Tag: review

Why Aren’t You Playing: Bullet Run


Whenever I hear about free to play shooter MMOs I think of one thing: over-extensive cash shops. I think about time-limited cash shop weapons and upgrades, with the option of spending a very long time grinding through kills in order to nab that better weapon. For myself, and a number of others, such titles start out fun but quickly lose their edge as the slow grind to achieve new weapons becomes longer and what might normally be random, mindless violence is now less enjoyable than slogging through quests in a fantasy MMO. Thankfully, Bullet Run is not that title.

First things first, before you can start shooting people you must create an avatar capable of holding an automatic weapon. Character customization at creation is virtually nonexistent. Apart from a type, tone, and gender, there isn’t much you are able to alter about your avatar. All characters start with the same basic submachine gun. The in-game marketplace is used to purchase additional cosmetic gear as well as new weapons and attachments, both of which can be purchased with either Station Cash or currency acquired through regular play.

Talking about Bullet Run’s gameplay aspects almost seems redundant, because if you’ve played any other recent first person shooter, you already know what to expect. There are two game modes present, Team Deathmatch and Dominion. The former features two teams of players sparring over a set of maps to see who can rack up the highest score in the time allotted. Dominion, on the other hand, has one team attacking a set of nodes as the other team attempts to defend the map. Dominion is played in two halves, allowing each team a chance to attack and defend. As you complete matches and kill other players, you gain experience and currency which are used to level up and purchase additional weapons and attachments. Abilities are docked and slowly build up a charge over the course of the match as you kill enemies and gain points, and encompass everything from mobile turrets to massive chainguns.

As far as cash shop titles go, Bullet Run scores a few points with its durability system. In many other free to play shooters, items offered on the marketplace are limited by time, often times not allowing the player to purchase a permanent version with in-game currency (assuming one exists at all). Once the time limit has passed, your purchased weapon is useless. In Bullet Run, weapons operate on a durability system  where the weapon must be repaired with either Station Cash or currency. The advantage of the system, however, is that even if you allow the durability to run out, the weapon can still be used at a 10% loss in damage. And considering the fast paced nature of Bullet Run, a 10% drop in your gun’s effectiveness isn’t going to lose you any battles.

Playing Bullet Run isn’t all run and gun, however. One feature added to give an advantage to players who can keep their cool under stress is a sliding bar when you reload. If you have decent reflexes, you can easily receive a speedier reload and some point bonuses as well. On the other hand, you can let the reload take its course, or risk jamming the gun and leaving yourself open to attack. When you find someone in a tight corridor and both of you empty your clips, the reload bonus can mean the difference between life and death.

Where Bullet Run falls short is content, the game lacks variety in almost every sector possible. Most important: There are only two modes to choose from, Team Deathmatch and Dominion. And while the marketplace plays host to a wide assortment of guns, the cosmetic clothing and hairstyles offered are few. Even the commentary by the characters in-game is lacking, with the same phrases being repeated over and over. The end result is that Bullet Run feels incomplete, as if the game had launched as soon as there was a stable product to show, rather than waiting until more content could be added. This isn’t to say that Bullet Run is a bad game by any means, it functions as intended, is fun to play, and the cash shop is much more player-friendly than similar titles.

With further development, and assuming Sony doesn’t cut the game short like a certain other developer, Bullet Run will enjoy a loyal following of shooter fans.

Pros:

  1. Generous cash shop: Weapons/Attachments can reasonably be purchased with in-game currency.
  2. Functional: I didn’t come across any notable bugs, and the servers even managed to stay stable on launch night.
  3. Stable: Lag was not a problem in any of the matches I played.

Cons:

  1. The game lacks content.

Why Aren't You Playing: Bullet Run


Whenever I hear about free to play shooter MMOs I think of one thing: over-extensive cash shops. I think about time-limited cash shop weapons and upgrades, with the option of spending a very long time grinding through kills in order to nab that better weapon. For myself, and a number of others, such titles start out fun but quickly lose their edge as the slow grind to achieve new weapons becomes longer and what might normally be random, mindless violence is now less enjoyable than slogging through quests in a fantasy MMO. Thankfully, Bullet Run is not that title.

