Mythos Europe Preview

By Nic van ‘t Schip (Nilax), OnRPG Journalist

 

 

It’s been a bumpy ride for Mythos Europe to get to where it is now. Frogster is ready to “go live” with it soon but in 2008 the sad demise of Flagship Studios, developer of Mythos and Hellgate London, made it seem like the game was lost forever.

 

Luckily HanbitSoft picked up the remains and had their US based Studios Redbana and T3 Entertainment work on it.

 

Mythos is a bit of a special case for me. A couple of years ago I worked in the company that was originally going to be publishing Mythos and I remember seeing it in its very early stages and being excited about it! Here was a game that going to combine the sweetness of isometric hack and slash games with the awesomesauce of more conventional MMOs. Think of combining Diablo or Torchlight with WoW… wow!

 

The comparison to Diablo, Torchlight and Titan Quest should be crystal clear to anyone just from seeing screenshots of the game. Combat, the skill, stat and leveling systems, the inventory and many more features of Mythos will be very familiar to people who’ve played these kinds of games before.

 

But as usual in the games industry; it is better to copy something that works than to invent something that sucks right, even if it’s original? There are plenty of things that Mythos does differently and I might even say better than the Diablos and Torchlights of this world. I will try to explain what I mean in this review of the Open Beta version of Mythos.

 

Extra Security

Before even starting the game I ran into something interesting. After the usual username/password prompt, the game asks me for my “Secondary Password”. This is a password of 6 digits that can only be entered by clicking the numbers on the screen. As the location of the numbers on the keypad always changes I imagine this would make it extremely difficult for hackers to determine peoples’ passwords using conventional key loggers. It is a clever system that I’m sure will save both Mythos’ players as well as Frogster’s Customer Support Team a lot of time and headaches!

 

 

Character Creation

As with so many MMOs, Mythos starts by asking you to create a character. You can choose between four different races: the diplomatic Humans, the crafty Gremlins, the ancient Satyr and the imposing Cyclops. Each of these races offers the choice of 3 Classes: The Bloodletter, a short range melee character, the Pyromancer a long range offensive/support caster, and the rifle using Gadgeteer who takes on the role of ranged DPS.

 

Each class has three skill trees they can progress in and Kataal on the OnRPG forums describes them like this:

 

– Pyromancer: Cinderblade (Mage/Warrior), Flamecaster (Standard fire mage), Coalsmasher (Pets and AoE)

– Gadgeteer: Marksmen (Rifle Expert with Stat Effects and Range DPS), Grenadier (Traps and AoE grenades), Tinkerer (Robot pets, stationary turrets)
– Bloodletter: Crimsonate (DoT, close-ranged AoE), Martialist (Generic DPS warrior), Red Hand (Necromantic Warrior, summons pets from corpses and uses magic to enhance them)

 

As you can see in this video, the character creator gives you ample opportunity to customize your character without going over the top. As long as you don’t expect Aion, RIFT or FF14 style customization you will be impressed!

 

 

For this review I played an impressive looking Cyclops Bloodletter… RAWR! I later tried both the Pyromancer and the Gadgeteer but I believe I’ll be sticking with the Bloodletter for now!
Isometric you said?

 

The first thing you’ll notice when you start the game is that the camera is stuck above your character and even though I knew this game was Isometric it still surprised me a bit. The character creator kind of threw me off I guess.

 

However, the game had a surprise in store for me! If you really dislike the isometric view, you have the option to play the game using something they call an “MMO Camera”. It’s not quite as smooth and flexible as the camera in “real”3D games but for the die-hards it’s a nice addition none the less.

 

 

I didn’t find the game very playable using this camera so I’ll stick to the good old Isometric view. The cell shaded/cartoony look of the game is pretty sweet and the bright colors in the outside world are a nice contrast between the really dark and gloomy caves and cellars you’ll often visit.

 

Gameplay

I recorded the first couple of minutes of game play and you can check that right here. As you can see the game has a pretty decent (if somewhat intrusive) tutorial that will teach even the noobest of game noobs how to play. I understand that tutorials are important to get “new” gamers into your game but I am not sure if that is the demographic they should be looking for with this game. All in all it’s pretty hardcore and I doubt many people who have not experienced Diablo, Torchlight or Titan Quest will be playing this.

