My friend, and writer on Vox Ex Machina, Nelson Williams has reviewed the free-to-play MMORPG Talisman Online. It's 3D antics muse a bit with Chinese mythology and as you'll see, provide a different sort of approach from MMOs that play in the Western mythos sandbox.
My friend, Nelson Williams from Vox Ex Machina, has gone and done it again: he made another video. Once again, it's for GameOgre.com and this time it's for "League of Legends."
It features a strong 3D engine with a lot of special effects, epic booming music, and an extremely tight grip on the concept of transforming players into other things. The developers and publisher also seem to have spent a lot more time pitting the different guilds against one another moreso than driving the underlying storyline (although the narrative is certainly there.)
During my play through, I encountered a lot of different people—although most of them did kill me after I left the city—but overall the community will be driving this game with PvP and events. In fact, one thing that this game seems to push hard is events. The fact that I stumbled across something called a Monster Racetrack really caught my attention (although I didn’t get to see a race.) The world is vast, contains a lot of interesting things, and would take a while to explore.
While the game does work fairly well, I don’t think I’ll be returning to play. I’m not a fan of getting pwned repeatedly by the wild-world-of-PvP and just couldn’t stand exploring under threat.
Link to Kyt Dotson’s First Impressions review of R2 Online, via GameOgre.com
Over at GameOgre there’s an article about World of Warcraft’s Starter Edition accounts and what they mean for Activision-Blizzard as a whole. Also, they answer the question as to why WoW didn’t just go all the way to free-to-play with their offering.
Easy answer: spammers and gold farmers.
The long answer is a bit more complex, but it still boils down to the same distillation.
Link, via GameOgre.
Here’s a taste of my review (only the first paragraph, go read the rest if you want to know more):
It’s a blue sky over Malinovka as your tank platoon rolls tread over the dying grass, playing a lethal game of cat-and-mouse against the enemy forces hiding amidst the heavy brush. Engines blurt out on all sides as your comrades roll out and you follow in their muddy tracks when the coughing turret-report of an enemy tank signals they’ve sighted us before we them. Shells whistle overhead, radios chatter with severe language—a nearby friendly catches fire and explodes—your gunner bears the cannon sights down on a light track rambling over a hill…
This squad-based tank-shooter simulation can be a really worthwhile to spend an hour or so just trucking around the battlefield. Even though it is other people you’re up against, it doesn’t generate the teeth-breaking competition fears that other games might. As it runs a little bit slower than most FPS squad-based games.
I am constantly comparing the PvP to things like World of Warcraft battlegrounds where you have objectives and capture the flag and such, nothing similar yet in World of Tanks: just tanks, that is all. The sounds are nice, hearing the hits score is interesting, and sometimes even getting blown up can have its own delight.
If you happen to get into game, send me a message, we can hook up.
Link, via GameOgre.
At the beginning of this week we saw the opening of EMC World, which SiliconANGLE got people at—namely SA’s editor and chief Mark Hopkins—as a result we got some news about Hadoop, and a video of Tom Roloff, Senior VP of EMC Consulting, speaking about Big Data. For video games, a Czech computer scientist designed an error-correcting algorithm for video cameras and Happy Cloud is looking to leverage the cloud to aid quicker click-to-play. Apple got called to the principal’s office (aka Congress subcommittee) over their Location tracking snafus which they fixed last week in patch 4.3.3. The Pirate Bay thought they were being blocked by Comcast in the United States; and Facebook got caught hiring a PR company to smear Google.
Only one MMO game review to speak of, but it’s a game really worth playing because it’s quite fun. That game would happen to be World of Tanks. Published by Wargaming.net this game has actually had be somewhat entranced for a while. I don’t know how long I’ll keep playing it—it has a rather limited playability as it’s the same thing over and over—but they did an excellent job.
The cloud is a big deal, and cloud data in government is even more interesting. During his term, President Obama signed legislation into play that requires that the government be more open about their data. In order to help, Microsoft put on their superhero cape and tried to come to the rescue—Microsoft Tapped to Enable the US Government Open Cloud—of course, others such as Google have already been working hard on this.
In an attempt to address privacy concerns cropping up out of smartphones, Congress called upon both Google and Apple to explain themselves. Apple Faces Congress over Location Tracking Concerns—no doubt they felt a little squeamish when trying to explain why the phone didn’t stop recording customer locations when they turned Location Services off. Of course, the Google Android also records this sort of information; but the difference that makes a difference in people’s minds seems to be that Apple’s iPhone did so without consent.
