Yearly Archives: 2003

Savage Eden

Characters Not many classes/races to choose from, you got the typical warrior, a mage, a mage defender class and a human who uses guns to attack enemy. I hoped for more of a selection, but they are good. 6/10

Monsters I havn’t played the game to a high level, but the monsters are good, they spawn fast and there’s alot to kill, nice variety 7/10

Magic Now this is where the game fails (note: Like I said, I didn’t play a high level) in the beggining theirs only 3 spells to choose from, and later on it looks like their isn’t alot anyways. You have a fireball spell, pepple spell and a lightning one, fireball being the most powerful. 3/10

Graphics The graphics are great. The character graphics and monster graphics are nice. I love the spell affects, although, they do get old after awhile 9/10

Items My melee is the highest level of my characters, the weapons look nice, a nice variety, all of the weapons are level and skill based. 7.5/10

Levels/Skills the levels are nice, quick to level. You have stats that you raise everytime you level, you get 3 stat points each. You also have different skills that you raise also, like, upgrading damage by a percentage, or faster healing time. I like how it works. 8/10

Death Penalty What does penalty? I got to level 24 and died a few times and nothing happened, probly isn’t implemented yet. A good or bad thing, your opinion 5/10

Crafting I havn’t explored this part yet, but you can craft different gems and stuff. Can’t rate this.

Overall It’s an okay game, im only playing it till I can open up my Horizons box on christmas, it’s fun, the GM even comes on and talks to people, which is cool, a rate this a good score. 7/10

Neopets

A popular pet game, can’t really be considered text base, or a MMORPG, want to know what all the fuss is about? Well, heres the review

Graphics : Well, some of the pets look dumb, others look cool. It’s all flash based. And i’ve seen better flash based games out there 4/10

Players : A game with tons of players, sometimes its a lil to much, i’ve seen alot of flame wars in message boards, but with a game with tons of players, theres bound to be flame wars. Also, scammers and hackers. I havn’t been scammed, but I have experienced being hacked, all my stuff was gone, then I got harrassement pms from the guy, he got banned, never got my stuff back. A game with tons of players, can sometimes be bad. 4/10

Admins/Moderators : Cant really review this, I never see any mods or admins on. People see that a user as been banned so. And people complain about being banned for no reason, dunno if thats true or not. 5/10 (Only because I never see any on)

Games : Alot of the games are bugged, like, playing a ball game, the ball gets stuck on the side of the screen. Then the graphics, I mentioned above i’ve seen better 3/10

Overall : I like pets game yes, but just because of so many players, I cant even chat, which I like to do, to many messages on one screen, and to many scammers/hackers for my liking. Overall, its over hyped, but people play it, and theres alot to do. So I have mixed feelings over it. 4/10

Astonia

This is a game that isn’t for everyone. The graphics are 2d but look great in my opinion. The battle system is fast paced and your character will automatically attack when attacked.

Characters:

When you start off you can decide to become 1 of 2 classes, warrior and mage. After leveling up to around 25-36 you can fight the gatekeeper to either Arch or Seyan, when you arch your character gains a cape and a new skill, and when you seyan you revert back to lvl 2, and are now a warrior-mage.

Each person raises their character differently, since as you gain exp you can increase stats, and levels are there just to give you a basic idea of power. And you can change your characters color at any time, so you can change to what you think looks good. Seyans can also arch.

World:

The world is of moderate size. 4 towns with a bunch of dungeons/areas. There is enough to keep people satisfied and the level of advancement isn’t fast so youll always have somewhere to look forward to going to.

Monsters:

There are hundreds of monsters in this game, each of them looks unique, from bandits, to skeletons, to demons, to harpys, etc etc.

Community:

THIS is astonias true strength, there is so many ways to communicate, normal talking, shouting, hollering, and chat channels. There are clans which you can join and then have a channel just for that clan, and you can raid other clans, and have little clan battles to win clan jewels which keep clans alive. there is a huge player base, in town you will meet many many people, and at times you will fill a bit too crowded. You will meet many friends, and meet many a helping hand. Also you will meet people who you do not wish to meet again, but in what game you wont.

Sound:

The only downfall of the game, the sound is just horrible, the sounds are all awful, and there is no background music, so it can get silent.

Overall:

A very sound game, which i think everyone will enjoy if they give it a chance and dont give up right away.