First things first, before you can start shooting people you must create an avatar capable of holding an automatic weapon. Character customization at creation is virtually nonexistent. Apart from a type, tone, and gender, there isn’t much you are able to alter about your avatar. All characters start with the same basic submachine gun. The in-game marketplace is used to purchase additional cosmetic gear as well as new weapons and attachments, both of which can be purchased with either Station Cash or currency acquired through regular play.

Talking about Bullet Run’s gameplay aspects almost seems redundant, because if you’ve played any other recent first person shooter, you already know what to expect. There are two game modes present, Team Deathmatch and Dominion. The former features two teams of players sparring over a set of maps to see who can rack up the highest score in the time allotted. Dominion, on the other hand, has one team attacking a set of nodes as the other team attempts to defend the map. Dominion is played in two halves, allowing each team a chance to attack and defend. As you complete matches and kill other players, you gain experience and currency which are used to level up and purchase additional weapons and attachments. Abilities are docked and slowly build up a charge over the course of the match as you kill enemies and gain points, and encompass everything from mobile turrets to massive chainguns.

As far as cash shop titles go, Bullet Run scores a few points with its durability system. In many other free to play shooters, items offered on the marketplace are limited by time, often times not allowing the player to purchase a permanent version with in-game currency (assuming one exists at all). Once the time limit has passed, your purchased weapon is useless. In Bullet Run, weapons operate on a durability system  where the weapon must be repaired with either Station Cash or currency. The advantage of the system, however, is that even if you allow the durability to run out, the weapon can still be used at a 10% loss in damage. And considering the fast paced nature of Bullet Run, a 10% drop in your gun’s effectiveness isn’t going to lose you any battles.

Playing Bullet Run isn’t all run and gun, however. One feature added to give an advantage to players who can keep their cool under stress is a sliding bar when you reload. If you have decent reflexes, you can easily receive a speedier reload and some point bonuses as well. On the other hand, you can let the reload take its course, or risk jamming the gun and leaving yourself open to attack. When you find someone in a tight corridor and both of you empty your clips, the reload bonus can mean the difference between life and death.

Where Bullet Run falls short is content, the game lacks variety in almost every sector possible. Most important: There are only two modes to choose from, Team Deathmatch and Dominion. And while the marketplace plays host to a wide assortment of guns, the cosmetic clothing and hairstyles offered are few. Even the commentary by the characters in-game is lacking, with the same phrases being repeated over and over. The end result is that Bullet Run feels incomplete, as if the game had launched as soon as there was a stable product to show, rather than waiting until more content could be added. This isn’t to say that Bullet Run is a bad game by any means, it functions as intended, is fun to play, and the cash shop is much more player-friendly than similar titles.

With further development, and assuming Sony doesn’t cut the game short like a certain other developer, Bullet Run will enjoy a loyal following of shooter fans.

Pros:

  1. Generous cash shop: Weapons/Attachments can reasonably be purchased with in-game currency.
  2. Functional: I didn’t come across any notable bugs, and the servers even managed to stay stable on launch night.
  3. Stable: Lag was not a problem in any of the matches I played.

Cons:

  1. The game lacks content.

Review: Runescape: Betrayal at Falador


Runescape: Betrayal at Falador is the first novel by T.S Church set in the world of Gielinor, envisioned by Jagex, more specifically the city of Falador and the White approximate king place approximately five years before the events of the game (the quest storyline), we find the world entering into chaos.  As the White Knights work to retrieve the demolished statue of a famous knight, a mysterious woman appears out of nowhere and near death. To the north, the evil Kinshra (black knights) under the leadership of Lord Sulla plot to sack Falador and conquer the region. Closer to home, a mysterious creature is murdering travelers, and the White Knights suspect a traitor is among them.