As it turns out Comcast customers discovered that they couldn’t reach The Pirate Bay. Alarms went off, but it doesn’t look like Comcast had anything to do with it—Comcast Users Unable to Reach The Pirate Bay, ISP Says “It’s Not Us”—and it wasn’t…this week Comcast assisted TPB with determined where the problem existed and it’s on its way to being fixed.
Well, it looks like Facebook got caught badmouthing Google behind their backs—Facebook Hired PR Company Burson-Marsteller to Plant Negative Google Stories—in possibly one of the worst-executed-smear-campaigns-ever. USA Today broke the story after public relations experts from Burson-Marsteller tried to sell them on exaggerated concerns about Google’s Social Circle application. Now we’ll just have to see how Facebook runs damage control. Who expects them to back away and says, “Sure, we hired them, but we didn’t tell them to mudsling Google. Honest!”
It’s been a grim month for the cloud, Amazon EC2 crashed-and-burned in mid-April and late the month-of-Spring-flowers the PlayStation Network lost its buttered toast. While all of these companies are still scratching their heads, leaving numerous customers and websites in the dark, we wonder how this will reflect on trust in the cloud and on the Internet. Amazon’s EC2 debacle created a crash-sense (which had been handled better by Google when it happened to them) and the PSN failures include a credit-card theft of notable proportions.
Finally there’s a little bit about Twitter being a powerful tool for spreading the news, but it’s more or less like a vast grapevine with all of the pitfalls that come with that. As a result I posit that Twitter Doesn’t Compete with Broadcast Media, It Amplifies.
And, Nokia seems to be biding their time before they come to the market with a tablet. A lot of speculation is running rampant on what might end up on that tablet when it does appear. With Nokia Waiting for the Right Time to Enter Tablet Marketplace we hear from Stephen Elop that he wants any Nokia product to stand out in a wash of too-similar products as the iPad dominates the market.
Free MMORPGs have gotten a few new First Impressions to play around with,
The game is still in beta so my review is somewhat forgiving of some of the issues I discovered. Overall, the biggest problem is how short the story is. However, if you like space fighter simulations in solo mode – you’ll probably love what Gamingo did with Black Prophecy.
Here’s a taste of my review,
In the beginning there was Privateer and it was good; then came Descent, I, II, and III and Freespace, Tachyon: The Fringe, and the Independence War series; and then there was Microsoft’s Freelancer—the MMO world rejoiced when Jumpgate made a grand entrance and cried when it crashed and burned in the mountains of obscurity (never fear, we might see Jumpgate: Evolution!) Finally, there’s those who wanted to scratch their eyes out when Starwars Galaxies: The Jump to Lightspeed gave us a space fighter simulation MMO…
Up next to fill up the cold, dead vacuum of space fighter simulation MMOs is Black Prophecy and a beautiful vacuum filler it is indeed. Developed by Reakktor Media and published by Gamigo Games, this game looks like it could be contending for the an amazing space fighter simulation, with a strong graphics engine, an okay ship control system, and a spellbinding science fiction narrative.
Link, via GameOgre.
Last week, I spent a while wandering around another closed-beta: Wakfu, a tactical combat MMO produced by Square-Enix. I took my experience and published a first-impressions article over at GameOgre.com of this free-to-play MMO.
While the game’s graphics don’t entirely play nice with my eyes—too small and doll-like even with the zoom feature—it still has a lot of cute effects going for it. From the turn-based tactical combat, the very cute animals (killing sheep called gobbals really) and also a socio-ecological feature set for its persistent universe.
Killing too much of the wrong thing makes it go away forever; of course, a portion of the game can be had by re-planting in the wake of destroyers. I believe that experience can also be gained doing that—although not the sort of experience that aids you in combat.
Link, via GameOgre.
The MMO part isn’t bad either.
Even with the preview event being a closed beta (invite only) there were plenty of people to interact with. The community is extremely friendly and I had a great deal of fun. Looks like its shut down now in preparation for the final launch.
The actual game launches on April 4th.
See you there!
Link, via GameOgre.
I won’t spoil it here for you (as we’ve already put a commentary up about my review on Vox Ex Machina) but suffice it to say: I really liked the game. I am not one for FPS-style games; but this one really has taken some of what I’d love to see in an MMOFPSRPG to heart. Yes, it’s a Massively Multiplayer Game, a First-Person-Shooter, and a Role Playing Game.
I love the stories that it tells, and I’ve even fought in some PvP matches in order to finish some missions for the various crime families around the city.
Level progression is interesting and having jobs that run along the lines of ”shoot this many people with a rifle” to complete really make for an interesting job-on-the-side in a job where you’re already shooting people.
Be sure to read the full review.
Link, via GameOgre.
Burning rubber where angels fear to tread.
