Of being alive?
Tag: Dino Storm
Fun Fact: Dino Storm Is Still Alive
Dino Storm Hit With DDoS Attacks
Here at MMO Fallout, we have no patience for hackers or script kiddies, especially considering their motivations are more often than not for either craps and giggles or for malicious reasons (identity theft). The folks behind Dino Storm have spent the better part of the last twenty four hours fighting off a distributed denial of service attack coming from an unknown source and aimed at bringing the game servers to their knees. While the attack has been ongoing, defenses have been beefed up and players are slowly getting back into the game.
Update on the game’s status: First, thank you again for your patience. The motives for the denial-of-service attackers remain unclear, but we’ve made great progress (Yeah!) in our defense against them and the vast majority of you WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY NOW. We would like to point out again that no user data was compromised during the attacks.
We hope the best for the Dino Storm team on pushing back against these attacks.
(Source: Dino Storm Facebook)
Dino Storm Redefines Combat
In my review of Dino Storm, I pointed out that the game has a fantastic concept (cowboys on dinosaurs) but the execution was a little rigid. To say that there aren’t a whole lot of abilities in Dino Storm is an overstatement, there are just enough to not be considered negligible. So it is exciting to hear that the team over at Splitscreen Studios is making a major update to the game, or “redefining combat.”
In the first developer blog, the team discusses loot, levels, and upgrades. For starters, players will enjoy a much greater variety of loot dropped by dinosaurs, including upgrade items which can be used or sold for Dino Dollars, and fame items. Leveling will now directly effect unlockable upgrades, unlocking enhancement slots, and upgrading equipment all the way to level 25. And finally, players will be able to buy already upgraded weapons and dinosaurs, depending on their ranger level.
Evolution serums, gun tuning kits, weapons tech upgrades, and dino implant upgrades are being removed from the game, and players will receive a refund in Dino Dollars for any left in their inventory at the time of the update. Upgrade items now drop from creatures on the field, and quest experience and coin rewards will be boosted to compensate for the lack of upgrade items as rewards.
More to come on the upcoming Dino Storm combat upgrade.
(Source: Dino Storm)
Why Aren’t You Playing: Dino Storm
Dino Storm is the kind of game that is born in the dreams of young boys. The more that you think about it, the more it makes sense. Cowboys riding dinosaurs, wielding laser guns, all in a old west setting. The game centers around a village called “Dinoville,” (bet you didn’t see that coming) where everything is bought and sold with Dino Dollars (you wish I was making this up). On paper (or wherever you happen to be reading this) it sounds just crazy enough to be an early April Fool’s prank, or a fever dream, but then you pinch yourself on the face and realize that no, it is indeed a very serious video game.
Created by Splitscreen Studios, Dino Storm is played through the browser and features a pretty cool 3D engine. So grab your laser gun and let’s dive in, shall we?
Gameplay
So we already know Dino Storm breaks some new territory with the whole cowboys and dinosaurs theme, but the game itself lives or dies on a very simple question: Is it fun to play? And my answer is a rather confident yes. You spend 100% of the game strapped to your dinosaur, which can be moved around either by clicking to move or using the keyboard. Quests are exactly what you would expect to find in an MMO, with the added exception that there are a lot less of them, and they are all public quests. Instead of traveling to a hub and picking up twenty or so quests, each area only has one or two quest givers, each of which have one quest in progress at any given time. The quests are along the lines of kill this, escort that, or activate these nodes, nothing particularly new outside of the always-grouped factor.
Combat in Dino Storm is rather love-it-or-leave-it. You have to click on all of your targets and select a large, bulky “attack” button from the drop down menu for your character to initiate his auto-attack. As your dinosaur levels up, you do gain access to new abilities but they are very limited in scope and quantity. You can move and shoot at the same time, which is less useful than it sounds when you factor in that proximity doesn’t mean a whole lot in MMOs, even in melee settings. Your abilities are dictated by the level of your gun and the level of your dinosaur, but you only unlock two for each category and the second ability doesn’t come until much later in the game.
In order to accomplish this leveling, you’re going to need to collect an assortment of items from quests and from killing monsters. Upgrading your weapon requires copious amounts of gun tuning kits and weapon tech upgrade kits. Leveling your dinosaur requires evolution serum. With how generously tuning kits and serum drop, the more difficult item on the list to pull together winds up being the Dino Dollars which are required in the thousands early on in leveling, and oddly enough are easily purchased with cash shop gold coins.
