Yearly Archives: 2013

Aura Kingdom’s World Comes To Life

Aura Kingdom

The curtain has begun to pull back on the rich world of Azuria. Aeria Games has revealed the backstory and major players of Aura Kingdom, leading up to the current events at the start of the ambitious massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

Aura Kingdom

Azuria is a vibrant world full of colorful creatures and deep history. It is comprised of three realms: Terra, home to mortal races; Pandemonium, land of demons; and the heavenly Aura Kingdom. Though players will spend their time adventuring through Terra, creatures from Pandemonium and the legendary spirits known as Eidolons from Aura Kingdom will emerge from their home realms to be part of the far-reaching tale.

Aura Kingdom

Imagine being thrust without warning into a desperate defense against a horde of rampaging demons, only to awaken in a cold sweat with fleeting visions of the dream left behind as ominous portents of events to come. This is how the adventure in Aura Kingdom begins; players soon become Envoys of Gaia, individuals gifted with unique powers and destined to shape the future of the world.

Aura Kingdom

Along the way they will advance through a multitude of gorgeous zones, each with distinctive looks. Beginning in the seaside town of Port Skandia, players will make their way through the quaint verdant landscape of Crescent Hill, the pirate bastion and black market center of Helonia Coast, and much more. Eventually the journey leads to Terra’s stalwart capital city of Navea, where the game’s most important quests begin to unfold.

Aura Kingdom

Dragon’s Prophet Launch Review

by Jaime Skelton (MissyS)

Who doesn’t love dragons? The staple of most fantasy, dragons encapsulate raw power, ageless wisdom, and unrivaled ferocity. As players, we fancy ourselves either as the greatest dragon slayers, or their staunchest allies. Dragon’s Prophet, from the creators of the popular Runes of Magic MMORPG, bring many of our fantasies to life, allowing us to battle, train, and even fly on a dragon of our very own. Dragons alone can’t make a game, however, so how does Dragon’s Prophet stay in flight when the allure of having your own dragon fades?

 

Dragon's Prophet

 

The Harbinger

At first blow, character creation seems simple enough. Choose a male or female character, and then from the classes Guardian, Ranger, Oracle, or Sorcerer. The classes are fairly standard to the genre, with Guardians as the heavy melee class, Rangers favoring distance weapons like bows, Oracles functioning as a light melee class, and Sorcerers given the path of healing or magical DPS.

Customizing your character’s appearance, however, will leave your jaw a little slack, especially considering Dragon’s Prophet is a free-to-play game. The sometimes dreaded slider-based system makes an appearance to allow you to tweak your character extensively. While many games offer you a chance to change your height, Dragon’s Prophet also lets you adjust your torso size, arm and leg length, your musculature, your facial features, and even seemingly ridiculous options like the size and position of your buttocks. Amusingly, the one character feature that isn’t fully customizable is hair, as there are only a limited amount of preset options. Still, it’s almost impossible not to create a unique character in the world.

 

Dragon's Prophet

 

Dragons, How Do They Work?

The lack of innovation in questing is the most immediate gripe we have with Dragon’s Prophet. After a short tutorial that helps introduce basic commands like movement and attacking, you’re thrown into a vibrant world to kill the proverbial ten rats for the local townsfolk. In fact, one of the first quests you get is to kill poisoned chomper rats, while collect viscera from healthy ones. Another early quest has you play shepherd to very stubborn sheep in town. You’ll have to get used to the traditional style of questing here, too, because it makes up a good portion of the gameplay.

Luckily, though, salvation comes in the form of taming dragons. The game boasts several types of dragons to choose from: flying, ground, aquatic, and hybrids between these three types. You will be given your first taming task fairly early in the game. When you use your dragon taming skill, you’re thrown into a mini-game where you use WASD to keep an indicator in a designated area while the dragon tries to buck you off. If you’ve ever played Red Dead Redemption and done the horse breaking missions, you’ll be familiar with this bronco-busting experience.

 

Dragon's Prophet

Fighting Fire With Dragons

Despite the weakness of the questing system, combat in Dragon’s Prophet is incredibly engaging. At a cursory glance, it seems like a normal skill based system; however, your auto attacks are bound to the left and right mouse buttons, and these attacks can be chained into various combinations, a la Dynasty Warriors. It’s not just those auto attacks that can be chained, though. Most of your other skills also have of combinations to utilize. For example, a Sorcerer can use their Ground Fissure skill to knock enemies back, and follow up with a basic attack to do further damage to all of them. Most skills also synergize quite well: using the Sorcerer again, they can cast Fiery Dragon’s Breath to deal a good deal of damage and leave a damage field on the ground, and follow up with a Zero Dimension freeze chain to ensure the enemies take full damage.

Combat is not only combo-based, it’s action-oriented. While a Sorcerer may have to stand still to cast their spells, a Ranger, for example, can move while using their auto attack chain. All classes get an active dodge mechanic that can be used to avoid attacks, and this can also be used with some synergy to other attacks. Rangers, for example, can knock back enemies back with Griffin Rake, and immediately dodge backwards to give them plenty of breathing room to launch more damaging attacks.

