, very bad; the mini map is a little too mini to the point all you can see are blue and red dots which doesn't help you at all in ganks, and your gold is shoved up in the top right corner and the number is so small you need glasses. Once more champions eat through manna like a fat kid at an all you can eat buffet so get used to relying on your auto attack A LOT. With such a faulty combat style and a clunky crowded display, not to mention its lousy handling and the lack of a free recall spell, Realm of the Titans is just NOT GOOD.

RoTTing away gets a 3 out of 10 better than my rating of LoL [no I will not go change my post] but not better than my oppinion of LoL. Figure that one out scholars!

Blessings of The Divine

2011-07-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

I just wanna start by saying I was thoroughly surprised at Divine Souls. Normally action style beat-em-up “arena” MMOs have little to no story outside of the individual characters plots, none the less a decent amount of character customization. Divine Souls had both, while the classes determined what gender you were which I think is downright ridiculous, I had no problem becoming wrapped up with my character.

Divine Souls has many plots, but I’m going to save time by only talking about my own. As the priest, you are a member of a secret order of monster slayers, brandishing your scythe as well as the powers of light and darkness (Or in my case, strictly darkness) in order to keep the world safe. With the aid of your friends or as a lone wolf, this game can be just as social as it can be a single player time killer rivaling top Pay to Play games like Aeon in entertainment.

Obviously this game isn’t perfect. There is still a lack of customization; however this isn’t a MMORPG so I’m willing to forgive it. Another thing is that the game seems a little TOO easy. While I do enjoy games that allow you to effortless slaughter hundreds of enemies (I did play Dynasty Warriors Online) I’d at least like a bit of a challenge. You’re given 10 revive stones at level one and at level 10 I’ve yet to use one. Once I hit level 20 I’ll have access to a life drain skill so potions will be pointless, it might just be the priest only but like I said before it’s simply not a challenge.

But I’m not about to let that kill this game, It’s really great and I loved playing it, I’m gonna enjoy playing it, at least until the next thing comes out.

Divine Souls gets a 6 out of 10 [I’m sure it has come to your attention that I don’t have screen shots for this game, that is because print screen didn’t work for some reason, so I’m sorry but you'll have to play the game yourself to see how awesome it is.]

Solo Fivetress One

2011-07-08T14:59:00.001-07:00

There’s been so much talk about Team Fortress 2 that every time someone says the word Babies it makes me want to punch one…Okay that was sadistic, but you get where I’m going with this. Any way in an effort to help break up some of the almost endless amount of banter about this game, here’s my review of the game.

To quote Yahtzee: TF2 is “Fucking fucking fucking fucking, bad bad bad bad, don’t don’t don’t Don’t Play It.”

I honestly can’t see what all the fuss is about; Team Fortress 2 is a really bad game. Perhaps the only reason it’s good is because its cultist fans have never gotten outside of the 2 room apartment that is the game and tried any of the other multitudes of shooters out there. I had more fun playing Call of Duty and I SUCK at that game.

Team Fortress 2 has a lot of the same problems that S4 League had. The costumes (or in this case the hats) were completely useless, and anyone who bothered wasting money on the game instantly became the Game’s equivalent to Jesus Christ while all the other people who are smart and don’t spend money on MMO shooters are left to cry in a corner because they don’t have any fancy hats and everyone on the enemy team is one hit killing them. I know the Spy is suppose to be able to 1hk, but when the Demoman or the Pyro does it I know there’s a problem.

Speaking of Spies, they’re arguably the most useless class in the game despite all the praise and fancy CGI behind them. Any smart human can tell if you’re on their team or not, and all the bots can see past your stealth so you can forget ever pulling off a backstab, which leaves you with the dinky revolver that…oh by the way, doesn’t work.

If you’re the medic you’re focused, if you’re the sniper you’re ganked almost effortlessly or picked off by another sniper. If you’re a scout you get burned to death and if you’re a soldier or demo man you’re about as useless as your ability to “rocket jump.” So in the long run, if you DO try this game, be sure to be the Pyro or the Heavy since they’re the only good characters in the game. Engineer? Hah! Do the words “Heavy Machine Gun” mean anything to you?

The game has had plenty of time to balance itself and plenty of time for more maps, the fact of the matter is Valve simply doesn’t want too…The fact that they made it free to play is basically them saying “here have something to keep you company while we take the next two years to come out with the next big game.”

