Game: Last Chaos
Developer: T-Entertainment
North American Publisher: Aeria Games and Entertainment
http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com/
This is one of Aeria Games 'free' MMORPGS. The storyline sounds like a lot of other fantasy tv series and video games - basically an evil god and a good god created the world together and its inhabitants, but then the evil god grew jealous so started a war. After a long war between the two gods, they leave the people and the other races they created/gifted for the war to their own devices. The player gets to play from an assortment of races. Character creation is simple - it is basically picking which class you want to play. Gender and race are tied to the class. There is an option to pick from a few hairstyles and faces, but the character creation screen is so overexposed that it is hard to tell what some of them look like. (Especially in the case of the elves, which glow rather brightly on that screen.)
Once launched into the game, the 'tutorial' is just a brief personal dungeon you run through and beat up monsters.
I appreciated that there were no 'kill 10 foxes' quests here, or annoying pop up screens that I had to x out of (while there were tutorial aides, they would just show up as text and fade out on their own, and were unobtrusive to play). However, this painless tutorial was about the only aspect of the game I liked.
The controls were cumbersome, the camera odd. My first quest I just clicked on an icon to the side of the screen and it told me I was to deliver a letter to someone in the city. While I appreciated the efficiency, it did hint that this was not going to be a game that was big on quest ambience. Also to the side were a few more 'event' notices for in game events that were irrelevent to me at this point in the game (A trivia game, a sale somewhere, etc.) I did not have to click on them, but still as they were right near my quests and so I thought they might be game essential, I would have appreciated them being elsewhere like in a menu.
After leaving the dungeon, I ran around the city and got completely lost. While I never found the guy I was supposed to deliver the letter to, I did run into lots of 'stores'. Player stores were everywhere, advertising for things that as of yet I had no clue what they even meant.
The lag was very bad, and at this point I decided the game really did not look like that much fun and quit. Besides the intro dungeon run through vs. starting in a village with critters to kill, there was nothing new or interesting about the game, and it had nothing to make me want to stick around longer and slog through the slow controls to find out about more of the world.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Syne
http://www.synegame.com/
Game: Syne
Developer/s: One Man Down
Basically, you control a spaceship? Of some kind. (It might be the superpowered soul of a fallen warrior that merely acts like a spaceship...) While the 'goal' of the game is to shoot down other enemies which attack you and collect their energy, Syne is far more about the experience than how quick or efficient you are.
(Indeed, one can pass the first two levels without actually killing anything and just sitting there getting beat up on. I do not think you can actually 'die' in Syne, which would make sense, since it seems to imply that you are already dead.)
The most ingenious aspect of this game, perhaps, is that the player 'makes' the soundtrack. Shooting bullets from your craft is the melody line, wheras being hit by an enemy can add in dischordant notes. The other enemies contribute harmonies as well, and by leaving them alone or shooting them down, and one's own bullet spray pattern, the soundtrack never is the same two games running. Each level also has it's own sound and artistic theme, as the game is based off of the five stages of grief.
(It is possible the game was originally meant to be five levels for the five stages, but the gold build of Syne only has three: Isolation, Anger, and Bargaining)
The theme of each level goes beyond merely art and sound. In isolation, the enemies and bullet spray patterns are simpler. In Anger, the enemies come at you in waves with insane spray patterns - I really did get mad at them ;) If only because unlike the first level which was rather calming the second I kept losing the pretty wings off my spaceship to the enemies fiendish plans :P Bargaining is the 'boss' level. It is the level I found perhaps easiest, if only because the enemy did not really move around and so all I had to avoid were the bullets.
Throughout the game, bookending each level, are introspective sayings and observations. They seem to give clues as to how the levels should be played - or perhaps that was me reading into things ;) But it certainly added to the game.
Syne is very short to play, and while very different from the genre of game I usually dabble with, I very much liked it. The addition of music and a storylike feeling to an otherwise arcade like game sets it apart.
On the downside, possibly, there is no sense of score or time whatsoever. I cannot compare one game to the next except perhaps by noting the strength of my spacecraft. Yet I am not sure if a game like Syne really needs scoring, or if the notion that 'A game has to have a score' is so ingrained into me that I am baffled by a game that you play -just to play-. For there certainly was a feeling of win/loss and progression as one played, even without a score or a way to 'die'. Syne is a game in which you take from it what you want - whether it be a few moments of contemplation and immersion in interactive music, or a few minutes of pulverizing your enemies for their energy orbs.
Game: Syne
Developer/s: One Man Down
Basically, you control a spaceship? Of some kind. (It might be the superpowered soul of a fallen warrior that merely acts like a spaceship...) While the 'goal' of the game is to shoot down other enemies which attack you and collect their energy, Syne is far more about the experience than how quick or efficient you are.
(Indeed, one can pass the first two levels without actually killing anything and just sitting there getting beat up on. I do not think you can actually 'die' in Syne, which would make sense, since it seems to imply that you are already dead.)
The most ingenious aspect of this game, perhaps, is that the player 'makes' the soundtrack. Shooting bullets from your craft is the melody line, wheras being hit by an enemy can add in dischordant notes. The other enemies contribute harmonies as well, and by leaving them alone or shooting them down, and one's own bullet spray pattern, the soundtrack never is the same two games running. Each level also has it's own sound and artistic theme, as the game is based off of the five stages of grief.
(It is possible the game was originally meant to be five levels for the five stages, but the gold build of Syne only has three: Isolation, Anger, and Bargaining)
The theme of each level goes beyond merely art and sound. In isolation, the enemies and bullet spray patterns are simpler. In Anger, the enemies come at you in waves with insane spray patterns - I really did get mad at them ;) If only because unlike the first level which was rather calming the second I kept losing the pretty wings off my spaceship to the enemies fiendish plans :P Bargaining is the 'boss' level. It is the level I found perhaps easiest, if only because the enemy did not really move around and so all I had to avoid were the bullets.
Throughout the game, bookending each level, are introspective sayings and observations. They seem to give clues as to how the levels should be played - or perhaps that was me reading into things ;) But it certainly added to the game.
Syne is very short to play, and while very different from the genre of game I usually dabble with, I very much liked it. The addition of music and a storylike feeling to an otherwise arcade like game sets it apart.
On the downside, possibly, there is no sense of score or time whatsoever. I cannot compare one game to the next except perhaps by noting the strength of my spacecraft. Yet I am not sure if a game like Syne really needs scoring, or if the notion that 'A game has to have a score' is so ingrained into me that I am baffled by a game that you play -just to play-. For there certainly was a feeling of win/loss and progression as one played, even without a score or a way to 'die'. Syne is a game in which you take from it what you want - whether it be a few moments of contemplation and immersion in interactive music, or a few minutes of pulverizing your enemies for their energy orbs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
