Yearly Archives: 2013

School of Dragons

School of Dragons whisks players away to the cold frozen north as they take up the reigns of their own dragon while training under the watchful eye of Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless. Join up with beautifully rendered mini-games as you work with your fellow Vikings to raise the best fireball throwing, hang gliding dragon of them all!

 

Features:

Raise a Dragon from the Egg: Players will gain a newborn dragon that they’ll need to kept fed, trained, and exercised through a number of mini-games.

Dreamwork’s Styled Graphics: Even though the game is playable on the browser or mobile devices, it still offers the iconic graphics and well-rendered characters of the movie.

Mini-Games Galore: From races and time trials to shooting galleries and Farmville style ranching, players will find a plethora of activities to keep them busy.

Single-Player Option: Afraid of letting your child online just yet? Activate the single player version to block out the community for interacting with them.

School of Dragons Review – Spot on Kids’ Entertainment

By Taylor Lux (Deertayorkay)

School of Dragons Review

Of the movies of the past few years, there are several that many would want to potentially see an MMO of. Dreamwork’s 2010 film, “How to Train Your Dragon” would be one of those. On July 17th, 2013 this happened when they released School of Dragons, allowing you to run about as your own customizable Viking and befriend then train your very own dragon that follows you around! It is a browser based game, but compared to others of its kind, it offers a rather solid package.

School of Dragons Review Toothless

Where’s Hiccup and Toothless?

Don’t worry, all the major cast from How to Train Your Dragon is here. They are actually your primary quest givers and mini-game initiators. Hiccup does your flight school that teaches you how to ride your dragon as they age while Toothless dedicatedly stands next to him. All the dragons the new Vikings rode in the film, except Toothless’ type, are able to be used as your dragon. You are there for the hatching of the dragon, and they follow you around, learning of their new world as you adventure around the islands.

School of Dragons Baby

What’s Up Kid?

School of Dragons is very kid friendly and actually is generally geared towards them. There are education courses over stuff like the Scientific Method and Botany that would actually introduce, expound, or reinforce things taught in their school. Overall as an adult playing, it wasn’t too distracting to take in the flood of information you have to comb through near the beginning in order to get to the meatier parts of the game. Also, one can improve performance and improve child friendliness by turning off MMO and making a completely single player game. Granted a few features will become void, but it can make it quite kid friend that way.

School of Dragons Feed

It also reminds me of other pet based browser games where feeding your pet is a major part of the game. These elements hold true with this game where your Viking must fish for food to feed your pet dragon and play with him to ensure his happiness. In fact, some games within are inaccessible unless your dragon has a certain happiness/food amount. It isn’t too difficult to raise your dragon’s hunger level and it’s very easy to raise their happiness with a few short games of fetch or chase the dot around using a magnifying glass and a candle, solidifying that this is indeed a kid’s game with how easy these two required tasks are.

School of Dragons Minigame

Tell Me More about These Games

Ah yes, there are several different games within School of Dragons, as if it’s one of those games where there’s multiple games within the game, like those board game compilations. There’s fishing which is simply waiting for a fish to bite and then keeping your line between the deep red lines while reeling it in. Once it remains in the deep red edges for too long, you lose the fish and your bait!

School of Dragons Farming

There’s also mini FarmVille where you grow plants and feed animals to reap their produce for money, though there is the cost of seeds and feed but there’s nothing with a negative outcome after investment. Plants are restricted due to your well needing to obtain more water, which takes a while. Animals on the other hand carry a hefty start-up cost but are much less maintenance intensive.

School of Dragons Shooting Minigame

The two most interesting games are the Fireball Frenzy, which is akin to a first person shooter featuring your Viking and dragon as the avatar and shooting fireballs at targets, and Flight School where you learn how to fly/glide on your dragon in a time attack type situation. There are a few other games that I sadly didn’t get far enough into, such as Thunder Run Racing, but if its name is any indication, it’s where you race your dragons against others via flight. I’m unsure if it’s against other players or against computers, but either way it sounds pretty entertaining.