Team 4-3-2 gets a 2 (HA) out of 10 if you were thinking about downloading it you might as well buy The Orange Box, at least then you get Half Life and Portal two of the greatest games ever made and you can spend your time playing those while taking the time to point and laugh at TF2 between loading screens because let’s face it you’ve got better things to do than play it.

Through The Gates of Hell

2011-07-01T07:52:00.001-07:00

Looking back, I actually played this game once before, but never bothered to make a review for it. “Well that’s not very professional” I told myself so here it is: Gates of Andaron Online.

From the start the game really didn’t look like much, you make a character after choosing to be devoted to one of two kingdoms, either one devoted to strength and war, or one devoted to magic and keeping the peace and balance in the world. The game takes a lot from World of Warcraft something I see a lot of MMOs doing these days. The first thing is the log in screen, which is a clear rip off of WoW's Burning Crusade screen, the next obvious take is the Alliance vs. Horde factions, and finally; one of the less obvious to anyone but people who play the priest class (like me) is that the they like dance around on the tightrope thin line between Light and Darkness magic something I personally found appealing. They even take it one step further, combining the two into what is known as “sacrificial” magic, AKA the magical art of Seppuku. (Yoshimistu from Soul Calibur [and Tekken if you want to get technical])

Sadly although the classes are not stereotypical to the races, there’s not really much in the originality department. There are only about 5 types of heads and 5 colors of hair per race, and the armor itself doesn’t seem to look any different until you start running through dungeons over and over again desperately trying to find the unique items off of the bosses. By the way does that sound familiar to anyone but me?

Another thing I don’t like about this game going back to the mage and priest classes; is while they are so squishy you could compare them to sponge cake, they have the ridiculous advantage of being able to cast magic as they move (something WoW tried and GuildWars later perfected without fault) after taking the time to get used to this handicap I found that absolutely nothing could touch me, thanks to kiting and my old friend Mr DoT, who pities the fool who thinks they can keep their health up around me. (Sorry bad pun)

After soloing several bosses without suffering so much as a paper cut I decided it was time to give up on this game. I really tried and tried to like Gates of Andaron, but sadly the game as a whole just isn’t very good at all. Anyone who wants to play this game is better off looking for another one. Maybe you can find one you like by scrolling through my other posts (*hint hint* o. o)

GoA scores a 2 out of 10 a score I seem to be giving to a lot of games lately. (Careful what you wish for eh?)

Rated M For Mature (I'm not even joking this time)

2011-06-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't figure out by the title, this game is absolutely NOT for children.

Ah Grand Theft Auto; fast cars, faster women, all the murderous weapons you can load and fire, and the “Crime does not pay” ending. Nothing says “let’s pretend to be criminals” like an appropriate criminal ending right? Oh but if only there were a game were you could be a crime lord to your heart’s content with absolutely no consequences. Well lucky for you there’s this:

Crime Craft (AKA Bleed Out) tells the shocking, horrific, and surprisingly accurate story of The United States in a future where we never stopped depending on foreign oil. The economy collapsed, the government abandoned its people and now everything is ruled by gangs which mean sex, drugs, and murder, reign supreme.

Don’t be pulled in by the GTA environment and promises of strip clubs though. Sadly in all seriousness this game is complete crap. It’s a 3^rd Person Shooter that tried to use the same dodge mechanic as S4 league only more realistic, and by realistic I mean useless. Unlike S4 you’re better off ducking behind cover and playing this Gears of War style, not that you have a choice, the game lags so bad that any attempt to play this game Halo style will result in a sniper round through the head. Even on the lowest graphics setting and the highest mouse sensitivity I still had delay and my shots were so inaccurate it actually took me 2 attempts to do each of the starting missions because I kept running out of ammo, and that’s on the easy setting.

What I find funny about this game is that the NPCs actually have the ability to rage, some of them curse more than players, using dirty words even multiple times in a single sentence. There’s going for a sense of realism, and then there’s just over kill, but it must work because I found myself chasing after a guy in a blind rage after he said “I should go shove [censored] [censored] [censored] up my mom’s [censored] [censored] and that he’s seen better [censored] on a [censored] camel”

Crime Craft is by no means an enjoyable game to play, and honestly it’s trying a little TOO much to be “Hardcore.” If I wanted to play a game where I get cussed at all match I’d go back to playing League of Legends; at least their bots don’t talk.

