Preview – Page 2 – MMO Fallout

Beta Perspective: H1Z1 On PS4

I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I am enjoying H1Z1 on the Playstation 4. Is it the graphics? No, those are relatively standard for a game of this style and mostly subpar in the greater scheme of the Playstation. Is it the streamlined controls and faster paced action than its PC counterpart? We’re probably getting closer. Is it the fact that I can get through a match, kill seven people, and actually have a fleeting shot of winning? Absolutely.

Competence goes a long way toward enjoyment.

H1Z1 is a battle royale game from Daybreak Game Company, originally released on PC and now ported over to PS4 sans its survival mode counterpart. The PS4 version down to its fundamentals is a port of the PC copy but with a lot of the intricacies stripped out. Gone is crafting, your inventory, weapon attachments, and more. What’s left is a survival mode shooter that will likely make you happy that the game isn’t pulling such complicated systems in a rather fast paced game and handing you a controller to fumble your way through it.

For those of you who have managed to avoid this genre, I’ll go over the details: H1Z1 throws up to 100 players on to an island littered with weapons, armor, and vehicles and has them battle it out to the last remaining survivor. You and 99 players are essentially thrown into an arms race where you try to build up your offensive and defensive power by raiding the numerous towns, houses, and camps that litter the landscape. As the match progresses the playable area gets smaller as a toxic gas slowly encroaches upon players. This ultimately leads to each map starting of slow, watching players get picked off, and ending with just a massacre of the remaining players as they all get grouped up into the last remaining safe spaces.

As a genre, the battle royale game mode is all about your experiences and how you experience the game is directly related to whether or not you enjoy it, and how much. Combat is fleeting so there tends to be more memorable moments of survival or failure, like the time I hunkered down in a gas station and wound up taking out six players before being forced out by the toxic gas, or the time I parachuted into the world only to immediately have my brains blown out by some guy who found a pistol seconds before I did. Victory, while likely more common in group games, always seems to have a memorable story behind it of you and the other last remaining dude or dudette battling it out in the toxic fog.

Controls and handling in H1Z1 is pretty unique compared to other shooters on the platform. Guns are tight and control pretty much how you would expect for a third person shooter, but vehicle handling is all over the place thanks to a rather wonky physics system. You’ll be spending a fair amount of time driving in a vehicle, so getting used to the loose turning is going to be necessary for survival.

What makes the gunplay so special in H1Z1 is that the game is very straight forward in how it plays. There is a large enough variety that you’ll inevitably find your favorite close and long range weapons, but basic enough that you’ll figure out what each weapon does within the first few games. Weapons are familiar enough that you’ll know how they work: Pistols can shoot faster but do less damage, or slower and be more powerful. Shotguns are killer at close range while SMGs shoot fast to make up for their lack of punch. The only wacky weapon that H1Z1 really has to offer is the crossbow that shoots explosive arrows, great for area of effect damage or destroying a moving vehicle.

Equipment you pick up is also huge for your survival. You will find basic helmets and makeshift armor everywhere, with higher end military gear available only from caches that dot the landscape. You can also find backpacks that let you carry more weapons and combat boots that let you run faster.

Microtransactions come down to cosmetics which in turn act sort of weird. You can buy gold and then spend said gold on loot crates or earn them through gameplay, and those crates in turn unlock cosmetics for various weapons/equipment that effectively override your current default. How does this work in a game where your items are all found throughout the world? I’m glad you asked. When you equip said item, the look gets overridden to your default. Simple as.

End of the day, I feel like H1Z1 is a game that people will either hate or they will love, until they hit three bad games in a row of dying within three minutes of landing, and log off to stop themselves from angrily throwing their controller through the television, and come online to finish the beta review that they should have done two days ago.

Unless that’s just me.

[Not Massive] Preview: Ion Maiden Plugs Old School Into New School

Ion Storm is the perfect level of ridiculous to be almost believable. Imagine for a moment that in 2018 I’m trying to tell you that 3D Realms is not only releasing a new game, but it is a first person shooter on the Build Engine starring a character who is essentially Duke Nukem’s lady alternate.

In a world where crispy M&M’s, French Toast Crunch, and Jumanji are all making a comeback, it only stands to reason that a shooter actually built out of a twenty year old engine would be eaten up like, well, crispy M&M’s. Ion Maiden is currently in early access on Steam with an anticipated release date of later this year, and people are loving it. It currently holds a 97% approval rating and clocks in at a hard drive busting thirty two megabytes.