 

Combat feels nice and responsive if a tad click heavy, but for a hack and slash game I guess that is expected. The starting ability of the Bloodletter kicks ass and I really enjoyed going STAB STAB STAB EXPLODE with him at every opportunity!

 

The flow of the quests and the development of the story are solid and smooth. I wish the same could be said for the translation. Even though US based studios have been working on Mythos, it is very obvious that native English speakers did not write the English translations.

 

I hope that Frogster isn’t quite done with this aspect of the game yet. They have another couple of weeks before the commercial release and perhaps they can use that to fix some of the blatant mistakes. It has to be said however, that other than making me chuckle, these badly translated texts didn’t have a truly negative impact on the game. It was still very clear what the quest givers wanted me to do, and I never ran into a translation that made the story incomprehensible.

 

MMO Hack ‘n Slash

Following the quest line I quickly found myself in caves, cellars and meadows, dispatching big groups of wildlife intent on making me their lunch. The leveling system quickly managed to draw me in and the item and inventory systems feel nice and familiar without seeming stale.

 

 

All in all Mythos is turning out to be a solid hack and slash MMO, and although I hardly grouped up with other adventurers while playing, it is clear that the system for grouping is excellent. If anything I wished the earlier quests and dungeons required grouping a bit more. Diablo was ok as a single player but it really shone as a multiplayer game and the single biggest complaint about Torchlight has always been that it lacked a multiplayer option. Mythos is an MMO from the ground up that just happens to have many of the good things from those other games on top of it!

 

I’m looking forward to seeing the game improve further over the next couple of months and OnRPG will keep you posted on any updates!

 

League of Legends: Brand Recognition

Patch v1.0.0.115, Bruisers taking a beating, Taming Teemo, Brand

by Jason Harper (Hhean), OnRPG Journalist

 

Greetings fellow summoners! This is the patch v1.0.0.115 article for League of Legends, the game that just wants to set the world on fire. This patch includes a wide array of changes, most of them being shots fired across the bow of the tanky metagame, along with some other fun stuff like Teemo getting a well deserved nerfing and Brand, The Burning Vengeance.

 

 

Brand is a fire spitting murder machine of a mage. His crowd control is fairly limited, but he makes up for it by doing some absolutely sickening amounts of burst damage. He’s a combo based character, so people familiar with characters like Swain or Anivia will get along with him just fine.

 

 

A listing of Brand’s stats and abilities can be found in detail here. For an introduction to the character and how he plays, I would recommend checking out the Champion Spotlight.

 

 

Brand relies entirely on landing his spell combos to be effective due to synergy between his passive, Blaze, and the various secondary effects on his abilities. His player must make the choice between miraculously transforming one enemy into a smoking pile of ash, or turning the entire area around him into a burning wasteland littered with the corpses of his former foes. The big choice when making use of his abilities is always which spell he should lead with, as in doing so you are always forfeiting one of his secondary effects.

 

His most stock standard combo against enemy champions is leading with Conflagration [E], as it has no travel time and cannot miss the target. Its secondary effect, an extra bit of area of effect damage, is worthless against a single target, so you don’t really lose anything by leading with it. If you have got a clear shot, follow this with Sear [Q] to trigger its secondary effect, a single target stun. If you don’t have the shot, skip Sear and just judge where the enemy’s headed before dropping a Pillar of Flame [W] in their path, triggering the secondary effect that inflicts loads of damage. If you got the stun off, just put it straight on their immobile head and watch their health drop like a stone.

 

 

If you are against a pack of enemies, and have confidence that you won’t need any crowd control, lead with a Sear shot to the nearest champion in the cluster. Immediately cast Pillar of Flame under their feet, but drop a Conflagration on the blazing target before the Pillar detonates. This will spread the Blaze to everyone around the target just before the Pillar blows them up, and gives them very little time to react before you kindly remove all that excess health from them.

 

 

For farming, just drop a Pillar of Flame in the middle of a wave, and blow up the surviving little guys with a quick Conflagration. This isn’t too effective earlier on, but later in the game it is a good means of getting instant gold.