School of Dragons Review

How Beautiful!

The aesthetics of this game are quite beautiful. The sound, though it can get repetitive rather quickly, is full orchestral music that captures the games setting perfectly. Fireball Frenzy has very energetic music that I particularly enjoyed. The graphics for a free to play MMO geared towards children are rather impressive, considering their source material it’s not too far off the mark. The water and grass is particularly pretty. It seems that graphics and audio were not things skipped around this game.

School of Dragons Verdict

Verdict: Excellent… for a kid game

It really is what it is, a game geared towards kids. There is some hard education stuff within the game along with a few pretty fun games. The main other thing that points towards a kid game is that it’s based off a movie. Granted the game hits the high standards set by Dreamwork’s film in both sound and visuals, but there isn’t enough to draw a veteran gamer in for long periods of play. I would highly encourage it as a game for parents to possibly play with their children or use it as a way to gather interest in gaming for their children. The focus stays true to the film well enough to keep kid fans enamored. If you know of a kid, why don’t you give them the present of a good looking, decently executed game and a dragon of their very own.

Editor’s Note:
Since this review was done, the following elements have been added to the title:

·         Fly Toothless in Flight Club and other known dragons from the franchise (dragon flying training school)
·         Clan system (create “clans” with fellow players in the game)
·         Achievements and trophies in the game
·         Enhanced in-game chat
·         A whole new slate of quests

GoD Factory: Wingmen

GoD Factory: Wingmen is a fast paced, intensely tactical 4 vs 4 player space combat game, where the aim is to destroy the enemy’s 13km long Carrier before it wrecks yours; all under the relentless fire of enemy players and point-defense turrets.
There are 4 playable species in GoD Factory: the ruthless Humans, the wise Guantris, the gigantic Chorions and the unnatural Ar. They each have unique ship designs, both visually and gameplay-wise. Players choose and start with two of those species and can unlock the other two during the course of their career.

Wargaming.net Funds £75,000 Exhibit for Dornier 17 at RAF Museum

Wargaming Plane Lift

In June, the world witnessed one of the most successful projects to raise the only known German Dornier Do17 bomber, from the waters of the Goodwin Sands, three miles off the coast of England.

Starting October 16th, the general public will be able to experience a dynamic new exhibition at its Cosford site which will explore the background of this legendary aircraft and its recovery. The creation of the ‘Wargaming.net Interpretation Zone’ has been funded by Wargaming.net, an award winning global game publisher and developer.

The grant of £75,000($120,472.50) has allowed the Museum to work with redLoop design and innovation centre, to develop new and existing approaches to the display and interpretation of the Dornier as it is conserved. A number of interventions will tell the story of the Dornier, its recovery and conservation – in both the Museum’s physical and digital spaces.

At both sites the public will also be able to see an augmented reality Dornier flying above the Museum, showing the aircraft as it would have been seen in 1940. Visitors will be able to view this through their smart phones and through specially created viewing equipment at the Museum. Additionally exhibits at both sites will display multi-media content – from footage of the Dornier in action in 1940, to film of the recovery operation and the chance to witness the Dornier in action in the Wargaming release World of Warplanes.

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The Museum has also tied in with organizations across the globe including the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, plus the Pima Air & Space Museum/Arizona Aerospace Foundation to celebrate the launch of the exhibition. Visitors to those Museums will also be able to see the augmented reality Dorniers through their smart phones, hovering in situ.

The exhibition will allow the Museum to develop new education offers focusing on the STEM subjects as well as creating a space where community groups and adult education partners can take part in the Dornier experience.

A new dedicated website will also be launched which will the story of the Dornier and its recovery and conservation. The website will showcase the social history behind the Dornier, the forensic science behind its discovery and recovery, archive footage from the Museum as well as user generated content. The website will develop with the Dornier project and function as an innovative hyper textual documentary for the project.