Call of Duty

Ok, this is a FPS, I know not a MMORPG, but this is a good game, and this is taken from demo, I havn’t played full-version yet, but what I played, ROCKED! It takes place during World War 2

Graphics: 9/10- I loved the explosions especially on the tanks, the characters were good, not top of the line so, a little blocky, the gun affects were nice to 🙂 Over all, they get a good rating

Sound: 8/10- I loved the explosion sounds, like when you implant C4 or whatever it was on a tank and hear it explode, the character voices were nice and realistic, the gun sounds were great 🙂 Didn’t pay attention if their were music or not, don’t think there was, but, I was busy listening tot he explosions and stuff and didn’t pay attention to that- Another high score

Missions 6/10- This is taken from demo, a level I see alot in fps games, plant C4 in this case, a tank, watch it explode after taking out all the guards and move on, the demo mission was pretty short, but it was still fun

Fellow soldier help/AI 8/10- Ignore the dumb rank title, couldn’t find a good name, now on with the topic, in the mission I played I had a few soldiers helping me, which they really did save my life a few times, I was about dead then they killed him and I ran to get the health kit and moved on, really good AI to, my other fellow soldiers crouched when needed and hid behind stuff to block the fire from the enemy, it’s all good 🙂 The enemy AI I didnt see much, they seemed to just keep firing at the wall or vehicle without doing any damage, but still, my fellow soldiers were good

Overall 9/10- I loved the game, I loved the mission, the game was pretty good, one of my favorite games out this year, and this was only the demo..I still liked it, I give this a high score, I reccomend this to all FPS/World war game lovers, like I said up top, it takes place in World War 2

PlaneShift Review: Early Quirks

PlaneShift Review: Early Quirks

 

Graphics: 8.5
The graphics are truly stunning. The texture work is phenomenal. The character animations are nice, but they could add some emotion to actions like jumping and strafing. When outside, sometimes the weather can get rainy. The rain is rendered nicely, giving the world a real world look.

 

Gameplay: 3.0
Really it is just a big chatroom were you can get crystals… this wil be around a 7.0 or more at the end of this year 2003 because combat system and lots of new features are comming in… The currency gets the lowest score because new players can’t get any crystals, higher players know where they all are and it take 500 to buy a basic weapon.

 

Guild System: 8.0
Really great i found myself starting the LEGENDS guild and in 3 hours got 20 other members.. Really fun system.. You can change rank names, change members ranks.. Change your guild symbol… Even you get your own chat system for your guild.

 

Performance: 6.5
Performance is ok considering the game is still in alpha phase. The lag is sometimes un bearable. My computer is top notch, but sometimes the amount of polygons on screen can slow performance considerably, since the alpha product is a memory hog. The game freezes up a lot.

 

Sound: 5
The music is nicely composed, but it can get a ltitle annoying after a while. I don’t really hear very many in-game sounds except when rain starts falling, otherwise, the sound is mediocre. Yea yea, it;s still in alpha phase, but it could use some more “cream with it’s coffee”.

Value: 10
Of course i’m going to give this game a 10 because first off — it’s FREE! No cost at all! Second, the developers have promised many things for this game; a great atmosphere, many ways to make a living, great quests and adventures, and a huge community to make friends in.

Overall: 7.5
So far, the game is slowly taking on what could be a revolutionary product in the MMORPG field. The graphics are already beautiful and still improving, realistic sound will certainly be added in future releases, The peformance will increase in organization and structure in the near future, and the production values are off the charts. Oodles of people are expecting an awesome, FREE MMORPG that can be enjoyed by all roleplaying types, and I believe that PlaneShift will deliver the goods one way or another.

Final Fantasy XI

First, its a MMORPG, so yes it requires pay to play

13 dollars per month +1 every extra char, first char free.

Now heres my review

User friendly The people are really friendly in this game, I was low on health and someone came running up and healed me, also I had one guy give me a shield, for free, I didn’t even ask for one. Right now so, no one talks alot, but its pretty user friendly I rate this 10/10

Events I havn’t been to any events, I missed the Halloween one, because I didn’t have the game yet, so I can’t rate this, but yes, it as events it looks like

Combat The combat is confusing at first, (always use Check on monsters to see if you can battle them or not) You have to double click monster, or use enter key to select them then press it again to attack. Theirs special moves you can do also for melees, I made a warrior for my first char, which gets a special ability when you first start that lets you do critical hits when you use it. Then for thief another char I made gets an ability to dodge melee attacks 100% of time for 30 seconds. Combat is pretty normal, oh, if you do special moves in a sequence with perfect timing you can do more damage then normal which is nice, so its all about timing. 9/10