Bleed Out (Crime Craft) gets a 1 out of 10, and the honor of receiving my “most unpleasant MMO ever played” award.

A Game For Ventriloquists Everywhere

2011-06-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

I’m honestly surprised that Gpotato still remembers my account name, considering how long it’s been since I touched one of their games, but I got an open beta invitation in my email, and since I’ve had nothing to play the past month besides Eden Eternal I figured “why not?”

The game in question is Prius Online, AKA Anima-Redux, AKA “why the hell did you name it that?!” The story of comes in a fabulous shade of blue Online is actually one of the weirder ones. In the opening cinematic a pedophile with a large sword performs a demonic ritual to save the life of his dying child lover, only to have the under aged CP star go on a bloody rampage and bring the whole world to ruin. Years later you play the role of one of these admired pedophiles that loses his memory after a futile attack on an enemy strong hold. Your child lover is taken away and you forgot you ever had a loli-complex in the first place. All joking aside the prologue of this game looks like it would be better off in an elder scrolls game than a MMO since every other player also has the same back story. I mean come on one of the most trivial flaws in a MMORPG's creation is giving the multiplayer game a singleplayer story, you’d think one of the latest games to come out would have fixed that.

-But I digress, after starting the game and sitting through the LONGEST loading time in a MMO to date I finally got to start playing, and was almost immediately disappointed when I saw what I like to call “Stereotypical Classes,” or better put classes that determine what race you will be. There are only about 5 classes in the game, and each determine not only what race you will be but also what gender; this my friends is a GREAT BIG NO! Stereotypical Classes take away the most important part of a MMORPG, and that’s the RPG part. People don’t want to be forced to play a specific way, they want to play as themselves in the way that they like to play. It’s astounding just how many basic errors slightly smaller than a Hummer Online has made up to this point.

Inside the game there’s a “Final Fantasy” aura about it; of course that could just be because the character I made looks like a sky pirate from FF XII. Sadly after about an hour and a half of grind quests I couldn’t help but feel I was simply playing a much worse version of World of Warcraft. It’s like everything about this game was taken from wow and made pants on head retarded just like the NPCs horrible ability to talk. There really wasn’t anything special about -Facepalm- doooh Online in fact it was downright lame.

[Insert Jeff Dunham Joke Here] Online gets a (well) deserved 2 out of 10

The game just really isn’t my cup of tea, speaking of which my morning tea is finished so I’m wrapping up this review.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNz1itJ1pd8) Thanks for being such a sport JD!

The Garden of Eternal

2011-06-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

Once again I find myself breaking my sacred vow of Aeria Abstinence; returning as a result of a not so closed Closed Beta invitation; the better half of me wanted to ignore it, however I’m a critic first, a gamer second, and a last and probably least, a man who picks favorites…So I headed back once again ready to give yet another Aeria game a stare down-

-But wait a minute, what is this? Eden Eternal is actually GOOD? And I don’t mean like DOMO where it’s good but with a lot of flaws , but I mean it’s really REALLY good. EE is probably the BEST thing I’ve seen come out of Aeria Games.

In Eden Eternal you play the role of a human, and once open beta comes around one of the many inhabitance of the world. Before humans came to the world it was inhabited by numerous Best-folk like races. However the differences of these races were too vast and the result was a massive war. It was only after humans arrived that peace was established, a very welcomed alternative to the "humans are responsible for all the worlds troubles" rpgs. In this game humans are the direct dissidence of the gods and are born from crystals like something out of final fantasy. The armor in this game doesn’t change how your character actually looks. You have preset outfits in each class, every 20 or so levels you get new outfits, though you can choose which one you prefer. Also all the outfits are completely color customizable using dyes you get from quests, npcs, and the item mall (real money mall); so while this game has hardly any customization, it’s still difficult to find two people who look the exact same.

Speaking of levels, they’re split between your character level and your class level. Unlike with DOMO were you only have 1 level and it resets with every class. Your character level never goes down and effects mainly your stats while your class level effects mostly what skills you can use, however character level also has its own skills and classes do alter your stats a bit.

