Yearly Archives: 2017

Mystic Melee Preview

by Andrew Skelton (Outfoxed)

 

My skills at action platformers have decayed over the years.  That’s something I’ve had to admit to myself, and now you all know, too.  That being said, there’s a certain satisfaction that I — along with many others — feel when they clear a stage that had been frustrating them.  Mystic Melee, by one man developer Ben Hopkins, seeks to grasp that classic notion of, “One more try!” with its blend of platforming and combat.  Featuring local and online multiplayer reminiscent of games like Super Smash Bros. might also be a bonus.  Having been granted an early access copy of the game, let’s take a look into the spell tome to see how Mystic Melee holds up.

Mystic Melee Screenshot

Are You A Wizard?

To get the most out of Mystic Melee, I highly recommend you play with a controller.  While there are keyboard controls, the game just feels much better with a gamepad of some sort.  Thankfully, either way you play, the bindings are fully customizable, which helps every gamer feel comfortable.

In addition to your basic commands like jump and attack, Mystic Melee also focuses heavily on dodging.  Do keep in mind, however, you have to use the specific key to dodge in a specific direction, rather that simply utilizing a dodge command.  There are also various spells you get during your playthrough, which range from utility to damage.  You can hold only two of these at a time, though you can always drop one and pick up another if needs be.

Mystic Melee Screenshot

Book Learning

The first few levels of the campaign serve as the game’s tutorial, and it serves teaching the basic functions quite well.  It even touches on some more advanced techniques that will be important such as down-jumping and sliding.  All in all, it does serve its purpose well, letting players get a good feel for the game.

What it does not do, however, is prepare you for the different characters you’ll be playing as.  You’ll be limited to the first character, Gale, until you clear the other stages of the main game before you can bring them into the tutorial.  It would have been nice if I could have practiced with some of the other characters before being thrown into their respective stages and expected to know how they function.

Mystic Melee Screenshot

I Wanna Cast Magic Missile

At its core, the campaign of Mystic Melee is an action platformer.  The game shoves you in the role of various wizards, and you have to protect the world from the designs of an ancient evil.  Pretty cliche, sure, but it works.  As I mentioned before, each of the four characters has a completely different skillset, and finding out how each of their attacks works is tantamount to getting through each of their difficult stages.  Personally, the hardest thing to get used to the fact every character’s basic attack is completely different in their physics.  Gale, for example, is a simple forward, backward rhythm to his attacks, but the second character, Amaya, has a neutral first, and a forward momentum to her second.

As you progress through the levels, you earn a combo by collecting glowing mana (red squares) and defeating enemies, all without being hit.  These levels are also timed, and you’re then graded based on how well you performed in both categories.  Therein lies the true replayability of these stages — trying to S rank everything will take a lot of skill.  There are also mystic mana nodes hidden on each stage.  Retrieving these often takes quite a bit more skill than anything else in the stage, and should likely be saved until you understand the level design and character physics.

Mystic Melee Screenshot

Sage Fright

The campaign mode of the game does feature a fairly linear progression.  You clear one stage, you move on to the next.  At the end of each character arc there’s a boss you must overcome, too.  It is quite simplistic in approach, but it does make sense for a game like this.  Plus each subsequent stage seems to build on the previous, or introduce something new to overcome, helping to keep things fresh.

Unfortunately, during the current version of Early Access, the last two stages are unavailable, meaning I can’t experience the other characters in their stages proper.  While they can be played in the game’s online and local multiplayer modes, it would be nice to see what the characters were capable of first.

Mystic Melee Screenshot

Last Mage Standing

Mystic Melee offers two different forms of multiplayer action.  Arena mode allows you and up to three others engage in fast-paced brawls.  The best part about the mode is the flexibility in team making too.  Want a free-for-all fight?  Have everyone on different teams.  2v2?  3v1?  Both are definitely within the realm of possibility!  Don’t have three friends willing to play with you?  Test your skills against bots in this mode!  Given the nature of the tutorial, this may be the best way to learn all four characters.