Without a doubt, Ion Maiden is the Duke Nukem game we all wished had released instead of the depressing episode that was Duke Nukem Forever, and likely evidence that 3D Realms might still have the Duke rights if George Broussard hadn’t catapulted his company into the sun in the pursuit of fancier game engines. Everything you’d want from a Duke Nukem iteration is in Ion Maiden from the fast paced gun action to the cheesy one liners, pop culture references, and maze-like maps with tons of hidden areas.

The Build Engine has been modified and upgraded throughout the years to include a 3D renderer and be capable of showing off really good looking sprites. Those of you who don’t wax poetic about the virtues of 90’s shooters might not find the aesthetics as appealing, considering anything and everything in the world is a two dimensional sprite that moves its orientation to face you no matter how quickly you circle around it. Still, 3D Realms has created nothing short of magic with this engine since it debuted in 1997, and while it may not impress anyone with its graphical fidelity, it is by no means simple.

It’s especially impressive when you consider that the Build Engine isn’t technically 3D, it just tricks you into thinking it is.

Right now there is only a sample campaign available that should take you about an hour to finish and a hell of a lot more time if you decide to try and track down every one of the campaign’s dozens of secret areas. There are only a handful of enemies and the preview is rather short, so I can’t fault anyone for simply waiting until the full game comes out later this year especially since it’ll still be a cheap $20.

Early Access: Tower Of Time Hands On Impressions

Tower of Time is hoping to continue the legacy of games like Baldur’s Gate and so far my time with the early access version has proven it a worthy successor. It strikes me as exactly the kind of title that hardcore RPG enthusiasts would be happy to get their hands on, the combination of strategic gameplay, stat building, and a so far compelling story that’ll have you up until two in the morning trying to figure out the best builds for your characters.

In short, this game is pretty fun, and it’s also tough as hell.

Rather than trying to go over every aspect of the game in this preview, I want to discuss the meat and potatoes of Tower of Time, that being its combat encounters. I find myself rather impressed by the fact that a game where you’re not directly controlling your characters requires as much attention to be paid as this game does. While you don’t control your character’s standard attacks, you do direct them around the field of combat and activate their special abilities when necessary.

Combat in Tower of Time is very heavily reliant on line of sight mechanics, with battles easily won and lost based on how you position your characters and keep them working with each other. Kane is the party tank, able to raise walls and absorb damage while your other party members pepper the enemy with attacks. Maeve is a marksman, high on damage but low on defense abilities. Aeric is a druid, able to summon an ent and more adept at party healing than Kane.

There are also plenty of ways to customize your characters, and you’ll need to be paying attention to the deficits in your team in order to properly build in response to them. For instance, I upgraded Maeve’s arrows with the ability to inflict blindness, making Tower of Time one of the few games in which casting blindness on NPCs is useful. Blind is great in this game because combat encounters at least early on have a habit of throwing wraiths at you which cast an ongoing life drain as long as they have line of sight. Now Kane’s wall can break this line of sight, but it can easily just push some enemies into attacking the more vulnerable characters. By giving Maeve the ability to blind them, I could very quickly put a stop to multiple life drains.

In a sense, you can think of each match like its own tower defense mini-game, like a puzzle of sorts where you need to carefully move your pieces around the board to handle each threat as it appears. For me this has basically come down to getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter in some matches a couple of times before I figure out the best way to maneuver my characters around. Arrow Time, Tower of Time’s branded bullet time effect, is both helpful and necessary to keep the action from getting overwhelming, not to mention handy in keeping track of who is targeting who (seen above).

You’ll have the opportunity to bring on more companions, up to seven from the looks of the roster, but the few hours I’ve spent in the game so far have only given me access to three. Presumably if I play the game as intended and put more time into crafting/enchanting gear using the available facilities in town.

I look forward to diving further into Tower of Time.

Exclusive: Middle Earth Shadow of War Preview

Middle Earth: Shadow of War is the long awaited sequel to Shadow of Mordor, a highly rated open world fighter that takes place in everyone’s favorite land of Mordor. Players once again control of Talion as he forges a new ring of power and attempts to keep control of it for use in the war against Sauron and his forces of darkness. The game doesn’t officially launch until October 10, but it just so happens that I was in the store and they miraculously had a copy on the shelf already. I couldn’t pass up this opportunity for an exclusive review, so I took it.