While this game has no PvP short of a duel button that is so untouched it's practically gathering cobwebs, you do spend more time fighting npc versions of the other races then the few actual monsters in the world. There are also lots of dungeons and instances that require lots of teamwork, which can quickly make this game feel like an anime version of DnDO. If I truly hate anything about this game its that the quests are tedious, they're not time consuming grind quests, however the item drop rate could be a bit better, and you'd think when harvesting items from plants and such instead of killing for them that the drop ratio would be 1:1, but it's actually more like 1:7 which I think makes no since at all...

Anyway Eden Eternal scores a 8 out of 10 possibly one of the best scores I have ever (and will ever) give a game from Aeria Games so I hope it’s proud of itself.

A Microscopic Adventure

2011-06-08T19:02:00.001-07:00

Micro Volts is the latest third person shooter to be released. Well technically that’s a lie; it’s actually be in closed beta for quite a while. Not as long as Get Amped 2 but still a LOOOONG time. In Micro Volt you are an action figure brought to life with the power of a special battery. However “resources” are scarce in the Micro world so you find yourself having to kill other dolls in order to keep yourself powered up and ultimatly animated.

Anyway, there’s only one way to describe Micro Volts and that’s this: If you can afford to buy Team Fortress 2 from Steam then do so, if not download this game cause it’s the EXACT same. The biggest difference is that Micro Volts doesn’t have classes, any character can use any weapon at any time, ranging from the Heavy’s “Heavy Machine Gun,” the Sniper’s “Sniper Rifle” and the Demoman’s…well you get the idea. The other biggest difference is Micro Volts has girls, and with those girls comes panties. The anime girl has a stereotypical mini-skirt that’s a little too “mini” and the gothic doll doesn’t wear any bottoms at all. They make for great distractions while you get yourself 1 hit killed by a sniper round, or a rocket, a grenade, ect.

Micro Volts sniper matches are usually “do or die” showdowns. This wouldn’t be a problem if only a few players had sniper rifles, but anyone can pull one out and put a bullet right between your eyes. There’s no denying that Micro Volts takes a ridiculous amount of skill no matter what style map you are playing. So needless to say it made me feel really good inside to maintain a positive Kill to Death Ratio the entire time I was playing. Because normally in shooters my KTD is like my sex life; so bad it’s non-existent.

Micro Volts in a nutshell, is a fun game, a hard game, and a COPIED game. However if you’re willing to forgive how painfully obvious of a rip off this game is, then look it up.

Team Fortress 2, oh wait I’m sorry MICRO VOLTS, gets a 5 out of 10

Get Owned 2

2011-06-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

I was excited to hear that Get Amped 2 had finally been put back out to the public again after its apparent placement in suspended animation. I loved that game in the Beta and I was sad to hear that the game was going to close, I was even more depressed, and even a little flabbergasted when I heard that it wasn’t going to come out again for years.

But now its back and boy are there changes. Unfortunately they are NOT changes for the better.

In Get Amped 2 you play the role of one of one of the multitudes of people from all across the stars who has come to take part in a (seemingly endless) fighting tournament. Apparently the entire universe is not only the planets in our galaxy, but also includes several parallel dimensions; I’ll explain the meaning of that statement in just a second. There are many ways to fight your opponents; player or otherwise. There are also many different maps each of which are quite stylish. However due to the multitudes of weapons, tools, and maps at your disposal this game quickly lost its balance. Returning to my previous comment the outfits your character wears are 100% cosmetic. You can even customize your own outfit and pay 2,000 in game coins to wear that custom skin in the battle field. As awesome as this idea is, I was shocked at the vast amount of people that actually DIDN’T have original outfits.

Almost everyone was dressed as a character from either a Game or an Anime; I even saw the entire cast of Soul Eater at one point. No one in that game seems to have the least bit sense of creativity which quickly ruins the point of having a fully customizable outfit in the first place.

While weapons are involved with this game, the abilities your character has are based off of your “accessory.” These range from claws to staffs to swords and everything in between. Sadly there are items in this game that are clearly superior to others, there’s no sence of balance present in this game at all. The 100k weapons are the tools of gods and will allow you to slaughter everyone in your path, while the 5k weapons are so horribly underpowered they have no earthly business being in the game in the first place.

Although the looks are cosmetic there are a number of classes like in Rumble Fighter. Just like the weapons some are clearly superior while others are left for the slaughter. The “beginner friendly” balanced character’s stats are so low that he’s nothing more than a punching bag, while the spy can’t be touched and the knight can’t be killed without an entire army due to his ridiculous defense.