“I am delighted that Wargaming.net are supporting Museum’s Dornier project by funding the Interpretation Zone. This is an innovative project and the support of Wargaming.net will allow us to tell the story of the aircrafts’ recovery and conservation in an innovative way” said Royal Air Force Museum Director General, Peter Dye. “Augmented reality, mobile applications and the use user generate content are new developments for the Museum and we are very excited about exploring their possibilities. “

SWTOR: The F2P Updated Review

by Jaime Skelton (MissyS)

 

When BioWare released Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (and its sequel), it made waves in the Star Wars universe. While previous Star Wars games had been action based, often space shooters or a console platformer, Knights of the Old Republic was different. The first major full-fledged Star Wars role-playing game, from the company that brought the world the Baldur’s Gate series, was an incredible offering.

Star Wars: The Old Republic continues BioWare’s original series, and the development team tried to stay true to the original Knights of the Old Republic experience. Originally a subscription based MMO, The Old Republic went free-to-play in November of 2012. Has this transition been successful, or have millions suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced?

 

SWTOR F2P Review 1

“The Force is Strong with this One”

Players start out by choosing to serve either Republic or Empire, and then choose Human, Zabrak, or Cyborg for their character race. These are the only options new free-to-play characters have, although there are ten total playable races available. The final major choice is class. Each class on the Republic has a mirror on the Empire; for example, the Republic Trooper is the same as the Empire Bounty Hunter. The other classes are the Smuggler/Imperial Agent, the Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior, and the Jedi Consular/Sith Inquisitor. Each class gains additional subclasses later on for further specialization.

Visual customization is quite extensive, with dozens of hair styles, skin colors, and accessories (such as scarring, make up, or tattoos) to choose from. Like many major budget MMOs, it’s quite easy to get lost in customizing a character down to perfection. For a quick fix, though, using the randomization button gives you no dearth of templates to further expand upon.

 

SWTOR F2P Review 2

“Don’t Everyone Thank Me at Once”

The Old Republic is a very story-driven game, with the bulk of the story being given through the game’s hundreds of quests. Although most quests are given traditionally by an NPC, some are also found off monsters, by approaching specific locations, or by interacting with special objects. The main storyline quests help advance your own character’s story, while the wide variety of side quests gives a good look into the lore of the worlds you visit. As is true with many MMORPGs, quests reward experience, credits, and often equipment to help your character become stronger.

One of the early selling points for SWTOR was that every line of dialogue in the game is voice-acted. This simple (yet very complex) addition to the game gives every character their own personality, and – while sometimes not personally relatable – it provides players a nice basis of immersion into the world. The game uses a dialogue wheel, similar to other BioWare games like the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age II, for interacting with NPCs. Some choices have later consequences, usually the gain of either light or dark side points that will further influence a character’s story.

 

SWTOR F2P Review 3

“Now I Am the Master”

 

Combat in The Old Republic is unfortunately lacking in expected innovation. Players must use a hotbar of skills on opponents in order to bring them down. There is also no auto-attack function in the game; however, right click will automatically use whatever skill is in the “1” slot of your skill bar. By default, this is usually a weak, filler attack to use when your larger damage skills are unavailable. In short: combat is simply an echo of every modern MMORPG.

One class does offer a sliver of something new to the combat system: the smuggler/agent. This class utilizes a mechanic called “cover,” giving increased defenses and the ability to use additional skills while hiding behind another structure. These cover-exclusive skills are their most powerful. Players looking for a more engaging combat system may want to select this class, even if the remainder of the combat system is dull.