The more I play this, the more I’m pretty sure that this is an unreleased prototype spinoff, possibly taking place in between the first two games. My local store had a copy called the Shadow of War: Pepperoni Edition, and frankly within ten minutes I could tell that this would revolutionize gaming as a medium. To start, the special edition was clearly mislabeled and thus rang up for about $4 at the counter. The cashier didn’t seem to care that I was getting this product more than a month early.

And I know what you nerds are going to say: Why focus on Pepperoni as a character when she was such a minuscule factor in the books and never made it into the movies? Look, I love Lord of the Rings just as much as any of you do, likely a lot more. I’ve read the books literally three thousand times each, and I’ve been waiting what feels like decades for the Tolkein Estate to finally release the rights to Pepperoni for her own game. In fact, just the idea that pervasive sexists are fighting so hard against her appearance as a lead character should be all the evidence the Warner Bros needs to put her front and center.

The most surprising thing of Shadow of War’s Pepperoni spinoff is that it not only isn’t compatible with any of the current gen systems. Instead, Pepperoni Edition is compatible with most microwaves and convection ovens. It does contain a code for 100 coins in the main game, however. The cashier told me that this game doesn’t play as well on the microwave, so for the ultimate experience I went with my trusty convection oven. After a quick 10 minute installation process at 400 degrees, I was ready to go.

Let’s get into Pepperoni as a character in Shadow of War. It’s nice to see Warner Bros. finally giving us a gritty female character, one with a tough, crispy outer shell that actually hides a rather saucy personality underneath. We see a character that is both sweet and a bit tart, always ready to help when called. The dialogue can get a little cheesy in parts and it lacked a really meaty ending, but overall the presentation is one that you can really sink your teeth into.

While her motivations aren’t as in your face as, say, Talion wanting to survive and destroy Sauron in the main game, it’s pretty clear from the get go that Pepperoni is all about sustaining the survivors still hiding within Mordor. She wants to enrich life back into the lands via copious amounts of iron and protein. The game really goes far to show the gritty, greasy reality of life in Mordor and while I wouldn’t exactly call this game “profane,” it is dirty enough that you will literally need some napkins in order to walk out with your hands clean. Perhaps some wet naps.

The delivery method of Shadow of War: Pepperoni Edition is going to irk some customers. The idea of games slowly becoming more of a service than a product has become more popular over time, but this is the first game made entirely out of consumables. The box came with 40 consumables that must be individually installed, of which I used a baker’s dozen for this review. Now I can see why this cost $4 at the store, most will beat it in less than a week while hardcore games can probably get through it in a day. I did severely burn my mouth on the first three consumables, but that’s the cost of games journalism.

There is little doubt in my mind that this review is going to get slammed on social media because “oh it’s not a real game,” and “oh Connor you don’t know what a real game is, you’re not a real games journalist.” Shadow of War: Pepperoni Edition doesn’t cater to the ‘hardcore gamer,’ the unemployed basement dweller who has all the time in the world to memorize button combinations. You don’t need quick reflexes to play this game well, nor do you need to memorize insane codes or find secret areas. Shadow of War: Pepperoni Edition can be played both solo or co-op/competitive, but there is no online option.

MMO Fallout Verdict: 4.5/5 – Shadow of War: Pepperoni Edition is a welcome spinoff of presumably a great game. It’s simple to install, engaging to play, and features a filled out protagonist with clear cut motivations. Will it win the hearts and minds of hardcore gamers? No, but the general public will find something to love in Pepperoni’s cheesiness.

Guild Wars 2 Expansion Weekend Is Live

Arenanet has officially launched the second preview weekend for Guild Wars 2’s next expansion, Path of Fire. You don’t need to have pre-ordered to get in on the action either, as any active account can join in on the festivities. Players will be able to take part in the demo until Sunday, August 20.

To participate, go to the Character Select screen and choose the option to create a demo character. If you don’t have a Guild Wars 2 account, register now to play for free.

MMOments: RuneScape Menaphos Details

Menaphos is the first expansion to RuneScape, a series of massive updates that are set to release every three months. While the content drops on the live servers today, MMO Fallout was invited to preview some of the changes last week, and the new content looks pretty exciting. As I have mentioned in previous update teasers, it’s been a while since Menaphos was first revealed to the public: Twelve years in fact, it’s like Boyhood but with a lot less growing up and a lot more angry desert deities. The city of Menaphos was first added to the map on April 26, 2005.