I cannot believe one of my personally favorite games has died so quickly. On top of that, I can’t believe how bad the game is, considering it was closed for development for what – 3 years? If you’re gonna take a game off the market that long for the sake of testing, you might want to, oh I don’t know…TEST IT.

Get Amped 2 gets a 2 out of 10, It’s really hard for me to talk down a game I used to love so much, but the GA2 I loved is long dead.

Immortality Is A Blessing and a Curse

2011-05-31T06:11:00.000-07:00

Battle of the Immortals…Lets see…well to be honest I don’t know of any way I could possibly review this without it sounding like a review of Diablo or Titan Quest. After all that’s almost literally what it is: A BAD version of Diablo or Titan Quest…Oh I know! I can start by discrediting the reviewers who have come before me who were clearly bribed into giving this game the good reviews it currently has that were clearly meant for some other game...say...oh I don't know...DIABLO.

(MMOsite.com)“BoI is a Must Play” – Runescape was a must play at one time, look how that guy turned out, and on that logic any other top view RPG is instantly worth playing too because they all also have “epic loot” “original game play” and mounts that look like they came straight out of World of Warcraft.

(MMORPG.com) “Battle of The Immortals is a perfectly playable and addictive Action-MMO..” - BoI has the entertainment value of a bomb on a school bus. The initial explosion maybe a grand spectacle, but once you look at the incident as a whole it becomes really depressing really fast.

(Massively.com) “Perfect World Entertainment has found a perfect balance in this game.” – A balance between what and what exactly? Is it the perfect balance between Diablo and WoW? Woops there I go again, I told you I can’t go two seconds without comparing it to Diablo because THAT’S WHAT IT IS.

Now onto the actual review: In BoI you play the role of an “immortal” because everyone knows to play the role of a “god” is to break a game in half before it even gets out of beta. Anyway a big problem of some kind is going down in the realm of the mortals so you’re sent down to “earth” with thousands of other immortals like yourself to deal with it. Yes that’s all I managed to get out of the story line; it all evolved a bit too fast for me and eventually it got to the point that I was accepting quests with no reason other than the fact that I got to smite stuff with my powerful “epic loot” that the game GAVE me not even an hour in.

See that is the biggest problem with BoI: it spoils you horribly and holds your hand through almost everything. You have plenty of opportunities for double EXP, for the first hour or so of the game they’re constantly giving you free stuff, and continue to do so with a special chest you can open every 5 levels, and my personal favorite, you have what’s known as a rage skill where you simply run into a massive mob of enemies and then everything on your screen just dies. The rage skill is a good concept but at least make us work for it guys! Don’t instantly fill our rage meter every time we level, and sure as hell don’t make us level after one quest. That’s a literal statement by the way; for the first 15 levels the game goes like this: “quest giver tells you to go kill 15…20 guys – find guys -[rage skill] – turn in quest – level up – repeat steps 1…5.”

That’s not fun, it’s just downright boring, not to mention repetitive. I know I constantly hit MMOs for the constant grind quests but this is a step so far in the wrong direction you fell off a cliff in China trying to move away from a Cliff in Washington D.C.

Battle of The Immortals gets a 3 out of 10; Needless to say I have recently become quite disappointed in Perfect World Entertainment. Now go rot in a trash bin you pathetic excuse for Diablo. (Oh hey look at that I did it again! If you’ve been taking shots to every time I mentioned Diablo [take another] I apologies for making you DRUNK])

Gears of Fate

2011-05-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Like last time I am reviewing yet another Browser-Based MMO that is ahead of its time. Spiral Knights is an action and puzzle strategy hybrid. The experience can only be described as playing LoZ: 4 Swords with 6 people, or better yet, if Castle Crashers was made into an MMO…wait does that exist? Hang on a second.

. . .

Nope sure doesn’t. Anyway you’re a steam-punk robot like “knight” who came to the world on a drop pod from space, after a bit of training you’re sent to Haven on an epic quest to unlock the secrets of the planet’s core, also known as the “Clockwork.” Sounds simple right? Well as it turns out the Clockwork was deliberately built as a massive pit of death; full of monsters, traps, hazards, the whole nine yards. So you and your friends and/or party members must fight your way down level after level of a wondrous underground collecting precious mineral to unlock further parts of the world.