Betrayal at Falador is a treasure trove of Runescape lore, featuring everyone you would expect in the area around Falador: white knights, black knights, the dwarves, the Humans Against Monsters cult, as well as plenty of known names. Going into the book, my initial fear was that the characters in TS Church’s mind wound contradict the personalities presented in the game. Instead, Church goes to great lengths to preserve the quirks and details of each personality, reinforcing that this is in fact a Runescape book rather than a fantasy novel with some two-dimensional representations slapped on.

Betrayal at Falador follows an enormous cast of major and minor characters, and tends to jump around quickly between them often times offering not much more than a quick scene. In fact, a majority of the book’s chapters are only two or three pages long, with a couple single pagers thrown in. Oddly enough, this works to the book’s credit. Church manages to keep an appropriate pace throughout, shortening and lengthening each character’s part as needed without fluffing or needlessly slashing any details.

The story is tense, and the characters are fleshed out enough that you actually care when one of them dies, even if they play a relatively minor role in the story. That being said, Church employs one of my most hated methods of storytelling, the convenient obscurity. I can better explain by giving an example: one character is hunting another character, but does not refer to him by name. Only after a convenient reveal is the character referred to by name, both in the narrative and in dialog (internal and external). A small complaint, but I find it obnoxious when one character refers to his prey as his prey for several chapters, but once the person is revealed in another chapter in another location entirely, all of a sudden he feels comfortable referencing by name.

Church installs some interesting takes on the Runescape lore. The mysterious woman appears by way of a Ring of Life, a magical artifact which teleports someone near death to Falador. The ring is described as rare and powerful, and only fifty existing in the world, while in the game itself the ring of life is the product of a rather low level magical spell. The wizards are able to do far more with the runes of magic than players. Additionally, Church sets out a world large enough to remind us that what we play in the game is really just a miniaturized version of the full deal. Falador, housing less than a hundred NPCs in game, plays home to hundreds if not thousands of citizens. A trip to Taverly, mere minutes in the virtual world, is a multiple day trip for our heroes.

Runescape: Betrayal at Falador suffers from what I call Skywalker Syndrome, which plagues any story where the prequel releases years after the sequel. If you’ve played Runescape, you already have a good idea who is going to die. After all, if the person is present in the game, they lived. If they are prominent and do not appear in the game, they probably die. Overall the story is still suspenseful and engaging enough to keep the reader engaged, and Church was smart enough to cast the lead role as a character whose fate is left uncertain.

Runescape: Betrayal at Falador cost me over $40 USD when I bought it in 2009, because I ordered the hardcover copy at Jagex’s website and paid twice the cost of the book in shipping from the UK. Still, the book is worth every penny, even though you will spend considerably less than I did by buying the paperback at your local boom store. Likewise, you can purchase it in ebook format and save more money and trees. The book is about 400 pages.

The sequel, Return to Canifis, I will review when I have an opportunity to read it.

Bleedout Comic: More Novelty Than Resourceful


You may already be familiar with CrimeCraft (if not, I would start here), in which case Bleedout will also be a known name. Last year, Vogster teamed up with Mike Kennedy and a whole host of artists (Nathan Fox, Zach Howard, Sanford Greene, etc) to write and produce the cutscenes for the MMO shooter’s single-player campaign story. What you may not be as aware of is that Vogster paired up with Archaia Entertainment to turn the animated-comic style scenes into a hardcover book: Thus the CrimeCraft graphic novel was born.

Originally set for release way back in May, Bleedout didn’t ship until near late July due to unseen difficulties (printing issue, as I understand). As far as content goes, this is a direct reprint of the cutscenes in-game, without the motion or the gruff voice-over. Each chapter covers the equivalent chapter in the game, page for page recreated from the MMO. The art style stays true to the game: Dirt, trash, drugs, and violence litter the pages, characters that you can practically feel the slime seeping through the pages. As far as graphic content, there’s maybe one boob-shot and a character sticking the tip of his tongue with a needle. Nothing gut-wrenching.

I highly recommend playing Bleedout on CrimeCraft before you buy this, otherwise you will simply have no idea what is going on. As I already said, the comic mirrors the cutscenes, so each chapter in the book serves as an introduction to the various factions in and around Sunrise City. Looking at the overall story, to take the comic book without playing the game is more akin to buying a book and only reading the first two paragraphs of each chapter. The story will skip ahead too far, too fast for you to keep track of what is going on, who is who, and who you are supposed to hate and why.