Online mode is like arena mode, however you’ll be competing against others across the globe instead of your friends.  It’s unknown currently if there will be any sort of matchmaking services available, but given the game’s scope, there may be no need for it either — the game is actually fairly easy to get into and understand.

Mystic Melee Screenshot

Final Thoughts

One of the most important things in any Early Access title is the willingness of the developers to take criticism and respond in kind.  The developer, Ben Hopkins, has been nothing but professional in his dealings with critique, so far as I’ve seen.  After reading the discussions page on Steam, Ben shows a willingness to explain development designs, and accepts where his game can be improved.  I’m always enthused when small studios like this are this tolerant and open to their community’s suggestions.

That being said, Mystic Melee may not appeal to everyone, and that’s okay.  Fans of moderately challenging platformers will certainly enjoy the campaign mode, and arguably it can find a very interesting niche in the speedrunning community with the time trial nature of each stage.  While multiplayer is a bit lacking at the moment, there is definitely much more to come from Mystic Melee.  I’m looking forward to seeing how things pan out from here.

Mystic Melee Screenshots:

Huge Raiders of the Broken Planet Changes coming in ‘Eternal Soldier’ Campaign

What was once known as the “Prologue” of Raiders of the Broken Planet is now known as the Eternal Soldier Campaign! It’s free, contains two missions, the single-player tutorial “First Blood” and the first 4 vs. 1 multiplayer mission (Hanging by a Thread). With full access to the games’ features, players who download the free Eternal Soldier Starter Campaign will be able to use gold, faction points, and character points to unlock new characters, build weapons from blueprints, unlock Faction and Character Cards and unveil pieces of lore from the world of Raiders of the Broken Planet! The renaming from Prologue to Eternal Soldier, they wish to re-emphasize the importance of the campaign, which serves as the base for which other campaigns will be built from.

“We have avoided naming the Eternal Soldier Campaign a demo, as it is not a gameplay section extracted from the premium campaign,” said Enric Álvarez, Co-Owner of MercurySteam. “It is a free group of missions including all the game’s features that can be fully enjoyed, before the customer can decide if he or she wants to invest €/$/£9.99 on a premium campaign.”

Players who want more can purchase additional campaigns, each of which contains four missions! These occur in parallel, each with their own characters and factions. Alien Myths is available now and the next (Wardog Fury) will launch by year’s end.

ARK: Survival Evolved Launches Today on Xbox One X

Today, Studio Wildcard announced that ARK: Survival Evolved is now available as a launch title for the Xbox One X from Microsoft! A free update for Xbox players, ARK on Xbox One X takes full advantage of the new system’s overall power, with HDR visuals, 1440p high-res, greater draw distances and enhanced visuals, and more. Xbox players can look forward to quicker load times, and is arguably the most advanced version of the game yet!

SMITE Shadows over Hercopolis – Wild Druid Artio Giveaway

We’ve partnered with Hi Rez Studios to celebrate the launch of its latest SMITE Adventure, Shadows over Hercopolis, with a giveaway of the Wild Druid Artio skin!

Smite Artio Skin Giveaway Art

The new SMITE Adventure, Shadows over Hercopolis, combines everything players love about RPGs with SMITE’s action combat. Players band together to traverse iconic locations from Norse mythology, confront legendary monsters, and get sweet loot.

The gods of SMITE will encounter 3 epic boss battles worthy of the ancient sagas. A flesheating sea monster confronts the gods in a multiphase boss battle atop a sinking ship. Survivors will progress to a burning realm where they will face the father of all fire giants. Only the strongest and most skilled players will earn the right to face Loki and save Hercules.


To Redeem your Key:

  • Sign-up for a Hirez account and download SMITE from https://www.smitegame.com.
  • Launch and patch SMITE.
  • Once in game click STORE then click REDEEM.
  • Enter your code in the field to activate the unlock.

Note: Unfortunately ad blockers may interfere with our site. If you have any issues claiming a key, please disable them and try again.

.hack//G.U. Review: What do ‘Normal Players’ do?

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

.HackGU - PVP Town

The World has never looked prettier.