But players couldn’t get in. While its sister city Sophanem became available, Menaphos immediately closed its doors to outsiders amid rumors of corrupt leadership and stayed that way, for twelve years. In that time, players have come in contact with numerous desert deities, learned new magics, and assisted in god-tier sibling rivalries. Now, the cruel Pharaoh has reopened the doors and adventurers are flooding in to see what secrets the city holds.

You may be asking at this point: How is RuneScape sixteen years old and is only releasing its first expansion now? For the better part of that time, Jagex has been releasing content updates on a weekly basis with various major updates every year to add in new skills, update the game engine, and more. Last year Jagex polled players on whether they would like to continue the current system of trickling updates out on a weekly basis or release major content packs every three months. Players chose the latter, and here we are.

Content in Menaphos is targeted towards mid to high level players, although most players will find something to do after completing the three pre-requisite quests. The city itself is divided into four areas, with access to everything from a Grand Exchange, new skilling areas, a merchant area to steal from, and more. Each of the four areas has its own reputation system, and while it is possible for the more dedicated gamer to maximize his rank in all four areas, Jagex told me during the preview that it will take some time and most players will just focus on one or two factions.

The centerpiece to Menaphos is the giant pyramid around which the city goes about its daily life. Inside that tomb you can find the Grand Library which will be comprised of stories submitted to Jagex by the player base. As massive as the library is, we were told that so many players had submitted quality stories that Jagex is having a hard time fitting them into the game!

Shifting Tombs is a randomized dungeon crawler with procedurally generated tombs and monsters. Players have a set amount of time to plunder the dungeon, gathering as much loot as possible while still making it to the end and escaping within the time limit. Personally, I’m looking forward to meeting Krondis, the alligator goddess of life and pleasure. Krondis, as with much of the rest of the city, has been corrupted and is currently hoarding the treasures for herself, but we’ll see if that can be changed.

The city is full of lush trees and vibrant colors, a rather stark contrast to the other desert areas. Every area has its own stylistic theme, from the extravagance of the imperial sector to the downtrodden workers district. A big piece of the Menaphos update is that the Slayer skill is having its level cap increased to 120 along with new content to fill in that level gap. You can check out the update details on the launch page here.

Players can also get in on a free weekend beginning on June 9th, allowing free players to enjoy all member content throughout the weekend until the 12th.

[NM] Demo Impressions: Prey

(Editor’s Note: All screenshots from Playstation 4)

The date, March 15 2032. The place, my apartment. I am Morgan, waking up to start my first day at a new job at the TranStar Testing Facility. After fiddling around with a few things in the apartment, I grab my suit and head to the roof where a helicopter awaits. As the pilot takes off, the game transitions into a vehicle for smooth synth music. Just for giggles, I decide to see if I can jump into the helicopter’s blades. I can, they kill me instantly.

You start off Prey as Morgan Yu, gender-neutrally named protagonist going through a series of confusing and likely annoying personality questions at the TranStar Testing Facility. As you might expect being that this is a science fiction game, you’re walled off from the other characters initially, something goes wrong and all hell breaks loose in the facility. You’ll see this “twist” coming the moment you step into the first room, so I don’t feel like I’m spoiling anything of importance. To go further with the story after this point would be a major spoiler, so play the demo at your own risk.

First impressions with Prey make me feel like I’m playing a game developed by the Deus Ex folks at Eidos Montreal for the Mirror’s Edge universe with some System Shock thrown in for good measure. Rather than throw you into a sandbox and have you play with the encounters placed around the map, Prey follows the vein of Deus Ex, throwing around enough toys to play to most preferences. Want to be an awesome hacker? There are turrets, locked doors, etc aplenty. Want to go in guns blazing? You have that option. Sneak around using stealth? Absolutely. You very quickly come upon items like the wrench, GLOO gun (freezes enemies in place) and oddities like a foam crossbow that fires bolts that don’t do damage but are probably helpful for distractions.

Mimics are the primary antagonist of the game so far. The more populous group you’ll come across are capable of scurrying off and changing into objects in the scenery. Larger enemies roam around the map, and at this early stage it is clearly best to leave them alone. Your GLOO Gun doesn’t do a whole lot to help and they are capable of taking your out from afar.