CrimeCraft, as I’ve stated in the past, has a rich and deep story once you dive into it, one that is not done justice by this book. Bleedout, on the whole, serves as little more than a companion piece for the game. If you enjoyed Bleedout and you like comics, it’s worth the $10. Otherwise, if you have no interest in Crimecraft (in which case you wouldn’t be reading this), this comic isn’t for you.

You can find Bleedout (the comic book) here at Amazon.

Why Aren’t You Playing: Gods & Heroes


Why Should I Play is a new series where I dive into games and discuss my experiences. This article is not meant to be un-bias’d and due to the intrinsic nature of MMOs, reflects the product at the time of publish but may not reflect the product at the time of reading. As always, MMO Fallout suggests you make use of free trials to form your own opinion of the game.

Gods & Heroes launched back in June to a rather low reception and equally mediocre ratings. A couple of weeks after launch, Heatwave Interactive announced that the game didn’t garner as much attention as they were hoping, and that the company had plans to implement several ideas including free to play at some unannounced point in the future. A few days ago, the company announced the release of the 3-day trial, allowing unlimited access (for three days) to all Gods & Heroes had to offer, along with a price drop to $29.99. I dived in head first into the three day trial to check out what Gods & Heroes had to offer.

Through my first day in Gods & Heroes, I kept asking myself why the game felt so familiar, and it wasn’t until around level six or seven that enlightenment hit me: Gods & Heroes feels like a game that should have come out years ago. The landscape in many places looks stunning, with impressive detail and variation in the flowers and trees that populate the landscape. The armor shows off the multiple pieces that put it together, and the characters look decent, although a bit shiny and emotionless. The buildings, however, are the sore spot in visual design, with a small amount of structures reused to populate the world.

The main advertising points of Gods & Heroes are the estate system and the minion management. Almost immediately, you are introduced to your private, dilapidated estate that must be built from the ground up to its former glory. As you complete quests for the NPCs in your village, you gain access to better perks for your minions, from armor, weapons, etc. The game uses a rather cheap method of having your buildings phase through construction right in front of you when you complete an upgrade quest, but that’s a rather inconsequential aesthetic flaw.

The meat of the game is a been-there-done-that fantasy MMO set in ancient Rome. Your main mode of leveling consists of going around and finding quests that task you with killing a number of NPCs, harvesting nodes, or killing NPCs to harvest things off of them. As you level up, you will follow the basic system of taking your trash to the vendor, buying new armor and weapons, setting up your alternate advancement points (feats) and upgrading your minions. The idea of bringing squad mechanics into a solo-oriented game will make your time spent in Rome a little too easy, however.

Gods & Heroes is funny and charming in parts. In one memorable quest, I had to bust up a multi-day long party by smashing wine vats that we then discovered were spiked with a magical essence. Inevitably, I killed the guy behind the magic and given the confirmation that the party would be broken up as soon as everyone sobered up.

Why You Aren’t Playing Gods & Heroes

You may have heard that Gods & Heroes is on the easy side, and that would be completely accurate. Having one minion makes the game easy enough, and that is before you hit higher levels and your squad increases to four. Now, to its credit, there are supposed to be later sections in the game that only allow for a limited number of minions, but with two sword wielding minions, I was steamrolling over anything that came my way. But you can put minions away if you want to make the game more difficult, there is no obligation to have your minions out.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Gods & Heroes is that the game is bugged like a hotel room in a prostitution sting. The game crashed maybe once every two hours, either giving me a “Godsandheroes.exe has stopped responding” Windows error, or simply losing connection to the server. Not that I was at risk of dying, thanks to my two tanks, but that doesn’t ease the frustration of those few moments when you know the game is about to crash, but hasn’t actually displayed the message yet. Otherwise, I didn’t have any lag issues while playing, there was no rubber-banding or jolting NPCs to speak of.

Invisible wall.