(A prosperous day in the mines: screenshot
made possible by friend and fellow guild
member: HayateButler)

The game is cartoony looking, but in a good way also no matter what level you’re on you have this spectacular view of the clockworks below, gears and leavers constantly in motion keeping the world going. The game may be played level to level, but there is NEVER a since of repetitively, even if you have to go back to the surface and dive back down again. The game is constantly cycling and recycling its levels. This happens in real time, so while one party is sent to a graveyard, another is sent to a highway just as quick. Not only is the level recycled, but each level has at least 3 different entrances and exits so even if you’re playing the same level as you did three minutes ago it’s a completely new map all its own. The feeling of the world in motion gives this game an amazing flow and great and entertaining pace.

Sadly as awesome as this game is, it was made by SEGA a big gaming corporation, so it's bound to have flaws.The biggest problem is what I said in the first paragraph; that this is a “castle crashers MMO.” You and your friends may be on the same team, but that bond is quickly severed by a rush to horde as much loot as you can for yourself, stealing another party members kills, looting the boxes he finds, and the most popular one, hording the biggest minerals for yourself leaving everyone else with tiny insignificant shards. Another thing I’m not too fond of is that every time you enter a level or make a fancy new toy with some alchemic recipe, it consumes “energy” the all important resource that your character apparently needs to so much as breathe. This isn’t that big of a deal, in fact I commend SEGA for finding a way to try and make gamers more active by giving them a time limit (more or less) but you only get 100 energy to your name. It takes 10 energy to go from room to room and there are tons of levels, 20-50 easily.

So now you’re probably thinking “Well there must be some way to get more energy right?” Well yes there are 3 ways. The first is to log off, you have what’s known as “mist energy” your default energy that recharges over time when you’re not doing anything. The second is grind up to about 40k in game cash and buy a ton, but who’s going to do that right? The third option: is to buy “crystal energy” with real money. It’s nice to see SEGA making games for the sake of gamers for a change, but I guess old habits die hard don’t they? (NOTE: this is not meant to be an attack on SEGA, I’m actually a big fan of their products, however I know how most big companies think: with their wallets. If this doesn’t apply to SEGA then I am sorry)

Spiral Knights is a great game by an old school diehard company, it gets a 6 out of 10 and honestly it looks like it’s still in development so I’m going to stick it out and see where it goes.

Taking Another Trip To Pandora

2011-05-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

What do you think when you hear browser based? You probably think 8-bit rpgs and those RTS games that are such ridiculous rip offs of Age of Empires that I dare not soil my blog with their tainted presence. Well apparently a new style of MMO has recently joined the no download group. The game I'm looking at today is Ruined Online: a Browser-Based Third Person Shooter MMO.

Ruined takes place in a post-apocalyptic world were for some reason only the big bad villains of the world have survived, now the only thing they have left is to duke it out with each other in battle scared and in some cases horrific lands until only one of them is left and that one person can commit Seppuku; except not really – HaHa.

(Almost looks like something out of Tron)

Ruined probably requires more skill than any MMO Shooter I’ve ever played. Your only source of in game money is kills so if you suck at killing, you’re left to the dogs. Lucky for you less than good players you start out with a pistol with unlimited uses and enough premium money to get one unlimited use item right off the bat. So you don’t need to worry if you were the punching bag of your games because hey the guys running this game still love you. (cause after all whats a shooter without pin cousins right?)

The biggest problem with Ruined Online is how good the graphics are. It’s a browser based game with graphics, characters, and game play all almost flawlessly resembling Borderlands so lag is an ever present issue, however turn all the graphics to their minimal and play it on a desktop with a good graphics card and you just might be fast enough to actually get a decent shot in. The only other problem with this game is that any cover lower than 3/4ths of your body is completely useless as there is no crouch option and any pro player is going to aim at your head anyway.

Anyway to wrap things up Ruined Online scores 6 out of 10;

It’s definitely something any shooter fan should look into whether you’re looking for a time killer you don’t have to download or you’re a die-hard Borderlands fan who wants to watch a psycho and a bruiser duke it out with lazars.

Vengeance Doesn't Factor Into This

2011-05-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

With the success of Forsaken World I returned to Perfect World Entertainment searching for my next great play. There are a few games in development it seems, none of which would let me into Closed Beta testing *sad face* so I’ll have those to look forward to, in the mean time I stuck with Jade Dynasty: Vengeance, a PVP MMO.

