By Michael Sagoe (mikedot)

Facebook gaming is about to get a little brutal with this recent title created by developer and publisher group “nWay”. ChronoBlade is a 2.5D multiplayer online beat ‘em up that features fast-paced, arcade style action, mixed with multiplayer co-op mayhem, all made possible through the power of Adobe Flash 3D.

Now multiplayer beat ‘em ups are very rare in this day and age, and even rarer are the ones that can be played online. With the recent departure of Nexon’s Dungeon Fighter Online for North America, the itch of combo heavy combat started to linger on me. With a quick glance at what ChronoBlade had to offer, I was hoping it could scratch that itch.

Customization

For starters: There is no initial character creation or customization. Instead, players will be forced to play as Aurok, a burly warrior who lets his fists do most of the talking.  As with most Facebook games, your registered name on Facebook will be used as your player name.  Once you get into it, the stat customization is pretty standard of what you would expect from an RPG: The outfits and weapons that your character wears determines your character’s combat power, armor, health and energy levels. The downside on customization is that if there’s an outfit that you really like for its looks, you won’t be able to use in the later levels, unless you decide to upgrade your outfits and weapons using the game’s crafting system. This system is simple to use, as most of the materials players will need are found from monster drops and treasure chests. However, for the few material pieces that can’t be found from missions, players will have to bug their Facebook friends in order to obtain them. Not only that, but once players have gathered all the needed materials, the crafting process can only be initiated by using crystals, and these can only be obtained using real money. It’s kind of a cheap way of getting players to advertise and bug others to try out the game, but fortunately enough, crafting isn’t mandatory as equipment drops are rather frequent.

There’s also a skill system that allows players to mix and match different active and passive skills between two different class types, but the options players have here aren’t exactly varied. You can unlock new skills from using points that are earned from each level up, but there are no skill trees and/or branching skill paths to choose from, so in the end your character’s skill build will be straight forward and simple. It’s also more effective to focus on one class type rather than dual-spec’ing, which doesn’t leave much room for experimentation during the early levels.

Controls

The game uses a basic control scheme: Arrow keys for movement, A key to block, S key for heavy attacks, D key for light attacks, QWER for skills and 1234 for items. The controls are quick and responsive, allowing players to attack and dodge almost effortlessly during combo attacks and guards. Players can also dash and sidestep as a way to close the gap on enemies or recover from knockbacks. There’s also support for gamepads, as well, which also has great responsiveness. Button layouts are mapped comfortably.

Gameplay

While the customization does not leave much room for experimentation, the game’s combat system has a lot of it. As players progress through and earn levels, they’ll gain several new combo attacks to pull off. With moves such as gap closers, guard breakers, knockbacks, pulls, projectiles and juggle launchers, there’s a lot that players will have to work with, which is important because the game prides itself in its combo system. In order to get big scores which will improve the rarity of the loot at the end of a mission, players will have to achieve long combos while guarding and dodging an onslaught of enemy attacks. Not only that, but they’ll also have to mix up their combos frequently in order to increase their score multiplier before finishing up their combo with a powerful attack called a HyperStrike.

Despite a fair amount of player skill being needed to complete missions, skill can only get players so far when stats are involved, so there may be times where you’ll have re-visit old dungeons in order to grind up a few levels or search for some better equipment before moving on, otherwise you’ll find yourself taking too much damage, dying from simple mistakes and end up having to pay heavy gold or crystal fees in order to revive in battle.

Despite this, ChronoBlade does a fairly good job of presenting challenges for players without coming too far off as cheap or unfair, as most of the enemies that players will face have predictable attack patterns that can be blocked and dodged with care. Some of the attacks that can’t be blocked are telegraphed by a red glow, and most enemies will try to crowd around you so you’ll always be on the move.

There are some binding challenges such as restricting the player’s movement to an actual 2D space, so players won’t be able to sidestep, or other elements such as adding hazards around the environment. Speaking of environments: there isn’t much room for exploration here, sadly. The game presents a clear path for players to follow, so your main objective is to head from room to room, defeat enemies in said room, and keep on moving until they’ve reached the last boss. Occasionally, there will be a few tiny paths that lead to some extra loot, but these are few and far between.

So with all this and more, where does the multiplayer come in? Well the only kind of multiplayer available is co-op missions and weekly tournaments with leaderboards. Weekly tournaments can be attempted at any level and players challenge each other to compete for the highest score. Top three players for each week will earn unique and rare equipment, most of which can’t be crafted, looted or bought, so it’s a worthwhile challenge for everyone. Co-op missions, on the other hand, are very limited to challenges such as defeating as many monsters as possible within a time limit. The developers at nWay missed a golden opportunity here that could allow players to play through the game’s story missions together, since despite only being able to unlock a second character after playing with Aurok for a while, Lophi has to start her leveling experience the same way that Aurok does, and the storylines are practically the same.

Visuals and Presentation

For a game that was created using Adobe Flash, ChronoBlade looks good enough to be a console-style title, or at least a DLC game on Xbox Live or PSN. While the polygon counts are low and the textures are somewhat unsightly at times, the game looks excellent in motion. Animations for attacks are smooth and give a distinct feeling of impact with each hit, not to mention that the final hit on certain enemies always end with a gory shot of your character bashing out their guts, leaving lots of bloody goodness on your screen.

Chronoblade’s theme of Norse-style mythology mixed with some medieval fantasy and just a tad bit of steampunk works out great, especially with the dramatic, but mystical sounding rock music.

