Saturday, February 7, 2009

Shadow Tale

"Shadowtale is an amazing FREE MMORPG game you can play right in your browser!"
Is what they say. Right off the bat, you realize that this game bears a striking resemblance to AdventureQuest, DragonFable, and (if you still followed the chain of similar games) MechQuest. You are given a choice of two characters:

A male character:


Or a female character:


Both of which look pretty nice, in my opinion. Insofar, I was pleased. The guys looked manly (As opposed to girly anime types) and muscular, whereas the women weren't all big-chested, half-naked amazons (you know the ones I'm talking about).

On the aside, I like the beat-em-up genre of games, run around a screen and beat enemies up for little storyline-based reason. Good times. This game has a beat-em-up style fighting system, where you run around a screen and defend yourself against enemies... and here's where things start to get ugly. There are monster encounters on every screen when you leave town, sort of like an instance 'dungeon'. You do not heal between encounters and have to carry around food so you can heal after combat... which brings about another thing in-game that bothers me. Why give us a timer on food when we're only able to use it out of combat anyway?

Now the combat: Your character has five moves, count 'em, five. A basic sword slash, a follow up slash to it, a subsequent follow up, a running slash, and a jumping slash. Customization of fighting in combat: Zero. Enemies will occasionally flank you, forcing you to run away or get beat up on two sides to your death (Died at least 10 times at my current level to just that). Your basic attack is, for the most part, useless once you pass level seven. The majority of enemies of that level will either block you (no damage to them, less stun time) as their allies get behind you or have this really fast, cheap-shot attack so they can get in the first hit. You need to be right in line with the enemy to even deal damage, and basically look like an idiot whacking in the forward direction with your sword until you score a hit. But that isn't my biggest beef. I told you there were five moves, and none of those include a bloody BLOCK move. A quintessential part of all beat-em-ups is that you could counter your attack-spam-happy enemies by blocking and following up with some kind of cool move. The game is still in beta, however, so maybe it'll get better with some actual fighting maneuvers.

And now the aspect that REALLY grinds my gears. They call it an MMORPG, but MM assumes that it's Massively Multiplayer... it's more like Massively Spectator. You see other people in games and can chat with them, but
A. You can't party with them
B. When you see others fight, it just looks like they're pacing like idiots on your screen
C. You can't trade
So basically there's as much player interaction as a chatroom. You can't really do anything with other people.

And as all loyal DragonFable/AdventureQuest/MechQuest type games are, you can't do half the crap in the game without 'upgrading' to the members version. The game doesn't offer much to start out with, and the NPCs will actually start giving you quests to go to areas that only MEMBERS can enter! Other member benefits include cheap, better weapons, food, and quests (about 8x the reward of Free quests). This game is such a con!

This game may be good for a cheap, short term thrill, but all-in-all, the game is static. I don't think you can 'game good' with this game. Try Runescape, BYOND games, or other games that don't force you to pay money just to play the basic game!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Kongregate: Storm the House 3!



Gar, I have not posted on this blog in ages. I thought it died... checked my counter and WOAH! People! I owe you all a blog post, so here it is.

Kongregate is still my recent obsession, so I decided to play a game of Storm the House 3 (http://www.kongregate.com/games/Ivory/storm-the-house-3), a base defence game.

I've played Storm the House 1, which had about 8 guns, I think, but my memory fades... lessee...


nope, just 1. But I assure you, the minute you get the Missile Site, the game is over, because at that point you have the money to hire at least 5 silo workers... if you have 20, you can nuke the field about every 5 seconds, and game over... now lets see the interface of Storm the House 3...
Big difference. Before you could solely upgrade a single gun with damage and what not, and every upgrade put you one step ahead of the weakling enemy swarms.

In Storm the House 3, you actually need to aim for crap, but the ability to modify your guns remains, as well as the ability to drop down modifiable towers such as the Quake Tower, which makes it very hard for enemies to stay on their feet, believe me.