Graphics The graphics are amazing, especially for the special attacks and spells, I havn’t played much to explore around so to different cities, but the cities look amazing. The water affects look great to 9/10

Controls Now this is where the lower score appears, although im getting used to it, its pretty confusing, you use the numpad to move, although you can change it somehow (havn’t figured it out yet) to the w a s and d key like a normal mmorpg would use. its better to select monster with the Enter key, as, if you use left click and you miss the monster it opens the annoying menu, so Im just using enter key mostly, although it sometimes selects a person instead of the monster. Like I said, you get used to it, alot of reviews are saying its annoying/hard or whatever. 5/10

Sound The sound is peaceful, but im not listening to it much, so I cant really review this but I like it so 8/10

Skills/Leveling Its level based/skill based, you raise a certain skill as you use it, like if you use swords or daggers, the more you use it, the higher it is, as that, the higher your level, the more special abilities/spells you get. Its an ok system, I dont really care about skills or leveling, so I wont rate this one

Overall So far the people are pretty friendly on my server (which I forgot to mention, your picked into a random server) I havn’t done any missions/quests yet so I didn’t review that part, so far im loving this game, minus the controls, I rate this 8/10

Zelda Online

Reminds you of Graal?
But this sweet little Game will stay in the Zelda Universe with a new World and other Players online.
This Game is in Beta Status allthough the Screenshots look great. Currently you can contribute your Work with 2 selfmade Tools from the ZeldaOnline-Team.
The Mapmaker
and the Tilesetmaker.
With a little bit skill and very much free time you can create your own World (with your own Tilesets;).
Its also said that there will be Minigames from the GameBoy-Games or completly new ones and other great Features. In the near future the Game will be downloadable. So check their websites and make some nice Maps or spend some of your Game-Ideas.

The sims Makin’ magic

It all started last Sunday…
I broke my Sims unleashed dish, so I go up town to get a replacement, what do I see ‘The Sims makin’ magic’ so I think that I don’t have it, so I buy it. 20 minutes later the game in my sweaty little hands. Installed.
The game is fantastic, apart from the usual more items (all +175 of them) and yet another area for your little Sims to explore, different NPC’s (including a pixie) and more skins, I noticed an interesting new feature: magic.
Basically what you do is buy the right equipment, a few ingredients, and viola, instant magic made easy!
I found the ingredients lists confusing at first, however a quick look at the handy spell book and I was soon making magic.
So far I’ve turned a neighbour into a frog, made a certain someone really like me a cheered up lots of unhappy folks, but there are many more spells I have yet to find (including putting out fires quick, teleportation, reanimating the dead and may more).
If by some miracle you only have the Sims and no add on packs, get this one first, I’ve got all the add-ons and this is by far, the best out of the lot (speaking of lots, be wary of any sim who has a lot of toads jumping round the house, you never know what dark arts they have dabbled in).
If this is not one of the best Sims add on’s yet, I’ll eat my hat (and wand, and spell book)

Battlefield

Battlefield
“Experience Battlefield’s Brave New Worlds. New Maps! New Features! Fuel up your tank and prepare for one of the web’s most dynamic multi-player games. You start out as a recruit, assign yourself to one of four teams and choose a combat scenario.”

When I read this while surfing around Bonus.com, I immediately checked it out to see what it was, and was suprised.

GAMEPLAY: ****
I have a lot of fun playing this game. Maybe it is just me. You roll around in a tank, shooting other tanks of opposite teams. There are tournaments to compete in, and medals to earn. There’s a good player base and everything so you have plenty of people to lay the smack down on 🙂

COMMUNITY: ***
When I was a new recruit — the community wasnt very nice to me 🙁 But it’s nothing to really whine about. Once you learn how to play and start blending in, people become very friendly.

GRAPHICS: ***
*Judging from a 2D-Scale
The graphics arent really that bad for a 2D Tank game. I like these kind of graphics 😛 But it is pretty much your basic graphic set.

SOUND: ** 1/2
The sound is nothing to get real hype over. All you really hear is your tank rolling around and stuff blowing up.

SKILLS/LEVELING UP: *****
I like the way they did this system. There are medals to be won, and ranks to be recieved. Watchout though, you can get demoted :-O. You can also recieve the Purple Heart, which is a rare medal people really look forward to recieving one day.