Skill upgrades are handled by neuro mods both in plain sight and hidden around the map, giving the game more of an emphasis on exploration and less so on killing everything in sight to maximize your experience gain. Neuro mods can be used to customize Morgan to your play style, emphasizing stealth, weapon proficiency, or healing, among other things. Players of Deus Ex will be familiar with using the system for minor upgrades like lifting heavy objects or allowing Morgan to extract more resources from downed foes. Weapons are similarly upgraded through weapon upgrade mods (go figure) that are found separate from the neuro mods and again encourages deep exploration.

Prey is best played at a slow, methodical pace. Explore the map too fast and you’ll likely miss the crafting materials and notes scattered around, sticky notes with pass codes and important information. I also enjoy that mimics will show up in rooms that you’ve already cleared, rather than guiding the player through an all-too-predictable shuffle of entering a room, triggering the traps, and then having it be safe forever.

I walked out of the Prey demo with a few issues, most pressing being that controlling Morgan feels like pushing a wheelchair up a hill made of pudding. Slow and sluggish, both in movement and in turning, with some serious input delays on the Playstation 4. It’s like someone put Morgan into one of those padded training suits that you see the police use with training dogs, and you’re expected to keep up with said dogs who are now on rocket powered skates. None of these problems appear to be present on the Xbox One version, so if you have both systems, you’re probably better off on Xbox. There is no knowing how the PC version will run, Bethesda hasn’t released a demo.

MMOments: The Exiled, No Land For The Sheep

(Editor’s Note: MMO Fallout received a key from the developer for the purposes of reviewing. The opinions of this website cannot by swayed by anything short of a case of Orbitz drink)

I started playing The Exiled a few days before the actual launch, and my first thought was basically the same that I had with titles like Darkfall. “Yea, it’s fun, but I have a feeling it’s going to push a lot of people away very early.” It’ll be hard to move forward with an impressions piece without talking about the ten ton elephant in the room, so I’m going to get it out of the way now: The whole labeling as free to play is going to annoy people, and already has. The game has a seven day trial, after which you have to chalk down at least twenty bucks to keep playing. Overall it isn’t a huge deal, but I feel like not mentioning this would bring up issues later on.

The Exiled is a PvP sandbox MMO with nearly full loot and a considerable number of you just crossed this game off of your wishlists. You control your character with the WASD keys, attacking through a combination of mouse buttons and keyboard commands. Your character can make, equip, and use any weapon or armor in the game without having to deal with a class system.

The rules in The Exiled are that while you keep your gear on death from other players, your inventory is open for looting. There is some solace in the fact that you drop to the ground and start regaining health, after which you get back up and can continue whatever you were doing without having to trudge back from a spawn point, since most gankers are willing to loot your bag and leave you be. The game, as you might expect, instantly turned into a numbers game with gangs of clans roving the countryside and wiping out random solo’ers.

I’m not making any big discovery by saying that this is a niche game in a niche market, if you could take the perception that games like The Exiled has and give it a physical manifestation, it’d be somewhere in the realm of opening a store, locking the door, hiding the key under the doormat and standing at the window giving the middle finger to whichever carebear customer has the gall to ask “are you open?” And if the store owner himself isn’t enough to drive away customers, you can bet that the tiny vocal minority of obnoxious, mostly toxic cult followers of the genre will do their part to make the game as intolerable as possible, be it running train through the starting zone to harass new players, shouting “gg kill yourself” in chat, and generally operating “for the lulz” because the game lets them do whatever they want and they’re too busy telling people to go back to World of Warcraft to notice the population decaying around them.

And this is where The Exiled falls shortest, in that I don’t think that the developers at Fairytale Distillery looked at similar games when they were creating this, or if they did then they didn’t learn anything. There are zero repercussions to acting like a jackass in The Exiled because there are no safe zones and no reputation system. Like I said, you can just run train through the starting zone and nothing’s going to stop you, outside of there being nobody to kill. While it’d be nice to imagine clans going up against one another, we all know that isn’t happening. Instead you have the hardcore gank squads, some of the most risk averse gamers in existence, only going into fights where the odds aren’t even close to even.

The bulk of the game is pretty shallow at the moment, comprising mostly of activating nodes and fighting off waves of mobs that try to destroy said node, hoping that at no point during the five minute wait that a clan will come along and steal the node out from underneath you. The AI is incredibly basic at the moment, as mobs mindlessly make their way toward the node with no ability to navigate the terrain aside from a straight path, not bothering to move around whatever is blocking their way.