 

SWTOR F2P Review 7

“In My Experience, There’s No Such Thing as Luck”

 

The Old Republic is not lacking in group content. The game boasts several instances to run, each with its own unique rewards. A group finder option for instances is available, making it much easier to find groups and get instances run quickly. Instances are done with the same storyline narration regular quests are done, but with additional group members, you can earn ranks of social points. Each decision made during a conversation gives a base amount of social points, and the winner of the roll (used to determine who speaks in a cut-scene) gets a bonus. Social ranks provide a variety of cosmetic items, some of which actually have practical use, like marking a target for others to focus their attacks on.

There are also several group quests throughout the game as your quest storyline progresses. These quests are often quite challenging for a single player to complete, but it also seems to prove difficult to actually find players willing to group up to complete them. Many of these quests also provide substantial loot rewards, becoming a major source of frustration for players that want to get the most out of their game experience.

 

SWTOR F2P Review 6

“We, uh, Ran Into Some Old Friends”

 

For those more interested in competitive play, The Old Republic offers several different PvP battlegrounds. Each battleground has different objectives, offering a different experience each time you enter. Several require you to hold specific areas, each with special bonuses for holding: for instance, holding one point will set off a bomb, which wipes out any player that happens to not be in shelter; another set of control points will set cannons firing at the enemy stronghold.

Warzones, as they’re called, offer players Valor – another ranking system like Social points — as well as commendations which can be used to purchase goods.These items help improve PvP performance, and are worth gathering if you’re serious about competition; but they also require a certain rank of Valor to be used – think World of Warcraft arena rewards.

 

SWTOR F2P Review 7

“Jabba, You’re a Wonderful Human Being”

Free-to-play players do have a significant disadvantage versus subscribers in The Old Republic. The most obvious of these is a currency cap: while this is quite high compared to some games, it still remains and is not difficult to reach early on. Another disadvantage is the limitation of only a single tradeskill. Most tradeskills require two supporting skills to help maximize their efficiency. Having only one is quite crippling, because crafting is a great way to build up your character power early on.

The cash shop of The Old Republic offers unlocks on a wide variety of the free-to-play restrictions, and buying something once also unlocks a preferred status, providing additional unlocks to restrictions. These unlocks can also be purchased on the auction house in game for credits, which most prefer, since earning cash shop tokens in game is tedious at best.

 

SWTOR F2P Review 4

Final Verdict: Good

Despite the massive budget allocated to the game, Star Wars: The Old Republic fails to offer the “Triple A” experience you might expect. Combat is routine, similar, and mostly involves little player involvement outside of instances. While the storyline is interesting thanks to the voice acting and excellent writing, listening to every line of dialogue is time consuming, and bound to turn away those who wish to experience the story at their own pace. The reliance on cash shop purchases to completely experience a game touted as being fully playable in its free-to-play model is horribly misleading. If you’re willing to work for it, there is still a lot of content to be had – but this is bound to make even dedicated players often feel like enjoying the game requires too many chores. Ultimately, the quality of the game is what we’ve come to expect from BioWare, but too many standard gameplay features sag below the weight of EA’s deadline-driven agendas.

If you’re serious about playing The Old Republic, we would dare to recommend purchasing the Digital Upgrade Pack from the store. For about $5.00 USD, you receive a variety of useful items, including a mount to help with travel times. More importantly, this will unlock your account to Preferred status, giving you additional character slots, and removing many of the choking gameplay restrictions. This will provide a much better play experience for a one time investment.

Eldevin Pushes Major Update and Level Cap Increase

Eldevin Massive Update

Hunted Cow Studios has upped the end-game of their dynamic world MMORPG, Eldevin, by upping the level cap to forty and with it much of the end-game content. In addition plenty of class rebalances, new zones, new armor sets, and plenty of feature reworks are included in the update. Catch the full list of changes on their forum post.

HeroesGo Open Beta Review – Second Chance for Victory (and Defeat)

By Michael Sagoe (mikedot)

 

ESTGames, the publisher and developers behind the classic hack n’ slash MMORPG “Cabal Online” has recently brought over a not-so-new MORPG to the F2P market. The name of this MORPG was recently known as “Howling Sword” in South Korea. With bright visuals, anime inspired characters and an arcade style approach, Howling Sword provided a more authentic hack n’ slash experience. Unfortunately, Howling Sword was not very well received in South Korea, and was then taken offline within a few short years.