Community

While this can be seen as both a pro and a con, the community of ChronoBlade is only what you make of it. There are no towns or lobbies for players to meet up, and no guild features are available at the moment. There’s only you and your Facebook friends to rely on for co-op action. While this will certainly prove to be a more enjoyable experience over playing with random people, those that do want the option will be out of luck.

Overall: Good

ChronoBlade succeeds well at bringing arcade style beat ‘em up action to Facebook, with combo heavy gameplay that is as challenging as it is satisfying. While the game is still fairly underdeveloped in its current state, and its methods of getting people to play and pay may be seen as a bit cheesy, the promise of more community features and PvP in the future can only mean good things for this entertaining time waster.

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor)

Wars can be fought in many ways, on the land, in the water, and high up in the sky. War Thunder is what Gaijin Entertainment self-proclaims ‘a next generation MMO combat game dedicated to World War 2 military aviation.’ Now I have always been a big fan of planes, and the Second World War prior to all the fancy computer auto-targeting is probably the most intriguing era of aerial dog fighting. So I went to check out whether or not War Thunder could legitimately label itself as Next Gen, a phrase thrown around so much lately it’s starting to lose meaning.

When we were young everyone had their toy of choice. I personally went with war toys and the variety of planes was a driving factor in my later interest in history. The impact aerial dog fights in World War II had on the overall map of Europe created ripples in time that continue to shape the world as we know it. Brave men stepped foot into battles by a new set of rules, abandoning tactics honed by our species for thousands of years to venture into an unknown frontier of battle. The thoughts of being in those historic shoes and flying recklessly into dog fights with maybe a 30% chance of survival at best easily gives an adrenaline rush. I have nothing but good things to say about its implementation in Battlefield titles as well as World of Warplanes, and perhaps brought an unprofessional level of enthusiasm as I clicked ready in my War Thunder starter plane.

First of all I want to mention how beautiful this game is; not only is it the best looking title in the free dog-fighting genre, it may be one of the most beautiful titles I’ve reviewed period. Each landscape you will fly through is absolutely mind blowing. The detail you will find on each hill, town or even river is artfully crafted, and even on the lowest graphics the game will constantly distract you from gameplay with one scenic vista after another. Each plane stands out from the pack as a unique snowflake. This is quite an accomplishment with five playable nations each offering a diverse set of plane styles. Beyond just looks, you will find the planes feel functionally different as well, but more on that later on.

Beyond a shiny paint job, War Thunder brings realism in heaping helpings to set itself apart. The impact a single bullet can have on impact with your plane is surreal. See your plane has multiple hit boxes, and each bullet type brings a different type of damage depending on where it hits. Shooting fans that prefer kill shots over drawn out gun battles will be happy to know that two hit boxes are almost always kill shots. The first is the engine; after a few battles you’ll learn to dread the sight of your engine smoking as once it lights up on fire, your match is over. That is unless you can escape your pursuer and find a soft landing spot between the trees in the nearby mountains (yea, good luck with that!). One hit box is even worse than the engine, and that’s the pilot himself. Once he is hit, the lights will go out and you are not able to control your plane anymore. The rest of the hit boxes however do have an impact on how your plane will maneuver. Even if they are only slightly damaged, you will notice this while ascending and descending. You will go slower, you will have trouble keeping airborne, and eventually if you take enough damage, you’re going down. Once any component on your plane is completely destroyed, you will have to make a crash landing, and it takes some serious practice to accomplish this feat.

Steering your plane is easy and won’t take actual military training to figure out. The mouse acts purely as a steering device. It can also double as your thruster control via the mouse scroll wheel, though this can be accomplished with the W and S key instead. Besides that there is always a way to put your landing gear down, and to change your flaps. But as a new player you should probably not try to use these at all at first. I still remember my first try at landing; let’s just say I was better off hitting the water. Flying in War Thunder is an easy job to do, but it takes a veteran player to be able to land.

There are three different battles that you can start. The mostly played Arcade Battle, where you will duke it out with a team against another team and you’ll have to do objectives to win your game. Historical Battles are another choice where you will fly in recreated regions where famous aerial battles took place. Finally there are the major leagues known as Full Real Battles where tons of players fly in but you only have one life to live, so make it count!

Now onto the planes themselves, each playable nation has its own research tree of available planes that you can choose from. There is basically a lot of different plane types, but the most known and used ones are the Fighter and the Bomber. As you can imagine, the fighter is the one who will go head to head with the other air planes, while the Bomber focuses itself on the ground targets and objectives. Unfortunately, just like in real life, your plane will have to reload, and this is the only negative thing of this game. Each helicopter is equipped with a different type of gun, and along with that you can also choose your type of special ammunition, that gives bonuses to either planes, or more heavier targets. Some of these guns are really strong, but barely have any rounds in the magazine. And for bombers, well they will have to wait a while before each bomb is loaded in again.

Conclusion: Great

I have been playing this game on and off for a while now, and I keep coming back for more. The gameplay itself has been well honed since my initial time playing; and offers incentive for players to put in the effort to perfect a certain plane type to overcome inexperienced foes. Being a better pilot means a whole lot in this realm. Each nation, each plane has its own unique set of skills, and you can always switch between them to keep gameplay interesting. The full package that War Thunder has to offer is just phenomenal. Of all the titles throwing around Next Gen, this is one of the few deserving of it. As a big fan of planes, and the Second World War, I can tell you War Thunder has all the elements I need to stay hooked.