The farming technique perfectly encapsulates how The Exiled exists now: A long, arduous grind that can and likely will be stripped from you at any given moment. Some people love this, and I won’t vilify them for their tastes. But when it comes to the genre, there are other games that have long established themselves and managed to throw in some semblance of fairness, even though you are never 100% safe.

In a way I like and can appreciate how The Exiled handles its inventory management. You gain experience through killing mobs, however there is a wholly separate material called Flux that can be used in crafting new gear or it can be converted to straight experience, which also means that if you get attacked you can at least scuttle the flux, level up in the process, and not come out of the encounter completely empty handed. Even abilities are subject to looting, since you obtain abilities as scrolls and must bring them to a dojo in order to learn the associated skill. Each class relies on a specific reagent in order to level up said skills, so killing and looting players isn’t just about stealing their stuff, you can also gain some heavy leveling materials in the process.

I suppose what makes me reel in agony even more than the long grind splattered with setbacks due to ganking is that the game wants me to do this all over again every month when the servers reset. No thank you, if you’re going to give me a job then it can either be fun or you can pay me for it. At the very least, while the MMO genre is all about a continuous carrot on a stick, gearing up to where you can run dungeons with the best until the better dungeons requiring the better gear comes out, you’re always making progress. Stripping that away on a regular basis only ensures that The Exiled will appeal to a limited portion of an already limited audience.

Right now The Exiled suffers from long time to kill on basic creatures, a lack of diversity within weapon subsets, and motivation outside of grinding resources, among other problems. That being said, the game is still in early access and early on at that. I’d recommend holding off on your seven day free trial for the moment, but keep the game on your radar. It might become something one day.

Beta Perspective: Criticism of the Avatar

Shroud of the Avatar starts you out as the corporeal form of the Avatar, an individual who has been summoned to Brittania time and time again to save the world from impending destruction. You meet with Lady British, who tells you that even her husband has returned to deal with evil forces threatening the land.

Lord British is here too? Great, I can’t wait to see how the guy completely ignores me and leaves me with absolutely none of his nation’s wealth to tackle the problem that he’s let fester for the last however many years. The dude’s been a total waste of space for most of the Ultima series, and didn’t even bother showing up for the embarrassing display that was Ultima Forever, although Garriott was long gone by the time that embarrassment of a game was released.

After building your character and answering the Oracle’s questions, you go through the Moon Gate and immediately find yourself in a village that was just ravaged by elves. You come across a dying knight who asks you to take an amulet to Brigid in Resolute. Along the way, you pick up items and figure out how to wield a sword and strike a test dummy.

If there’s one thing I constantly hope that the gaming industry would take away from Richard Garriot’s games, it is to show even a modicum of the respect that Garriot has for role playing and building worlds. I’m talking about putting in more effort than just designing an enemy and plonking him down on a field and calling it a day.

There are numerous areas just in the tutorial zone that you are likely to completely miss out on if you try to power your way through it. For instance, did you know that it is possible to find a healer who tries to cure the wounded soldier? It is, but unless you bypass the gate and head down another path, then talk to the guy and get on the subject of the dead and dying, you’d never know. He can’t save the soldier, but the game appreciates you taking the effort and rewards you as such.

It’s the little things that make the game that much more real feeling. You don’t know anyone’s name until you ask them or they tell you, and generally they won’t right away. Sure, you can weasel your way around the system by clicking on buzzwords or grunting your comments like a caveman, but if you want to dive into the world and type “what is your name?” you can. You won’t learn everything by following the underlined words, so you eventually have to play along if you want things like quests.

Now let’s talk about difficulty.

Are you kidding me? I’m not even out of the tutorial zone and already I’m getting my ass handed to me because the game decided it was high time to throw me into a three on one cluster f-you know, I’m not going to let this discourage me. This wouldn’t be an Ultima game if it didn’t start you out completely ill-equipped for the most basic task at hand. I need to get back into the mentality of RPGs where you need to git gud or get out, and having the game eat your lunch and then stab you in the face with your own fork is exactly the message the game needs to send to players that they aren’t screwing around.

Is it frustrating? Absolutely, but it makes the reward all the sweeter when you’re forced to put in work towards it. That said, nothing will make you smash your keyboard quite like that feeling when you see your attack miss, then miss, then miss, miss again, miss a fifth time, miss, miss, miss, and finally hit two damage only to miss, miss, miss, miss, you get the picture.