The .hack// series is revolutionary in its own way. It was a refreshing, unique window into the world of MMORPGs. Having a singleplayer game that was set within the boundaries of an MMO was fascinating and makes me sad but also furious, that we never saw the .hack// MMO that came out in the Japan/SEA area. So, now we have .hack//G.U. – Last Recode which is a graphical remake of all three G.U. games, and in addition, there is a fourth chapter added to the game, which could make it all tie together nice and neat (Vol. 4//Reconnection). What I really enjoy about this series though, is that it’s a genuine look into how MMOs are perceived (and how they really were) to the people who lived in them. All the tropes and bases are covered: People who share an account/character (Sakubo), the guy who flirts with every girl (Kuhn), the older guy/girl who has fantastic speech but a super fanservice character model (Pi). You have the people who work on the game and lurk in the shadows (people in Raven, Piros) and a whole slew of PKer assholes, and the assholes who PK them (most of the bad guys, and then Haseo).

.HackGU - UI

You even get to see a cool PC UI!

Everyone plays MMOs for different reasons. Some people can’t leave their homes and find beauty in the digital world. Some just like to level, kill and make other people feel bad. It’s fascinating. One of the things that are really profound about this game is that Haseo wonders to himself that if perhaps he was not tricked and PKed on his very first day in “The World”, maybe he’d be like Atoli; just enjoying the world, exploring and finding pleasure in it. Instead, he hunts other PKers that pick on weak players/noobs. He’s the PKK, “The Terror of Death”. People really call him that. It’s a stupid nickname, but he has fanart on the forums, and his name is spoken with reverence/fear. But this is how MMOs were in the early 2000s. Hell, that’s how they still are. Well, I guess the word “noob” or “pwning noobs” is used less. That’s more of a MOBA thing these days, I suppose. But something is amiss in “The World”, and Haseo is one of the special characters, after being Data Drained. His character is special and can wield the power of the mysterious Avatar/Ephitets. Tri-Edge is lurking and murdering people. Anyone he kills goes into a coma in real life.

.HackGU - Goblin

Die, Goblins! Now we’re playing an MMO!

.hack//G.U. is a fantastic title, and it’s much prettier than it was on PS2. That doesn’t make the PS2 version crappy, but it’s a title that was definitely worthy of a remaster/remake. Is some of the dialogue dated? Sure. Is the difficulty the same? Absolutely. Is Haseo so mean and rude and frustrating that you want to wrap your hands around his neck and bloody strangle him for yelling at Atoli? He’s easily the worst main character of any RPG I have ever played. Sure, he comes around and receives some character development. Everyone does, really. But it takes forever, and some of his dialogue is pretty damn hard to listen to. Haseo is what happens when you play a game with open PKing for the first time. It can really ruin your experience. There are a lot of people who have played games like that (say, Ultima Online) and after being tricked, killed and robbed, they never come back. But it has all the things that made the original special (and it’s predecessor) with forums, official and community, the PVP Arena, the whole cast of characters, customization, challenging dungeons and a gripping story.

.HackGU - Keywords

This can feel frustrating, but it gets easier over time.

Out of all the RPGs I played on the Playstation 2, .hack// and .hack//G.U. are some of the absolute best. The way the game is played is pretty simple. You are Haseo and meet other players to do dungeons and tackle PVP, by sending them in-game invites. You can build your relationships with them, despite being an absolute bell-end, through emails and postcards. You enter dungeons using the Chaos Gate. You can combine “Keywords” to create conditions/level suggestions/elements in these dungeons. You either have to Fight a Boss, Get the treasure at the Beast Statue, or Reach the Temple with the Symbol Fragments. Some of these are overland, some are underground (some have multiple levels).

.HackGU - Atoli

Seriously, Atoli’s the sweetest healer ever. How can you be an asshole to her, Haseo? You prick.