Second on my list of three big gripes: The terrain. The terrain needs to be revamped so walking isn’t a fight between myself and my character. Slight inclines or tiny but sharp inclines seem to stop my player in his tracks, and I am fairly certain that Heatwave has installed invisible walls in some areas because I’ve found multiple spots that I cannot pass. In the above picture, you can see my character on pretty level ground, but ground that he cannot pass. It is worth noting that this is nowhere near the area limits.

Third: The game has some issues with lack of context sensitive response, or my character is a pacifist. When fighting, I had several instances where my character would just cancel auto-attack, wouldn’t attack at all, or I would hit something on the hotbar and I would see “queuing quick shot” but my character would never use the power. This isn’t a lag issue, to my knowledge. When using hotbar actions, I also found that there is no context for cooldown. The buttons are grayed out until you can use them again, but the countdown timers always say: 00:00:00 remaining, and the buttons regaining their color doesn’t necessarily mean that pressing the associated button will result in attacking again.

So Should I Play Gods & Heroes?

Gods & Heroes is fun, and its major issues are on the hardware front (performance, responsiveness, and terrain/pathfinding). The estate and minion systems are enjoyable and innovative, but the experience is just crushed under the foot of your minions managing to kill the mob before my scout decides to stop ignoring my button presses.

I’m going to leave this up to the reader to decide, download the Gods & Heroes trial and give it the whole three days before you make your decision, but you may want to wait to activate your key until some much needed terrain/stability issues are fixed. I would buy the game as it is now, because I didn’t find the issues to be game-breaking, if it weren’t for the fact that the Star Wars Galaxies weekly article is my primary MMO right now.

Otherwise, I’d give Gods & Heroes a thumbs up. If you haven’t taken part in the 3-day trial, do so.

http://godsandheroes.com/gods-heroes-rome-rising-free-trial-program-is-live/

Why Aren't You Playing: Gods & Heroes


Why Should I Play is a new series where I dive into games and discuss my experiences. This article is not meant to be un-bias’d and due to the intrinsic nature of MMOs, reflects the product at the time of publish but may not reflect the product at the time of reading. As always, MMO Fallout suggests you make use of free trials to form your own opinion of the game.

Gods & Heroes launched back in June to a rather low reception and equally mediocre ratings. A couple of weeks after launch, Heatwave Interactive announced that the game didn’t garner as much attention as they were hoping, and that the company had plans to implement several ideas including free to play at some unannounced point in the future. A few days ago, the company announced the release of the 3-day trial, allowing unlimited access (for three days) to all Gods & Heroes had to offer, along with a price drop to $29.99. I dived in head first into the three day trial to check out what Gods & Heroes had to offer.

Through my first day in Gods & Heroes, I kept asking myself why the game felt so familiar, and it wasn’t until around level six or seven that enlightenment hit me: Gods & Heroes feels like a game that should have come out years ago. The landscape in many places looks stunning, with impressive detail and variation in the flowers and trees that populate the landscape. The armor shows off the multiple pieces that put it together, and the characters look decent, although a bit shiny and emotionless. The buildings, however, are the sore spot in visual design, with a small amount of structures reused to populate the world.

The main advertising points of Gods & Heroes are the estate system and the minion management. Almost immediately, you are introduced to your private, dilapidated estate that must be built from the ground up to its former glory. As you complete quests for the NPCs in your village, you gain access to better perks for your minions, from armor, weapons, etc. The game uses a rather cheap method of having your buildings phase through construction right in front of you when you complete an upgrade quest, but that’s a rather inconsequential aesthetic flaw.

The meat of the game is a been-there-done-that fantasy MMO set in ancient Rome. Your main mode of leveling consists of going around and finding quests that task you with killing a number of NPCs, harvesting nodes, or killing NPCs to harvest things off of them. As you level up, you will follow the basic system of taking your trash to the vendor, buying new armor and weapons, setting up your alternate advancement points (feats) and upgrading your minions. The idea of bringing squad mechanics into a solo-oriented game will make your time spent in Rome a little too easy, however.