I believe that you can game good on Kongregate, and this game has proven exceptional quality and substantial improvement... I can only wait for Ivory's next installment, if s/he decides to make it.

Now I shall leave you with early-game CHAINSAW MEGADEATH!


And that is all. Game good together!

P.S. All spelling errors in this blog are intentional. I'm still a spelling nazi.
P.S.S. Sorry for the large amount of pictures, someone told me I should put more in... tell me if I went overboard.
P.S.S.S. If the pictures are small, blame the uploader. I'll get them larger next time if I have to.
P.S.S.S.S. I've been playing Storm the House 3 till late because I want the Hard badge, nerdy me, so here's a dilemma I have.

OH SHIT! MECHS! Chainsaws just won't cut it no more D:
NO WAIT! *generic dramatic music plays*
IT IS TRULY DEUS EX MACHINA!

LASERS FROM ABOVE!
WAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ok, so sue me, I did this little add-on at 2 AM. Sleep deprivation may cause insanity.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Sheesh it's been a LONG time

But I'm a gamer. I've been on Kongregate (http://www.kongregate.com/) a lot recently, a site which is a flash portal much like Newgrounds (http://www.newgrounds.com/). Kongregate's unique feature is that there are many games that offer Awards/Achievements, which increase your Gamer Score and give you levels. New awards are added every week.

Recently they've added an online collectible card game of their own called Kongai. The combat system is interesting, albeit weird. It reminds me of the Pokemon collectible card game, except less slow and monotonous.

You can find me often in the Achievement Addicts Anonymous room, playing recent and newer games. Since I consider gaming to be indiscrete, I often play games that offer no reward simply for the fun.

Hmm. I should make my next blog post a rant/self-discussion about how I critique games. Many games that others say 'suck' I say 'rock'... but to each gamer his/her own. Happy trails, and

Game Good together.

Friday, July 25, 2008

The Magic Test

Well, I'm sure everyone's taken this test, but I haven't. So now I'm gonna sidetrack and brag about how smart I am.


Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.



Blue is the 'do-nothing' color. It makes your opponent do nothing. Frustration sets in as everything they try to do is annulled, and they start stumbling around drunkenly attempting to play how they've always played. Manipulation is fun.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

I'ma watchin' the game Haze

Since I don't have a PS3 (and my friend does, who will remain unmentioned at this time), he downloaded a demo for this game, Haze. Haze, on first impressions, seems to be a shooter with a twist (although more like a handicap). You have this super suit (Halo, anyone?) which basically pumps a drug into your system that is a painkiller, as well as heightening your perception to inhuman levels (all enemies are highlighted in BRIGHTLY OBVIOUS colors).

I told my friend that this was cheesy. It was much too easy to win, and it seemed like just ANOTHER shooter. I have seen shooting games from Doom to Gears of War to Crysis, and it falls into the "generic shoot 'em up" category... on first impressions.

Then, proud nerd I am, I randomly found a full walkthrough for the game Haze on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qsGVExfAY, courtesy of Boner's Games). I started watching it, realizing that it had 15 CHAPTERS. Watching, I actually found that despite the game's linear storyline and (very) repetitive blabber from your allies, (Notably, the Americans are all cool Macho Men and the supposed Intifada (sp?) all have a quote set that could easily align them to being fervent terrorists) the game would be a fun rental in the least. They had that creative drug idea, but the idea of corruption in the military/government is so overused in TV (Law and Order, The West Wing) and gaming (Army of Two, Mercenaries) that it just seems plagiarized.

So, all in all, I'd say that you could game good with this game, give it a try.

Now I'm gonna go get off my butt and get a counter thrown up on the site. Oh, and if anyone's reading this, gimme an idea for what I should put up as a picture... that cat just isn't cutting it.

Angry cat is angry.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

The grand intro!

I'm a gamer. As of this moment, this is the first blog I have ever created. I'm a gamer like you people. I like good games. Lets game good together.