 

 

His ultimate, Pyroclasm [R], works similarly to Ryze’s Spell Flux. A big fireball (At least I think it is meant to be a fireball, it looks kind of like a fiery cloud) moves towards your target, then bounces to a nearby enemy, then bounces to the next target, and so on. The damage this thing deals is fairly good if you can catch people in a cluster, or fancy finishing up a single target for being on low health near a minion wave. Its big advantage though is its Blaze effect is pretty crap, just increasing the projectile’s speed. This means you can fire it off at the start of team fights without remorse, then drop a full load of Blaze enhanced goodness from the rest of your abilities without losing out on anything. Mega damaging area of effect burst followed by stuns. Yummy.

 

 

One problem with Brand, and it is especially pronounced with his ultimate, is spell shields really, really hurt his damage output. A single spell shield from Nocturne, Sivir or a Banshee’s Veil will stop the Pyroclasm from bouncing to another target afterwards, even if it is bouncing to someone else after the initial target. Spell shields also mean that he has to sacrifice two blaze enhancements in order to get just one single enhanced spell off on someone. That’s a big hit to Brand’s overall damage output, so always try to get a teammate to pop any spell shields before a fight really kicks off.

 

 

For his level 1 ability, you want to pick up Sear or Conflagration. This decision is really up to how confident you are that you will land Sear on an enemy. Sear is a much more efficient skill, doing more damage for a lower mana cost at a faster cooldown. However, it can miss, and won’t get blocked by minion waves like Conflagration will, so it is the riskier choice of the pair. I personally prefer Sear, due to it being more useful in the initial fights as the team protects our jungler. Either way, its best to pick up the other one of the pair at level 2, so you can start stunning people as soon as possible. Normally I would leave off on getting my third ability until level 4, but since Brand lives and dies by his full combos, its best to pick up Pillar of Flame up at level 3.

 

 

From there, again you are going to be playing the risk vs reward game. If you need a consistent harass that won’t cost you much mana, go for maxing Conflagration first, and follow with Pillar of Flame. If you want to do sickening amounts of damage from long range, but at the risk of missing and wasting your mana, max out Pillar of Flame before Conflagration. This option get riskier if the enemy buys boots early, since it makes dodging the pillars much easier. Again, I love playing the riskiest option, and landing the shots isn’t overly difficult given how large the blast is. My order then is usually Pyroclasm > Pillar of Flame > Conflagration > Sear.

 

 

Start out with a Sapphire Crystal, mana and health potion. This is going to be built into a Catalyst The Protector later to get around one of Brand’s big weaknesses – His lane sustainability is non-existent. For his boots, I’d recommend Sorcerer’s Shoes, since even if you’re carrying Mercury Treads, Brand is so squishy that the crowd control reduction isn’t going to save him if he is being focused. It is usually better to build this into a banshee’s veil much later in the game when the catalyst isn’t helping you much in the late game.

 

The recommended items on Brand work well for the most part. I think Will Of The Ancients is more of a gimmick item on him than anything else though, since while the spell vamp works with his passive it is only gaining you 0.5% of an enemy’s health with every hit. Even against health stacking teams, he simply won’t get enough health back to be worth the mana investment required to keep you in a fight. Once you have the Catalyst on him (which infuriatingly isn’t a recommended item), your second item is going to be either rushing a Rabadon’s Deathcap for mega damage because you are killing everyone in sight, or grabbing a Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre because you are having a bit of a slow game, and need to dip more into utility in order to be of use to your team. For those of you wondering – Yes, the passive also triggers the Rylai’s slow effect, so it inflicts four glorious seconds of slow on your victims. Either way, you are going to want both eventually if a game is going into overtime.

 

 

For his Masteries I use a stock standard 9/0/21 build that works on every mage in the game to a greater or lesser extent. I tend to run with Ignite and Ghost for his summoner spells, because I prefer the overall utility of Ghost over the ‘Oh Crap!’ button that is Flash.

 

 

His Runes should focus on magic penetration and mana regeneration, with a possible touch of cooldown reduction. Phreak’s rune build shown in the spotlight is well thought out, and maximizes the capabilities of his passive. I personally use a similar build, but replace the glyphs with cooldown reduction, because I have an unhealthy obsession with cooldown reduction, and want to never stop using abilities, ever.