After some re-structuring, ESTGames decided to give Howling Sword another shot for US and EU territories, but with a new name: HeroesGo. However, with so many MORPGs already offering similar gameplay, visuals and features, does HeroesGo deserve a second chance?

HeroesGo OB Review 1

Controls

The controls for HeroesGo are very simple and easy to grasp. By default: Z, X and C are used to dash, attack and jump, respectively, while the ASDFG and QWERT keys are used for activating skills in battle. The keyboard commands are fairly responsive. Just make sure that the skills you’ll be using the most are rearranged appropriately.

Gamepad support is surprisingly absent, which is disappointing considering that other MORPGs (such as Elsword or Dungeon Fighter Online) equip players with tons of active skills, all of which are possible on gamepads with simple directional inputs and combo sequences. While the official website mentions that gamepad support will be included later on, why this same exact kind of control system isn’t available for HeroesGo, FROM the get-go, is baffling.

HeroesGo OB Review 2

Gameplay and Features

While HeroesGo takes full advantage of being able to battle in a full 3D space, the overall combat in HeroesGo lacks polish. Performing just about any kind of attack or active skill comes with stiff animations, most of which cannot be cancelled. The only moves that can be cancelled out are basic attacks using active skills or dashes. Compared to a handful of other action MORPGs, the stiff combat also fails to give HeroesGo a steady pacing.

Equipment stats play far too much of an important role in HeroesGo. Unlike some MORPGs where good equipment will make the player more efficient in battle rather than better, having proper equipment becomes necessary later on when dealing with stronger enemies. Having to worry about stats such as “attack accuracy” will become the bane of any breaker or blader user. Even if an attack makes direct and visible contact on an enemy, it’s still very possible that the attack will miss, simply because a random number statistic on your equipment says so. There’s also a stat that affects your attack speed, and you’re going to need a fair amount when dealing with the later bosses.

PvE in HeroesGo is all about overwhelming odds. When players go out to explore the game’s many different dungeons, they will be pitted against hordes of enemies, most of which will always attempt to attack players directly.

HeroesGo OB Review 3

There’s an awkward sense of difficulty after the first few dungeons: Since mob enemies can inflict heavy amounts of damage, most will end up playing very cautiously. While it may seem hard at first, enemy attack patterns are obvious, and avoiding their attacks using the dash skill is fairly easy as long as you’re not getting caught in the middle of a massive pile up. The easiest way to handle mobs in HeroesGo would be to jump into the fray, throw out your strongest attacks and do your best not to get surrounded. If you’re playing as a ranged character like the gunslinger or the mage, staying out of harm’s way is even easier. If the player can keep all this in mind, battling against mobs won’t be as difficult as it seems. Rather, it will just be very tedious.

The real challenge for battling mobs in HeroesGo comes from having to deal with them alongside traps and stage hazards, including fire pits, laser barriers, wrecking balls and more. While it certainly makes battles more engaging, they also come off as a cheap way to make battles more dangerous. With rooms where tons of traps are being set off at any given moment, there will be moments where HeroesGo will feel unreasonably difficult.

Boss battles, on the other hand, are all over the place when it comes to difficulty. Some bosses have very quick attacks and tells that are hard to read,  some bosses have very easy tells but have attacks with large hitboxes that can’t be interrupted and are hard to dodge, and other bosses are so massive that players can simply dwindle them down by staying close to them while chipping away at their health.

Simply put: The challenge and difficulty of PvE in HeroesGo is very inconsistent, and it doesn’t seem to find a balance later on.