FEATURES: **** 1/2
The features of this game is excellent. There are 4 teams to choose from, Medals/Ranks, Bombs, tons of PvP, tournaments, top 25 listings, guilds, and various other stuff, like The Purple Heart.

OVERALL: *** 3/4
The game is fun — and that is all I look for in a game. I’m also deadly in love with PvP — which is what this game is all about. If you’re tired of all the hack and slash gain lvl new skills repeat games — try blowing some tanks up, it relieves some stress 😉

*The only thing required to play is a FREE registration at Bonus.com. Set up your account then click on ‘Games’ -> ‘Battlefield’, and scroll down to Battlefield and you’re all set. You may want to read the How To Play first.

Mu Online

Overview
Mu Online is a 3D MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Role-playing game) developed by Webzen. It is set in medevial times, and you may choose from three classes: Dark Knight, Dark Wizard, and Elf. You may also create a Magic Gladiator, a mix between a Dark Knight and a Dark Wizard, but you must get a character to level 220 before you can have access to him. There is no character creation system, every class member looks the same. You control your character with your mouse, and use the “Q”, “W”, and “E” keys for shortcuts in the use of items (health and mana potions, etc.). Now, on to the review…..

Graphics
Mu Online has excellent 3D graphics for a MMORPG of its kind. It has very detailed character models, and (for the most part) good background scenery. The buildings in Mu are well-textured and very solid looking up close. The backgrounds have some very cool ambient effects, such as grass swaying in the breeze. All the monsters are well animated, and some are breath-taking. The spell effects are excellent (especially the Dark Wizard’s lightning spell), usually very well animated and beautiful. Combat styles are usually very entertaining to watch, although some are pretty stupid. Overall, Mu’s graphics deserve 8/10, because although they are good for the most part, some of the smaller things (such as chairs) look kind of sloppy.

Sound
Mu’s sound is extremely annoying. I couldn’t get the BGMs (Background Music) to work, and even if I had I don’t think they would have helped much. The monster’s screechings and wailings are absolutely the most annoying stuff I’ve heard in a game. You try and play a whole day with budge dragons, hounds, and liches screaming at the top of their lungs. It almost drove me insane, so I rarely had the speakers on while I played Mu. The weapon sound effects are decen though, as are your footsteps. Mu’s sound gets a 5/10 because although the monster sound effects are loud and annoying, the rest is pretty decent.

Gameplay
Mu’s gameplay is somewhat of a mixed bag. The combat is pretty stale, I mean how excited can you get watching your character swinging stroke after stroke with you just sitting there staring. It’s completely non-interactive, just click on a monster and sit back and enjoy the show. You can make it “interactive” by making it so that you have to click on the monster every time you want your character to attack (a la Priston Tale), but your finger will hate you for it. Spell casting and archery are automatic as well, unless you make the finger-cramping change. You can PK (Player-Kill) in this game, only it’s not very rewarding. You can only PK once every 3 hours, unless you wish to branded as a murderer. If you are branded as a murderer, merchants will not sell you anything and you will have a greater chance of dropping one of your items if you get killed by another player. If another player attacks you, then self-defense will be set up against him. That is, you can kill them while you are defending yourself and you will not be penalized for it. The same goes for you if you attack, only vice-versa. However, if you become a murderer, will you NOT have the benefit of self-defense; if you attack back, it will set up self-defense against you(After 4-5 hours you will no longer be a murderer). If you decide to kill another player while you are still a murderer, you will become a Phonomaniac (I still don’t know where they got that word from). If you are a Phonomaniac(you must wait 9 hours before you become normal again), players will not be penalized in any way for killing you, and you have even greater chances of dropping one of your items. Socially speaking, besides being able to create parties and join a guild, there is nothing much besides the ordinary sell/trade/buy stuff usually going on in the main town. Mu’s Gameplay deserves a 6/10, because I dislike its PK system, and the combat system isn’t very engaging.

Final Comments
Mu could have been so much more, if the developers only had spent a little more time with it. They should have added a job system, or at least a skill system much like Runescape’s. They should have had staff-run events, where the winners could recieve special pieces of armor, etc. I gave Mu 7/10 overall, because it can be very addicting, just don’t expect too much out of it. But, don’t take my word for it, click the link below and download it for yourself (it’s only 60 megabytes).