 

 

Brand is an absolute blast to play. I love his highly adaptive style, and combo based skill system. You constantly have to make decisions while playing and building him, which I think is the core of good design. Unfortunately though, while his damage output is extremely high, his crowd control is very limited (A single, iffy stun that can be blocked by enemy tanks), which is a noticeable weakness to have on your team’s mage class. It means you are putting more reliance on your team’s tank(s) to perform the majority of the crowd control, when you could simply Tibbers bomb everything into submission instead. Brand is fun and strong but I think he is going to need some specific team compositions to support him in order to be viable in competitive play.

 

In Other News, Tanky Meta-Game Gets Screwed:

Holy Raptor Riding Cowboys Batman! There have been a lot of changes this patch. Were I to hazard a guess, I would assume that some of these changes were intended to be added to the previous patch, but got pushed back to this week because, wow, Riot have been busy this fortnight.

 

 

The biggest overarching theme of this patch has been ‘Screw you, tanky metagame’. The best early game defensive item, Heart of Gold, got a nerf that even I have to admit was deserved, and this is coming from someone who loves his tanks. Randuin’s Omen has been made largely useless, which I think really wasn’t deserved. Sunfire cape now outstrips it in just about every way. On the flip side, Infinity Edge got cheaper, better and easier to build, its various components being made cheaper in addition to the item itself. Looking over these changes, I am going to suffer from a serious lack of surprise if Catalyst The Protector gets nerfed in the upcoming weeks.

 

 

Teemo got slammed with a nerf bat to the face, and the little pest couldn’t have deserved it more. Nearly every other nerf that was inflicted looks to be a test run for future changes to bruiser style characters. There was some odd nerfing to the heal reduction abilities of various characters, which is just another reason to always be carrying ignite. Cassiopeia got some much needed buffs, though with some testing she still is a bit underwhelming, though closer, I think, to the role of a chasing mage she looks to have been intended as.

 

 

If you haven’t tried League of Legends yet. Now is the perfect time.

 

Hobo Wars: Teaching You Why Hobos Are Cool

By: vincenthaoson

 

 

HoboWars is a browser based game created by HellBored Entertainment that puts you in as a smelly homeless dude (or dudette) trying to live a world of Hobo-ism (I just made that up). Hobo Wars gives you the chance to live your dreams of being a hobo without losing your house to the bank in real life.

 

 

The game mechanic is simple, you live in a dog eat dog world as a hobo. You need food to stay “awake”, you battle it out with other hobos to earn experience points and money which would translate to weapons, equipments and better food. You also have the choice of “studying” so that you can improve your stats and of course explore the “city” you live in to collect cans and dropped money.

 

 

With that said, there’s nothing much to look forward to in Hobo Wars. I suppose I can include the mini-games in the arcade as well but that sums it up.

I must stress however, that Hobo Wars is a game that’s more appealing because of its charm or novelty rather than its gameplay. Hobo War banks on its Hobo theme to such an extent that the draw is heavily reliant on that to appeal you for at least about 30 minutes. After that the game’s addicting nature kicks in and traps you in the gutters.

 

 

On paper it seems that the idea of “schooling” being addicting is quite preposterous, but when you start playing the game you just get sucked into it, clicking on the attribute you want to raise to a certain amount. If that does not appeal to you then “explore” your city in search of cans that you can sell or dropped money bills that can reach up to 120 dollars (the highest I got in one drop anyway). How you can be a hobo in a city that drops $100 bills on the ground like chump change is beyond me though.

 

 

If you area tough customer not easily entertained by “exploring” or getting “schooled” in browser games, Hobo Wars gives you the opportunity to “defeat” fellow hobos. I mean seriously, if the title isn’t a dead giveaway already I don’t know what is. Battles are stat-based combat with the outcome determined by the game. Though it is not the most immersive of battle systems out there, Hobo Wars’ battle system does provide me a good chuckle or two whenever I finish trouncing someone. I also liked the idea that you can just throw your hobo into a fight without knowing the strength of your enemy, because all you have as any indicator is rough level indicator of their strength.

 

 

All in all, Hobo Wars is not so much a serious browser game that will keep you coming back for more hourly. It is light, funny and quite easy to play and requires little time dedication compared to other games of its kind. The game’s addicting nature must not be underestimated though. I still find myself wanting to jump back into the land of hobos for some good ol’ schooling and dueling.