While this game isn’t the totally horrible game I was looking for in my last review it certainly didn’t meet my standards when it was compared to the epic that is Forsaken World. The graphics and music were stunning but that was all the game had going for it, everything looks like something that has been done before; only much MUCH better. Jade Dynasty isn’t bad though, it’s simply run of the mill; nothing new to show to the world, it’s almost like a one of those Abominations from Warcraft, only each part of the body that is sown on represents a different game whose ideas JD is using.

The game is an absolute grind fest in an attempt to get to a decent enough level that you can enter an arena and not suck horribly, but hey I guess that’s the norm for PVP MMOs it’s all about doing whatever it takes to get to a higher level than your opponent, until you get to the max level in which case it becomes a battle over who has the best equipment (see World of Failcraft –cough- Warcraft). The worst part about it is you’ll get your quests in roughly groups of 5, each of the quests wants you to kill the same creature but the quests don’t stack. In other words you have to fulfill the requirements of each quest one after the other, considering all the quests are literally nothing more than “kill [number] of [this]” you’ll easily end up grinding the poor creatures into extinction. After words the game says its sorry by giving you so much XP from the quests you end up jumping like 8 levels, and that’s outside of the 4 levels you gained from killing the creatures in the first place.

Last thing I’d like to point out is how overpowered the Assassin classes are, I mean I know they’re suppose to be heavy hitters but your very first skill hits so hard that you 1 hit kill your quest target. This is effective at getting rid of the grinding, but at one point while killing my usual 128 monsters (that’s the literal number by the way, I actually did the math out of boredom) I stumbled upon a well hidden boss distinguishable only by the name which you don’t see until after you begin attacking it, rather than panicking like what SHOULD happen when you start fighting a boss by yourself I simply sighed and said “oh look I found a boss” followed a minute later by “well that was fun…back to the slaughter.”

I myself am thoroughly disappointed in Jade Dynasty: Vengeance, however there’s nothing absolutely horrible with it so it’s not like I’m gonna give it a bad score. JD scores 5 out of 10, and who knows; maybe there’s a silver lining after the grind fests and over powered killers.

WoW's Undead Have Nothing On This

2011-05-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

Guuuuuuhhhh; Being bored out of my mind recently I went through some of my oldest reviews and have come to two conclusions: 1) They weren’t long enough, and 2) over 90% of them were reviews that had good scores. I mean come on, what kind of reviewer doesn’t have a decent amount of rejects under his belt? (No I’m not counting my recent rant of S4: DL) So unsatisfied and demoralized I continued my search for games. Eventually I stumbled into Forsaken World and Hoping I could make a bad rant or two I downloaded it and played it.

Unfortunately much to my disappointment the game was really-really-really-REALLY good… Forsaken World is the counterpart to Perfect World, the Yang to its Yin in a since. The graphics are awesome the visual effects are nothing short of stunning and you couldn’t get any more racially diverse if the game was based off of League of Legends.

I’m being completely serious, most people are waiting for future games like Guild Wars 2 or Star Wars: The Old Republic to be the “WoW Killer” when they don’t even realize that one is right under their noses right now, if more people knew about this game WoW could be dead within the month.

I was all ready to flag this game with a perfect score when some unknown all powerful force tapped me on my shoulder and convinced me to continue playing, so I did; what I found was quite possibly the games one fatal flaw.

GRIND QUESTS! – Quests that take half an hour at least to complete; the ones that have you kill a ridiculous number of monsters or ones that require you to collect a large amount of items from a monster that have a small amount of chance of dropping. Sure the game play is so amazingly good that you should be able to look past it, but the fact still remains: They are there!

On that note I raise this question: “Why would you pay $15 a month to play WoW for endless hours at a time when you can get the exact same satisfaction from Forsaken World and not ever pay a cent?” If the 11 million members of the WoW cult stopped playing for a week and spent that week playing Forsaken World instead, my guess is half of them at least would never go back.

Forsaken World gets a 8 out of 10 it’s addictive, it’s amazing, and I’m going to keep playing it even as I go through the other games I review.

Everything is Darker and Stupider

2011-05-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

Most of you remember my (little less than a) review I gave of S4 League a while back right? Well Alaplaya released the second version of the game a while back. S4 League Season 2: Dark Lightning. You’re probably wondering why it took so long for me to mention this version of the game, well to be honesty for the longest time I didn’t think I should, but let me tell you S4 has taken a turn for the worst thanks to the introduction of a few nasty upgrades.