Once you get past the initial area around Dinoville, you start getting into zones that have pvp enabled and that two-clicks-to-attack feature becomes a lot less of a hinderance and a lot more of a necessity. The menu clearly differentiates between players and mobs, and since the public quests have a tendency to become one massive clustertruck of players and dinosaurs crawling over one another and attacking, that extra menu before you attack can mean the difference between attacking a mob or accidentally flagging yourself to another player. The system isn’t perfect, and I did see plenty of players accidentally attacking each other, but it is better than not having a safeguard at all.
One problem I have with Dino Storm in the gameplay area is over the game’s GPS-style system of directing you to the objectives, with footprints leading you where you need to go. While the system mostly works fine, there are several instances where the game is simply unable to find a path, and is perpetually stuck in the “finding your target” mode. I even had this happen while in Dinoville, searching for the casino in the same area. I would much rather have to rely on a static indicator on the map and have the system be reliable than have no indicator and have to hope that the game can figure out its own map.
The other major problem I’ve had is with overlapping quests, especially when they are radically different in level. At one point, our group of about fifteen players were tasked with escorting a caravan to its destination. That travel took us through another quest area where players were fighting high level T-Rex mobs (pictured above) which mobbed and took out our entire group in about three seconds. I don’t know what happened to the players on the quest, but they never showed up to kill the T-Rex group, and we had to wait until they despawned in order to complete the escort mission. On more than one occasion, I’ve had entire groups of bandits spawn into an area and just start randomly attacking people.
The downside to having less quest givers is of course that there is far more limited content than in your standard MMO. All of the combat quests revolve mainly around defending yourself against waves of mobs, whether it be waves of mobs in a specific area or waves of mobs as you escort a couple of trade dinosaurs. After a while the repetition begins to weigh in as you find yourself performing the same tasks over and over in order to forward the main “chapters” which are a set of tasks for each region.
Appeal
When it comes to graphics, my policy is simple: Work within your limits. Aesthetically, there is a huge difference between aiming for the middle and striking gold, or aiming too high and winding up with the product of nightmares. So I give credit to the folks at Splitscreen Studios for figuring out a style and making it work.
Dino Storm looks like a game that might have found home on the old Quake engine, which I personally find to be a more preferable direction than trying to make a realistic looking game and falling into the uncanny valley, or heading down the generic indie route of calling your game “retro” and using 2d graphics. The visuals are low-key, but charming and with their own distinct theme. The dinosaurs look good and the player models are decent enough, even though they lack in any meaningful level of customization.
The UI is one of the worst aspects of Dino Storm. It is basic, bulky, takes up far too much of the screen than it should (especially in window mode), and it’s rather ugly to boot. I have also seen a large number of threads on the forums with people complaining that they are losing their inventories during server crashes, although I have not experienced this myself.
Conclusion
Overall, Dino Storm is a game with a brilliant setting surrounding a decent game on a promising platform. The game is actually rather family-friendly, so if you’re looking for a game to introduce your son/daughter into MMOs, I’d put Dino Storm up there along with Free Realms, Fusion Fall, and a few others. The few rude players I’ve seen have been pretty unanimously rejected by the community, and the game has systems in place to protect someone from getting ganked or spawn camped, alongside an actively policing player base.
Dino Storm isn’t in the realm of hardcore gaming, but considering that after the main city players are able to freely attack one another (albeit with repercussions for doing so) and take control of spawn points, not to mention that you need to do a corpse run for your quest items and sell-able goods which are left on your body upon death, not to mention that you are most likely to die from being piled by mobs or sniped by a player, I hesitate to call it a soft core title. Instead, it’s a bit more in the range of RuneScape pre-gravestones. Think of it as a mid-core title for players who are either enticed by the theme, or are new to the genre and would like something a bit tougher than Free Realms or Fusion Fall.
I give Dino Storm a B+. Aside from some bugs, there isn’t anything wrong with the game on a fundamental level. More depth would do nothing but help it. If this is an indication as to where browser based MMOs are headed, the future looks very bright indeed.
Why Aren't You Playing: Dino Storm
Dino Storm is the kind of game that is born in the dreams of young boys. The more that you think about it, the more it makes sense. Cowboys riding dinosaurs, wielding laser guns, all in a old west setting. The game centers around a village called “Dinoville,” (bet you didn’t see that coming) where everything is bought and sold with Dino Dollars (you wish I was making this up). On paper (or wherever you happen to be reading this) it sounds just crazy enough to be an early April Fool’s prank, or a fever dream, but then you pinch yourself on the face and realize that no, it is indeed a very serious video game.
Created by Splitscreen Studios, Dino Storm is played through the browser and features a pretty cool 3D engine. So grab your laser gun and let’s dive in, shall we?