The game also features player vs. player modes in either solo or team battles with up to eight players. Unfortunately, PvP isn’t a very popular activity in HereosGo, as the game suffers from huge latency issues. PvP combat is also gear-based, so players with that are full equipped will have a fairly noticeable advantage over those that aren’t packing heat.

HeroesGo OB Review 4

Customization

Starting up your first character in HeroesGo comes with very limited options. There are only four different classes that players can choose from, and each one is gender-locked. While gender-locking is something I usually do not favor, each character plays an individual and unique role within the game’s major storyline, so I was willing to let it slide. The four available classes range from two close-quarters combatants and two long range support types: Breaker, Blader, Gunslinger and Mage. Each class has one of two subclasses that can be unlocked later on, which gives players access to more diverse play styles.

Initial character customization is also limited with only six options to choose from between hair styles, shirts, gloves and shoes, so players can expect to run into clones of themselves well within seconds upon entering the starting town.

HeroesGo OB Review 6

Equipment customization works very similar to other MMORPGs: Players can upgrade their weapons and equipment by using Ether stones. These stones are obtained by sacrificing old weapons and equipment. However, like many MMOs of old, attempting to upgrade your equipment comes with a risk. If you attempt to upgrade your equipment without using an item called “Ether powder”, there’s a chance that your item could possibly be destroyed. Even more so, the game flat out tells players that if they want get some of this special powder, they’ll have to hop along over to the game’s item shop (which is currently unavailable during Open Beta) to get some.

Certainly, this is not a very pretty sign to hold up. While I’m certain that not all ether stones will be obtainable from the future item shop, upgrade systems such as this tend to inform the player just how important your character’s equipment will be compared to your skills. I’ve said this several times before, but skill in HeroesGo can only get a player so far when stats are involved.

 

Visuals and Presentation

HeroesGo comes with a visual presentation that’s easy on the eyes, with bright and soft visuals, mixed together with cartoon and anime aesthetics. The characters themselves have fairly detailed textures and somewhat unique outfits that could remind some players of other popular RPGs.

HeroesGo OB Review 5

Looks sort of like a cross between Sora and Cloud Strife, don’t you think?

While the town NPCs have their own English voice overs (which aren’t too bad, but not too good, either), the main characters still have their original Korean voices whenever they shout out their skills in battles. While this may or may not be a good thing to some people, the sounds of enemy NPCs getting hit and defeated will be sure to wear on a few nerves.

The music is fairly appropriate, with lighthearted and ominous tones for adventuring, but nothing special to write home about.

 

Community

HeroesGo includes standard online game features including friends list, in-game mailing and guilds. Not much else can be said about community options, and not much can be said about the game’s community in general. From the start, trying to find a group to party up can be tough, as many players have already moved onto the next set of dungeons, but when you do find a group, they’re generally casual and friendly enough to share in the pain and pleasure of dungeon crawling.

 

Overall: Good

HeroesGo manages to provide an average hack n’ slash MORPG experience, but does not offer much else in terms of distinct gameplay or features. The lack of polished gameplay also pales in comparison to several other MORPGs already available. While I firmly believe that new games do not have to reinvent the wheel in order to be enjoyable, it certainly does not help when your game makes very little attempts to stand out among the crowd. It’s not a bad game in particular, but there are far better alternatives available.

All New Collaborative Event in The Secret World

TSW Argatha Event

Funcom’s The Secret World is offering its players a new chain of events called The Whispering Tide. In these events the whole community joins together to fight the Filth invasion in the hollow earth – Agartha.

The first event in this chain starts today, Friday the 20th of September, and lasts until the players have overcome the new challenge by beating back the Filth’s attack. As the players work together they unlock more new content and rewards.

The Whispering Tide will escalate in the coming months. As new content becomes unlocked the events offers greater and greater challenges, requiring more and more players to fight together.

In the event’s its final chapter the players must band together in a massive battle against a brutal foe. If the players are successful in this struggle they will gain access to the brand new area of Tokyo.