You’re also able to use your dragon in combat, and choosing a dragon is as “simple” as selecting what skills complement your character best. A Ranger may find a dragon with tanking skills best, to keep enemies from getting close, while an Oracle may find something to help focus on damaging mobs. Dragons can also be trained, helping them learn new skills in the process.

 

Dragon's Prophet

 

Here, There Be Dragons

Each time you level up in game, your character gains an increase in seven base stats: Strength, Constitution, Ferocity, Intelligence, Focus, Charisma, and Dragon Affinity. Strength increases physical damage and defense, constitution increases maximum health and health regeneration, ferocity increases critical hit chance and damage, intelligence increases magic damage and defense, focus increases physical defense and armor penetration, charisma extends the time your dragon can help you attack and boosts their attributes, and dragon affinity increases magic defense and penetration. You also gain three points per level in addition to the base increases to develop your character as you see fit.

At level 15, all classes gain a Mastery system, allowing each class to buff one or more of their core abilities, or even learn brand new ones. Sorcerers who use a lot of AoE abilities like Fiery Dragon’s Breath and Ground Fissure can increase the damage they cause, or add additional effects to the spells. Some skills can outright be changed through the system, such as the Sorcerer’s Arcane Missile auto attack changing into a melee ability that does magic damage instead of being ranged. The amount of points you can spend on the mastery is limited, however, so many players utilize a calculator to ensure they get exactly what they want.

 

Dragon's Prophet

 

Can Anyone Make That for Me?

Crafting is a big part of Dragon’s Prophet. Each character can learn the Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, Alchemy, Chef, Tinkerer, and Carpenter professions. Recipes for each profession can be learned through leveling up said profession, and as random drops from monsters in the world. Weapon and armorsmithing produce weapons and armor, respectively; alchemy creates useful potions for healing and buffs. A chef can create various foods that provide buffs to character attributes for a time. Tinkers create jewelry as well as armor and equipment for your dragon. Carpenters create furniture for player homes, and can craft the Draconic Flute, a much-sought after item that summons dragons for the player to tame – rare, powerful dragons can only be obtained through this item.

Gathering items for crafting can be done one of three ways: nodes, monster drops, and your dragon. Herb, wood, and ore nodes are scattered around the world, and can be gathered simply by interacting with them. Monsters drop leather and cloth, meat, and a variety of other crafting materials. Finally, you can instruct your dragon to gather any of the above in great quantities, though this does require spending gold, and time spent waiting for the dragon to gather. The benefit to having your dragon do it, however, is the ability to continue playing the game in the meantime (your dragon will also gain experience, increasing the value).

 

Dragon's Prophet

 

Goods For Sale, Specials Await

Unfortunately, there is one elephant in the room when it comes to Dragon’s Prophet: it relies fairly heavily on the cash shop to truly enjoy the game. Players are only allowed two dragons by default. If you want more, you’ll have to pay for them, at 99 Station Cash a pop (about $1.00). Additionally, inventory space is at a premium for the game, especially with the amount of crafting materials in the game. While you unlock more space at level 10 and 20, if you need the room before then, you’re looking at another 99 Station Cash per row of inventory room. There is also a slight buy-to-win aspect, as players can purchase hard-to-find item strengthening bonuses in the cash shop, giving them better equipment.

 

Dragon's Prophet

 

Final Verdict: Great

For a game with dragon in the title, Dragon’s Prophet certainly delivers. Each breed of dragon is unique, both visually and with the skills they learn. Some dragons can fly high, while others can only glide short distances, and others can only run on the ground. Choosing a dragon is often as much of a challenge as choosing how your character looks, or how to specialize. Being able to use your dragon as a combat pet and a mount adds to the feel of the game, and remains a solid, enjoyable gameplay mechanic as you level up. Combat is fluid and action-packed, which will keep players going even while trudging through boring quests. Being able to utilize every crafting profession is also a major benefit to people who want to do everything without having to create a long list of alts.

On the downside, inventory room is incredibly sparse, with a total of 40 spaces once you’ve reached level 20. Destroying items just to make room for more items to destroy became far too common, and was a clear bid for a cash shop purchase. Being able to only have two dragons as a free player was also stifling, since there are so many choices, even in the starting zone. Still, these things won’t deter dedicated players, leaving Dragon’s Prophet flying as a worthy free-to-play MMORPG.

America’s Army: Proving Grounds Review – The U.S. Army Develops Games?

By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF)

 

America's Army Review

Introduction

America’s Army: Proving Grounds is the next installment in the America’s Army franchise, which is developed and published by the actual U.S. Army. It is available on Steam and, like all previous versions of the game, is completely free. Proving Grounds is aimed to be a small-squad focused experience with 6v6 and 12v12 matches taking place in urban environments. As you might imagine, a platform that has been used to train actual soldiers in virtual environments has a lot of realism in it, and you’ll be going down with one or two shots if you’re not careful. It is this focus on communication, tactics, and realism along with the completely and truly free to play model that has given the America’s Army series a great amount of respect in the FPS community.