Gameplay
So we already know Dino Storm breaks some new territory with the whole cowboys and dinosaurs theme, but the game itself lives or dies on a very simple question: Is it fun to play? And my answer is a rather confident yes. You spend 100% of the game strapped to your dinosaur, which can be moved around either by clicking to move or using the keyboard. Quests are exactly what you would expect to find in an MMO, with the added exception that there are a lot less of them, and they are all public quests. Instead of traveling to a hub and picking up twenty or so quests, each area only has one or two quest givers, each of which have one quest in progress at any given time. The quests are along the lines of kill this, escort that, or activate these nodes, nothing particularly new outside of the always-grouped factor.
Combat in Dino Storm is rather love-it-or-leave-it. You have to click on all of your targets and select a large, bulky “attack” button from the drop down menu for your character to initiate his auto-attack. As your dinosaur levels up, you do gain access to new abilities but they are very limited in scope and quantity. You can move and shoot at the same time, which is less useful than it sounds when you factor in that proximity doesn’t mean a whole lot in MMOs, even in melee settings. Your abilities are dictated by the level of your gun and the level of your dinosaur, but you only unlock two for each category and the second ability doesn’t come until much later in the game.
In order to accomplish this leveling, you’re going to need to collect an assortment of items from quests and from killing monsters. Upgrading your weapon requires copious amounts of gun tuning kits and weapon tech upgrade kits. Leveling your dinosaur requires evolution serum. With how generously tuning kits and serum drop, the more difficult item on the list to pull together winds up being the Dino Dollars which are required in the thousands early on in leveling, and oddly enough are easily purchased with cash shop gold coins.
Once you get past the initial area around Dinoville, you start getting into zones that have pvp enabled and that two-clicks-to-attack feature becomes a lot less of a hinderance and a lot more of a necessity. The menu clearly differentiates between players and mobs, and since the public quests have a tendency to become one massive clustertruck of players and dinosaurs crawling over one another and attacking, that extra menu before you attack can mean the difference between attacking a mob or accidentally flagging yourself to another player. The system isn’t perfect, and I did see plenty of players accidentally attacking each other, but it is better than not having a safeguard at all.
One problem I have with Dino Storm in the gameplay area is over the game’s GPS-style system of directing you to the objectives, with footprints leading you where you need to go. While the system mostly works fine, there are several instances where the game is simply unable to find a path, and is perpetually stuck in the “finding your target” mode. I even had this happen while in Dinoville, searching for the casino in the same area. I would much rather have to rely on a static indicator on the map and have the system be reliable than have no indicator and have to hope that the game can figure out its own map.
The other major problem I’ve had is with overlapping quests, especially when they are radically different in level. At one point, our group of about fifteen players were tasked with escorting a caravan to its destination. That travel took us through another quest area where players were fighting high level T-Rex mobs (pictured above) which mobbed and took out our entire group in about three seconds. I don’t know what happened to the players on the quest, but they never showed up to kill the T-Rex group, and we had to wait until they despawned in order to complete the escort mission. On more than one occasion, I’ve had entire groups of bandits spawn into an area and just start randomly attacking people.
The downside to having less quest givers is of course that there is far more limited content than in your standard MMO. All of the combat quests revolve mainly around defending yourself against waves of mobs, whether it be waves of mobs in a specific area or waves of mobs as you escort a couple of trade dinosaurs. After a while the repetition begins to weigh in as you find yourself performing the same tasks over and over in order to forward the main “chapters” which are a set of tasks for each region.
Appeal
When it comes to graphics, my policy is simple: Work within your limits. Aesthetically, there is a huge difference between aiming for the middle and striking gold, or aiming too high and winding up with the product of nightmares. So I give credit to the folks at Splitscreen Studios for figuring out a style and making it work.
Dino Storm looks like a game that might have found home on the old Quake engine, which I personally find to be a more preferable direction than trying to make a realistic looking game and falling into the uncanny valley, or heading down the generic indie route of calling your game “retro” and using 2d graphics. The visuals are low-key, but charming and with their own distinct theme. The dinosaurs look good and the player models are decent enough, even though they lack in any meaningful level of customization.
The UI is one of the worst aspects of Dino Storm. It is basic, bulky, takes up far too much of the screen than it should (especially in window mode), and it’s rather ugly to boot. I have also seen a large number of threads on the forums with people complaining that they are losing their inventories during server crashes, although I have not experienced this myself.
Conclusion
Overall, Dino Storm is a game with a brilliant setting surrounding a decent game on a promising platform. The game is actually rather family-friendly, so if you’re looking for a game to introduce your son/daughter into MMOs, I’d put Dino Storm up there along with Free Realms, Fusion Fall, and a few others. The few rude players I’ve seen have been pretty unanimously rejected by the community, and the game has systems in place to protect someone from getting ganked or spawn camped, alongside an actively policing player base.