For starters in order to accommodate the drastic new changes to ENS4 League, the graphics have actually gotten worse. Last time I checked with better version comes better graphics, with this it’s just not possible I suppose. The games just become too big for their greedy little hands.

On the subject of greed, several new AP items have been introduced. There are three new outfits for boys and two new outfits for girls (who consequently later got 2 new hairstyles). These are all AP exclusive outfits (excluding the off chance you find them in a Fumbi Dance), all of which at one point you could have gotten permanent unlocking the ever overpowered “Capsule EXP Force.” Stats higher than any other stat available in the game, exclusive to people who spend the right amount of money at the right amount of time. It’s one thing to want to make money off your game, it’s another to excessively reward people who want to spend money. Turning them into what I call “instant pros” since their damage and defense are right up there with any pro who actually worked his way up (who at this point are few and far between).

S4 also got new weapons, the origins of which are a controversy. The first weapon are the spark and homing rifles. These weapons have a dandy little thing called “automatic aim.” When you use the weapon you sacrifice your ability to critical but the fact that the weapon hits 100% of the time from almost any distance more than makes up for it. The next weapon is the Twin Blades, which are often frowned upon for being long ranged melee weapons, but what most people don’t seem to realize is that the Twin Blades have so many issues it wouldn’t matter if they could hit the entire length of the field…okay I’m excadurating; point is not many people know how to use them correctly yet more people would rather see them go then the 1 hit kill Spy Dagger, which I think makes no since.

I suppose you’re wondering if there’s a moral to this ranting and the answer is yes. Alaplaya, at some point you forgot that MMOs aren’t about making a quick buck, they’re about having fun with groups of people. No game stresses this better than S4 League so you need to stop thinking with your wallets and start thinking with your heads. Don’t reward people who spend real money on a game. Well if you have to give them customization and originality, but don’t give them power. The way you’re running things right now totally defeats the purpose of S4 being a FREE 2 PLAY game.

Consequently S4: Dark Lightning gets a 2 out of 10

What Do the Cards Fortell?

2011-05-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

Alright! Argo Online finally came out! I finally get to play the greatest hybrid MMORPG the world has ever seen!

...What? Oh you thought I was gonna do a review for Argo? Well YOU’RE WRONG the games graphics are too epic for my laptop and I can’t even play the game. TEE HEE!

On a more serious note; assuming you’re still reading this, I started playing Iris Online, another game that recently came into Open Beta. It’s a “Gypsy MMO” involving Tarot Cards. The Minor Arcana cards are used to upgrade your weapons and armor while the Major Arcana served as “keys” which allow you to access specially designed dungeons. You’re one of many heroes who apparently gave his/her life defending this land in a war that happened a long time ago, but the monsters are back so the populace did the logical thing, and brought you back to life.

The game was made by the same people who made Luna Online, and if you remember what that game was about you know what to expect here: Anime graphics, too cute to kill monsters, and Characters that are so cute that getting a pantyshot from an elf is an instant…well guys know what I’m talking about.

They'll never know it was me thanks to this brilliant disguise
: D

The gameplay is great and entertaining; the quests are the usual kill a certain number of these things or get a certain number of items from an enemy. I would normally have a problem with the gathering quests since so many MMOs have managed to turn them into grind fests, but Iris actually found a good balance so I’m willing to look past it. Sure the item drop rate ranges from 1/4 of the time to 1/3, but the thing is you only need 3-4 items to appease the sexy girl in a skimpy outfit that sent you out to get them in the first place. Also the game has no restrictions on weapons or armor, outside of the fact that each class has skills specific to certain weapons, but besides that you can use any weapon you feel like.

If I have any complaints about the game it’s the following: 1) If you enter the battle fields and you find yourself up against a team and they have less people than yours, the game fills the void by adding in a number AIs until the teams are even. These AIs are the definition of OVER POWERED; if the other team has so much as 4 of these suckers they can kick back and relax because your team is skarude, and 2) The Invisible Walls in this game work TOO well. Sure I’m grateful you blocked me from walking over a cliff into a dark abyss below, but what’s the point of having a jump key if you can’t jump over anything?

Selfish complains aside Iris is a great game that anyone (and everyone) should try. It gets an 7 out of 10 because although the game is good it’s not perfect and it just hasn’t gotten to where it needs to be for an 8 or a 9