Posts filed under 'Previews'
Atlantica : Preview
Atlantica just ended it’s closed beta. Most of game play involves your characters running around killing X number of monsters for some quest. While it sounds boring the combat aspect is very interesting. You can recruit a handful of various characters through out the game and use them to create a party of 9 individuals which you use to fight turn based battles. If anyone on the battle field is hit 3 times in a row they become stunned and can’t attack for a few turns, which adds an additional strategy element. I’m a little on the fence about the equipment aspect of the game. Equipment is mostly acquired through monster drops and in order to upgrade your equipment you need 2 items that are the same and an upgrade item which is fairly easy to acquire. This can get a bit tedious once your equipment becomes +3 or +4 and your inventory is bursting with generic equips just so you can gain a level. Overall I found the game entertaining and well worth my time.
Add comment July 31, 2008
World of Kung Fu Online : Preview
World of Kung Fu Online will be entering open beta on August 1st. The game is a martial arts based rpg, with classes determined by a specific school of fighting.
Add comment July 27, 2008
4Story : Preview
People are calling 4Story a World of Warcraft clone, and I can’t completely deny that. Some elements of 4Story seem reminiscent of WOW and also the Final Fantasy mmo. However the same thing can be said for a lot of mmos (and the whole mmo genre itself is a clone of table top gaming). Anyway, I don’t care. Currently 4Story is moving into the second “pre-open beta”, whatever that means. There are three races to choose from and six classes. Also players may choose from three nations, which allow for “dynamic war” over ownership of various territories. Currently the game suffers from a little lag, nothing that would interfere with game play however. Overall I consider this game alright. It seems some features haven’t been rolled out yet and once the game enters it’s final phase perhaps game play will be more appealing.
1 comment July 23, 2008
Concerto Gate : Preview
Concerto Gate just ended it’s closed beta phase, with an open beta looming some time in the distant future. The game is a standard mmorpg. Go on quests, level up, etc. I’m not sure quite what to make of the game yet. My first impression is that it suffers from a lot of hype from the community and fails to deliver. However, the closed beta was extremely crippled. No jobs, most quests are bugged, I’d die after 10 minutes. So it’s preposterous to render a verdict on the game at this point. However, I can say the turn based battles are pretty solid and seem to succeed where other games fail.
Add comment July 14, 2008
Combat Arms : Preview
Combat Arms comes to the English audience from Nexon. The game is more or less a standard army-based mmofps. Game modes currently include capture the flag, “search and destroy” where you set and defuse bombs, “elimination” where two teams compete for most kills, and “one man army” where everyone just shoots everyone. The only restriction on equipment you can equip your character with is level, otherwise anyone can use a shotgun, a sniper rifle, etc. Occasionally logging in can be difficult if everyone’s hammering the server. Otherwise lag seems almost nonexistent within the game. Game maps are a little smaller than I’m used to, which puts you pretty close to your enemies, currently there are only 4. The game is in open beta and features are slowly being rolled out in stages, but overall the game is addicting and very fun.
Add comment July 11, 2008
T-Crew : Preview
I really really want to like T-Crew. The game is an rpg platformer, you and the other players fight through various levels trying to gain experience and items while accompanied by your respective T-Crews. The T-Crews are little monsters that float behind your shoulder. T-Crews posses 9 different skills, but they can only learn 6. However, you can carry 4 with you at any one time. The game play and the T-Crew system is very engaging and fun. What I can’t stand is the level/mission room aspect of this game, which is pretty common among Korean mmos. I really feel it interrupts my game and keeps me from the full game experience.
Add comment June 26, 2008
Bugs Rider : Preview
Bugs Rider is currently in closed beta. Therefore the community is pretty small right now and currently game play data is not saved to the servers, which means your progress is lost whenever you close your client. All that aside, I really like it. Once the game opens up fully I think Bugs Rider will be a very good game. It reminds me very much of Gunbound, you are given a series of machines to pick from each with different styles of attack. Stages are divided between matches and missions. Missions feature typical fast-paced shoot ‘em up action. An open beta announcement hasn’t been made yet, but GameNGame usually has a fast development cycle.
Add comment June 22, 2008
Aeronauts : Preview
Personally, I didn’t care for Aeronauts. My biggest problem with the game is that it is slow to start and when you actually get past the tutorials and into the more juicy game play you have to go back and play the tutorial stages over so you can get enough experience to play the next missions. I suppose this wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the community was a little bigger and you could play more dogfight matches, which allow you to fight/compete against other players, but right now the community is pretty small and you can’t count on getting your experience that way. Other than a few odd localization quirks, I found Aeronauts to be an interesting game.
Add comment June 19, 2008
NeoSteam : Preview
My opinion of NeoSteam is that it is another game suffering from over-hype. It sounded great. I really really wanted to like it, but I could only stomach about 20 minutes or so. The game is still in closed beta, so any problem could be fixed before the game is officially rolled out. My two biggest problems are that the graphics seemed unforgivably jaggy to me and that there was practically no explanation on how to do anything or where anything is. This is particularly unforgivable in this case as there is no explanation of factions or classes, which are somewhat essential to game play. Regardless, hopefully this particular issue will be fixed by official release time.
Add comment June 17, 2008
Stone Age 2 : Preview
My impressions of Stone Age 2 can be summed up in one word: “blah”. For me there seemed to be a large amount of hype surrounding the game, but after playing it I can safely say that I am disappointed. When you start the game you are allowed to determine your character’s elemental affinity, this in turn determines your starting creature/pet/monster/whatever. After that you can catch any monster you want, however you can only use a certain number of monsters in battle and this number increases every five levels or so. You have to keep monsters happy by feeding them and not dying very often, a happy monster performs better in battle and learns new skills quicker. Battles are random and turn based, occurring around every twenty steps or so for me. Characters are given access to a “den” which they can decorate, use to store items, store monsters, and breed monsters. My biggest complaint is that there really isn’t very much concrete information about game play at this point. I don’t know anything about monsters, what abilities they have, etc. Which means I have no actual reason to capture one other than it looks cool (or less stupid than the others). I don’t know what the overall story arc of the game is supposed to be. Am I just walking around fighting because I have emotional issues with animals? But I suppose all that can be excused by the fact the game is still in closed beta. This random battle system, however, is awful. I hate random battles in mmos, and in this particular game random battles get tedious fast. The file size of the installer is 1GB+, which is a little painful considering the quality of the graphics. All in all I expected better of this game. However, Stone Age 2 is in closed beta which means that the game hasn’t technically entered it’s final phase yet, and most of these problems might be eliminated.
Add comment June 14, 2008