Gods & Heroes is funny and charming in parts. In one memorable quest, I had to bust up a multi-day long party by smashing wine vats that we then discovered were spiked with a magical essence. Inevitably, I killed the guy behind the magic and given the confirmation that the party would be broken up as soon as everyone sobered up.

Why You Aren’t Playing Gods & Heroes

You may have heard that Gods & Heroes is on the easy side, and that would be completely accurate. Having one minion makes the game easy enough, and that is before you hit higher levels and your squad increases to four. Now, to its credit, there are supposed to be later sections in the game that only allow for a limited number of minions, but with two sword wielding minions, I was steamrolling over anything that came my way. But you can put minions away if you want to make the game more difficult, there is no obligation to have your minions out.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Gods & Heroes is that the game is bugged like a hotel room in a prostitution sting. The game crashed maybe once every two hours, either giving me a “Godsandheroes.exe has stopped responding” Windows error, or simply losing connection to the server. Not that I was at risk of dying, thanks to my two tanks, but that doesn’t ease the frustration of those few moments when you know the game is about to crash, but hasn’t actually displayed the message yet. Otherwise, I didn’t have any lag issues while playing, there was no rubber-banding or jolting NPCs to speak of.

Invisible wall.

Second on my list of three big gripes: The terrain. The terrain needs to be revamped so walking isn’t a fight between myself and my character. Slight inclines or tiny but sharp inclines seem to stop my player in his tracks, and I am fairly certain that Heatwave has installed invisible walls in some areas because I’ve found multiple spots that I cannot pass. In the above picture, you can see my character on pretty level ground, but ground that he cannot pass. It is worth noting that this is nowhere near the area limits.

Third: The game has some issues with lack of context sensitive response, or my character is a pacifist. When fighting, I had several instances where my character would just cancel auto-attack, wouldn’t attack at all, or I would hit something on the hotbar and I would see “queuing quick shot” but my character would never use the power. This isn’t a lag issue, to my knowledge. When using hotbar actions, I also found that there is no context for cooldown. The buttons are grayed out until you can use them again, but the countdown timers always say: 00:00:00 remaining, and the buttons regaining their color doesn’t necessarily mean that pressing the associated button will result in attacking again.

So Should I Play Gods & Heroes?

Gods & Heroes is fun, and its major issues are on the hardware front (performance, responsiveness, and terrain/pathfinding). The estate and minion systems are enjoyable and innovative, but the experience is just crushed under the foot of your minions managing to kill the mob before my scout decides to stop ignoring my button presses.

I’m going to leave this up to the reader to decide, download the Gods & Heroes trial and give it the whole three days before you make your decision, but you may want to wait to activate your key until some much needed terrain/stability issues are fixed. I would buy the game as it is now, because I didn’t find the issues to be game-breaking, if it weren’t for the fact that the Star Wars Galaxies weekly article is my primary MMO right now.

Otherwise, I’d give Gods & Heroes a thumbs up. If you haven’t taken part in the 3-day trial, do so.

http://godsandheroes.com/gods-heroes-rome-rising-free-trial-program-is-live/

I Don’t Do Reviews, For Good Reason


The Fallen Earth LLC Boardroom
Where we go to discuss Fallen Earth.

If you’re a visitor to mmorpg.com, you’ve probably found yourself stepping into the middle of a controversy. Apparently yesterday’s review of Fallen Earth caused such an uproar that mmorpg.com’s staff saw fit to remove it from the website. I decided to get my super sleuth kit, and by super sleuth kit I mean grabbing part 1 off of Google Cache before it was deleted.

Continue reading “I Don’t Do Reviews, For Good Reason”

I Don't Do Reviews, For Good Reason


The Fallen Earth LLC Boardroom
Where we go to discuss Fallen Earth.

If you’re a visitor to mmorpg.com, you’ve probably found yourself stepping into the middle of a controversy. Apparently yesterday’s review of Fallen Earth caused such an uproar that mmorpg.com’s staff saw fit to remove it from the website. I decided to get my super sleuth kit, and by super sleuth kit I mean grabbing part 1 off of Google Cache before it was deleted.

Continue reading “I Don't Do Reviews, For Good Reason”