 

 

Customization

At the start of each round you are able to choose from all the available weapons and equipment. Currently, that is all the customization that is offered, but more may be available in the future. There is an advancement system in the game, but I do not yet know if this will be used to unlock unique looks, weapons, or other equipment. I do know, however, that everything put in the game will be available to everyone at no charge, which is quite nice. Normally, in 2013, I would expect quite a lot of customization available, even in an FPS, but I can’t quite complain as this game is completely free and I honestly don’t care to paint my guns or make my character look like a clown.

 

Ameirca's Army Equip Select

Graphics

The graphics in America’s Army: Proving Grounds is a nice step-up from America’s Army 3, which was already nice to begin with. The higher quality textures make a huge difference, especially when added with the nice smoke and light affects. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics aren’t as impressive as a title like Battlefield 3 (or 4), but they are more than decent for a free to play game. The urban maps that are available are well designed and are interesting to explore. Part of the fun of Proving Grounds is learning all the ins-and-outs of the maps to find the perfect spots to snipe or ambush the enemy team.

 

America's Army Graphics

Controls

The controls in Proving Grounds are your standard FPS control scheme. WASD to move, left mouse button to shoot, right mouse button to aim, G for grade, C for crouch, etc… If you’ve played any other FPS ever, you will pick up these controls very fast. There are some nice intuitive effects that have been added. For example, if you sprint and then press C, you will slide into a crouch, making your escape to cover much quicker and safer. This is something that came naturally and I made a lot of use of it. Overall I am very pleased with the controls.

 

 

Community

I’m a bit mixed here. Generally, at least with my experience with past America’s Army games, AA tends to attract more mature audiences. However, with the new CoD-generation of FPS gamers joining into a mixing pot with F2P Steam users, a branch of younger gamers are starting to flow in with much more offensive demeaners. For example, in the very first game I joined, I immediately heard someone who sounded somewhere between the ages of twelve and fourteen cursing out one of their team members because they didn’t perform as well as they thought they should, despite the person doing the yelling having died quite a bit earlier and had essentially done more towards the team losing than the person being yelled at. However, I did find that most of the people in the match were mature and were more focused on working together to complete the objective than playing the blame game.

 

 

Gameplay

America’s Army: Proving Grounds is a fairly standard FPS experience, but with a more tactical twist. As I’ve said earlier in the review, you’ll be working with your teammates more than you would in similar titles. Lone Wolfing is a quick trip to being taken out of the game, and working together is the key to success. The two biggest factors that play into creating this tactical and cooperative experience are the built-in voice communication and the fact that you do not die immediately after you are taken down. You can still be revived by your teammates, or ‘secured’ by the enemy to take you completely out of the round.

 

The maps have been designed for tactics to come into play with every turn. You won’t get far if you try to just run at the enemy team with your assault rifle. You won’t be jumping around and shooting, either. No, if you want to do well you will need to go slow, use cover and be smart about what you do. Taking care to make sure you aren’t making too much noise or exposing a part of your body to an enemy sniper. At the same time, you will be communicating with your team to coordinate your attacks, reviving those that fall so they can stay in the round and continue to help you, and securing your enemies so they won’t be able to come back and bite you in the butt when you least expect it.

 

Ameirca's Army Fighting

 

Game modes are pretty simple. Essentially it comes down to capturing something or taking down and securing the whole enemy team. My favorite game mode was a variation of Capture the Flag, which Proving Grounds has given a few unique twists. As a result, it felt a lot more tactical than what I was used to from other FPS with CTF. I’m used to just going for a mad rush at the flag and then trying to get out ASAP. That won’t work here, fortunately.

 

America's Army Training Grounds

 

Realism is important to the folks in the U.S. Army, or at least I get the impression. Combat and situational awareness is probably the most important thing to learn. The sounds of enemy gunfire or footsteps, the muzzle flare when someone shoots, or using smoke screens and flashbangs are all important. You will go down with one or two shots in most cases, so you have to be extremely careful with where you go. You might think it’s OK to sprint across a room with a large window, but more likely than not you’ll get sniped, or alert enemies to where you are so they can ambush you around the next bend.

 

America's Army Sniping

Conclusion

America’s Army: Proving Grounds is shaping up to be a very fun FPS. The fact that it is completely free to play is a major plus, especially when you consider the quality you’re getting. There won’t be any cash shops for you to waste your money on, only a fair environment where you can test your skills. The tactical gameplay is a refreshing change from the usual mindless twitch-fest that most FPS games have become, too. If you’re looking for a modern tactical FPS, fire up Steam and download America’s Army: Proving Grounds today and you won’t be disappointed.

 

Features: 3.5/5 – Honestly not much here, hopefully future updates will bring more.

Customization: 2.5/5 – Being able to choose your loadout is nice, but I would like a bit more customization.

Graphics: 4/5 – The game is great looking, but not amazing.

Controls: 5/5 – Smooth and familiar, just what I like in my FPS.

Community: 4/5 – Some of the toxic COD community is seeping in, but the maturity level is still quite high.

 

Overall: 4/5 – Check it out if you want a great FPS experience.