The puzzles in them are pretty simple, the traps are not hard to avoid. You’ll see the enemies coming and you can sneak up/sneak attack them with X. Combat’s simple, using X to attack, R1 to activate skills, Square for your Beast Awakening (Morale Bar is full). If you see an enemy flash purple, you can hit them with a skill for your Ren Geki art (which also gives bonus exp at the end of combat), so don’t spam skills! They have a slight cooldown. You combo attacks together, loop around and break guard, and build three-person teams that complement what you can do. You can gift your squadmates gear to equip when they get in range, and while it’s a little hard to get money in the first few hours of the game, that changes before you know it. It’s four games total, so there is plenty of content. This is not a title you’ll beat in one sitting, and you don’t have to play one of them if you don’t want to. As each part has a level cap (50, 100, 150, etc), if you start a new file without having a file for the one before it, it will start you at the minimum level (the cap for the previous game), so you don’t have to fret about that so much. But I recommend playing them all in order. That means it will be a while until you get to the new content, but it will be worth the wait. I promise.

.HackGI - Arena

Into the Thunderdome!

This is again, gorgeous and plays very smoothly. Most of the time. I had some pretty serious (but rare) lag spikes/slowdowns in the game, which appear to be tied to the framerate. As long as the game is moving at 60fps, everything is fine. But if you get to a cutscene/moment of the game that moves at 30fps, it’s going to slow down horribly, and will probably do so for several minutes. It feels kind of lazy and really made me think my PS4 was dying until I talked to my boss (whose husband is playing the game at the same time) and was in the process of troubleshooting the problem I was actually having at the same time! So we figured that much out. The World still feels kind of empty, and part of me kind of hoped to see more NPCs running around in the PS4 version of The World. That didn’t happen, which is probably for the sake of keeping the title true to the original, which I appreciate. But, I won’t lie: I was hoping. You aren’t free to do as you please all of the time though. Players won’t always be free to party with you, which gates who you can/cannot bring to quests/missions, so don’t just play with two people all the time. This is an MMO! Make friends! Though personally, there are characters I like more than others. Piros the 3rd, Pi, Ovan (Ovan for the main character please), Endrance, Sakubo. But there are plenty of characters for any strengths/weaknesses you feel you have.

 

SKEEEEEEIIIIIIIIITHHHH: ⅘

.HackGU - Normal Players

This is the most important screencap I took.

I love .hack//G.U., and as gaming press, I have an all-new appreciation for it. I’d recommend anyone who played MMOs in the early 2000s to go back and play this and think back to how you or someone you know treated others in them. It really is a fascinating, and sobering look at how far we’ve come as a community (Spoiler Warning: It’s not very far). One of the most compelling things I’d argue is that the main character is not likable at all. At least not at first. It’s going to take a few discs to really like him, but I promise it happens. Eventually. But he’s what happens when a dumpster-fire part of a community hits someone who just needed someone to talk to or help them learn the ropes instead of killing them and making fun of them. For new people, it’s even got a desktop with folders to browse, forums to peruse, where you can find more keywords/dungeons to explore, lots of secrets, cool weapons, items, and skills.

It does require grinding because it is an MMO, but it’s not an unenjoyable grind. You can create dungeons using keywords, make random ones, complete quests, and trade with other “players” in The World if you think they might have something you could use that’s not in the shops. Don’t think of it as “just a PS2 remake”, because .hack is stronger than that. There’s a lot of value to be had in .hack//G.U. and I hope that it’s sales do well and we see my personal favorite, the original .hack quadrilogy will get a remake. It’ll need considerably more love than the G.U. did, but it would be worth it. Or maybe a Key of Twilight series on the PS4? Maybe? Just a thought. But it’s a terrific update to a wonderful series. .hack//G.U. is absolutely worthy of your attention as both an “MMO” and an Action RPG.

 

Tartaros Rebirth

Tartaros Rebirth is a F2P action MMORPG set in a beautifully colorful world filled with all manner of customization options, fast-paced combat, and elegant storytelling to discover. Search for the legendary Obolus while experiencing everything the sky-and-ground boundary sanctuary Tartaros has to offer. Available for Windows.

Features:

My Hero: Effortlessly personalize your adventurer with a metric ton of options to choose from including which character you pick, the job they pursue, the skills they take, and of course, the way they look.

Worker Bee: Take on quests and beat endurance-testing dungeons for great rewards.

Fight King: Dive into the adrenaline pumping action with over 200 skills and 60+ jobs in the unique hunter areas.