But push come to shove, Shroud of the Avatar overshoots Difficult Lane and lands right in the middle of BS Valley. In short: enemies are too densely packed and take too long to kill in respect to how fast they respawn. And to top it off, enemies just seem to waltz in from random areas of the map. You’ll be fighting two archers only to have a wolf and two random other bandits just rush in and start attacking you. So you start taking them out but by the time you finish the guys you killed earlier have respawned and joined the fight again. It’s a never ending cycle in some spots!

Experience in Shroud of the Avatar comes from a pool system. By killing enemies and completing quests you add to the experience pool that then goes toward leveling up skills as you use them. So yes, you do have to quest in Shroud of the Avatar in order to level up. The higher level the skill, the more it will draw from the pool in order to level up. In order to level up efficiently, you’re going to have to put locks on skills and decide where your priorities lie.

So it might come as a bit of surprise when I sum this up by saying that I love this game and my enjoyment is getting higher as I play. The more you fight, the better you get, the higher your stats, and the more punishment you can take out and withstand. Considering how much time I’ve invested into just the first area, I feel like this is going to be a very, very long game.

Beta Perspective: A Third Go On The Neverwinter Express

How much do I like Neverwinter? Three systems in and I’m still playing it, that’s how much.

Neverwinter is an action-based MMORPG set in the Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign. It initially released on PC back in 2013, Xbox last year, and now the game has come to Playstation. Unlike its Microsoft counterpart, Neverwinter on Playstation 4 does not require a subscription to the system’s online service in order to play. There is an extensive cash shop and an optional VIP subscription system that I will get into further on.

If my time in Neverwinter in PS4 has taught me one thing, it is just how massive in scope the game has become since it launched just three years ago. I started Neverwinter on PC during its beta phase and haven’t taken much time off since. As such, I’ve experienced the content in small doses as it became available.

Beginning again on PS4, all I can say is…wow. Seventy levels, six massive campaigns, the daily quests, etc. It’s a bit like deciding you’re going to start getting into Game of Thrones after numerous books and six seasons. Despite this, Perfect World is constantly doing work to make the leveling process as smooth and clear as possible.

Having already played the game for its Xbox release, Neverwinter’s ability to pull off a controller setup is pretty well cemented. Your analog sticks are used to move, the right triggers pull off your primary and secondary attacks, and other attacks are mapped to the face buttons. I expect a lot of people to have momentary trouble with jumping, which requires a pull of L1 + square. Unfortunately, I’ve committed this key combination to memory so well that I’ve started using it in other games.

Combat is a ballet of cooldowns and potions as you maneuver the field and dodge attacks. Each class has plenty of abilities to use as you level up, and you only have a few equipped at a time, making room for experimentation. Combat is satisfying, hitting enemies carries a heavy oomph to it and your character (regardless of class) is pretty capable of handing out some serious punishment.

One thing I have to point out about Neverwinter is that the game seriously panders to pack rats (of which I am one). Every zone has its trinket to collect and turn in for random gear packs, you collect seals of the lion, the unicorn, the drake, manticore, pegasus, adventurer, elements, and protector by completing tasks and dungeons. There are ardent coins, zen, astral diamonds, celestial coins, black ice, guild marks, and more.

The big currency in Neverwinter are Astral Diamonds and Zen. Players will recognize Zen as the real money currency that is common among Perfect World titles, with Astral Diamonds being the complementary currency obtainable in-game. You can trade Astral Diamonds for Zen in-game, allowing players to buy AD with real money and vice versa. This makes it technically possible to buy all of the cash shop items without paying any real money.

Astral Diamonds are obtained via multiple daily blessings, as well as daily skirmishes, dungeons, and pvp. They are required to buy items on the auction house, also making it possible to buy cash shop items if you manage to find expensive drops in late-game dungeons. Foundry creators can receive tips from players who complete their levels.

The community that has been built up so far is awesome. Since players can use keyboards, there tends to be quite a few people in chat. Since Neverwinter has open world bosses for the dragon campaign, there are always people in chat looking for groups, willing to invite to full zones, and calling out respawn timers. As far as console MMOs go (that are not cross-platform with PC), this is the first I’ve seen with an active chat community.

The Playstation version definitely has less technical issues than on Xbox One, particularly in FPS loss at the main hub Protector’s Enclave. Barring the influx of new players on launch day, there isn’t much to note in the bug department outside of some issues with players not being able to redeem their extra character awarded in the head start package.

More to come on Neverwinter PS4.

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