Dino Storm isn’t in the realm of hardcore gaming, but considering that after the main city players are able to freely attack one another (albeit with repercussions for doing so) and take control of spawn points, not to mention that you need to do a corpse run for your quest items and sell-able goods which are left on your body upon death, not to mention that you are most likely to die from being piled by mobs or sniped by a player, I hesitate to call it a soft core title. Instead, it’s a bit more in the range of RuneScape pre-gravestones. Think of it as a mid-core title for players who are either enticed by the theme, or are new to the genre and would like something a bit tougher than Free Realms or Fusion Fall.
I give Dino Storm a B+. Aside from some bugs, there isn’t anything wrong with the game on a fundamental level. More depth would do nothing but help it. If this is an indication as to where browser based MMOs are headed, the future looks very bright indeed.
MMOrning Shots: I Am On A Dinosaur
Dino Storm has cowboys on dinosaurs. I’ll let that sink in.
Taco Tuesday: Five More Steam Greenlight MMOs
I’m writing on scenic on-campus, and that can only mean one thing: It is Taco Tuesday, inarguably the greatest day of the week in cafeterias all around America and hopefully much of the world. Taco Tuesday is also the day where I get to put some focus on games that I think you should be watching out for, even if I don’t normally have an opportunity to fit them into everyday MMO Fallout life.
Continuing on with the past few weeks, I’d like to expand upon my list of Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter games. The best part about Steam Greenlight is that, generally, a lot of the games I get to talk about are already available to play either as live titles (Perpetuum, Battleground Europe, etc) or in beta (see this list). So even if the games wind up in limbo on Greenlight for the next two years, you can still download them from their respective sources and play now.
1. Dino Storm
Just take a minute to soak in the above image. A cowboy riding a dinosaur wielding a laser gun. With that sort of introduction, Dino Storm has a lot to live up to. From the looks of things, Dino Storm features questing, loot collection, and player vs player combat with territory control and resource collection. Gain recognition and even compete with other players for offices and become the town sheriff.
It may not be sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, but surely this unholy trinity is worthy of some sort of attention. Even better, you can play Dino Storm’s open beta right now.
Official website: http://dinostorm.com
Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=94544410&searchtext=
2. NEStalgia
So I’m a sucker for 8-bit graphics and old school RPGs. Sue me. NEStalgia merges old school RPG mechanics with the trappings of the MMO genre, merging turn based combat with online play, auction housing, and guilds. NEStalgia is free to play without microtransactions, but with an optional subscription which unlocks new classes and ways to customize your character’s appearance.
NEStalgia can be played currently at its website.
Website: http://silkgames.com/nestalgia
Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92588954&searchtext=
3. Dark Blood
I normally wouldn’t consider myself to be easy to please, but show me a game where I can play as an ass-kicking polar bear, and I’m a happy guy. Dark Blood is a beat-em-up arcade brawler along the lines of Dungeon Fighter Online, and the game looks pretty good to boot. Dark Blood is free to play with microtransactions (as you’d expect), and there isn’t really much more to add. You’ll fight through dungeons, massacre all sorts of creatures in large quantities, and fight other players in arena combat.
So if you enjoy games like Dungeon Fighter, why not play the best looking game in the bunch? Dark Blood can already be played at its website below.
Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=94463555&searchtext=
Website: http://darkblood.outspark.com/
4. Heroes & Generals
I love World War II, and there is a particular place in my heart for massively multiplayer games that are set in World War II, even better if the game is a first person shooter. The core of Heroes & Generals is a team-based first person shooter, players taking to the trenches and fighting it out on foot, in planes, or in vehicles. Strategically, both sides must manage resources and territory, sending troops where they are needed and taking command. If this is sounding like a 2012-Battleground Europe, stop me now.
Heroes & Generals is being developed by the founding fathers and core developers of IO Interactive, our dear friends who brought us Hitman and Freedom Fighters. You can sign up for the beta at the website below.
Website: www.HeroesAndGenerals.com
Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93051095&searchtext=
5. Island Forge
Yes, I’ve talked about Island Forge before, but it wasn’t from this particular computer. Island Forge presents two games in one: One half of the game is a hex-based world creator. Design and publish islands for other players to quest through, creating your own stories and adventures only limited by your creativity. The other half involves, of course, exploring other player’s creations, besting their quests and knocking a few heads together.
Island Forge is quite impressive, seeing as how it was developed by a single person. You can even play the game in its current iteration on the main website below, free for 30 days with a subscription going forward. And since I’m already on track to “this is a sales pitch” comments, you can support Island Forge’s Kickstarter below as well.
Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93854071&searchtext=
Website: http://islandforge.com/
Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1391235405/island-forge-establishing-a-creative-player-commun
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