Faxion Online

UTV True Games is working on an epic new online game that will pit the forces of Heaven and Hell in a war to settle the score once and for all. Faxion is a traditional MMORPG that focuses heavily on combat and will serve up tons of exciting experiences that will prove it's not just another run of the mill MMO. The game is currently in an alpha testing phase and I got a chance to play first hand.


For starters, players will begin the game by choosing whether to side with Heaven or Hell. It may seem like a tough decision, but both sides are structured very similar to each other. For this tour, I and several others joined up with the Heaven side to meet up with Ashen Temper, one of the Lead Developers for the game. Once gathered, we set off to see and learn more about world of Faxion.

Ashen first explained to us about the game's classes: Available for both heaven and hell are Crusaders/Reavers (warrior types), Diviner/Occultists which are range/DPS dealers and Guardian/Zealots which can heal and buff. While this all sounds like the same old stuff we've seen from other MMOs before, Faxion sets itself apart from the pack by introducing a multi-class system. Basically, you can mix and match skills between the available classes to create a unique class you can call your own.

Want to create a ranged class with tanking abilities? No problem!

...Or how about a warrior that can heal and buff? Go for it!

Although you're free to tweak your character with tons of different possibilities, the amount of multi-class skills you can earn are balanced out by the amount of skills points needed to unlock them. Gaining skills for your primary class will require the least amount of points, secondary class will have a moderately higher amount needed and your third class will require a ton of points. Plus: You'll need considerable amounts of gold to gain those skills as well, so you won't be able to create a character with every skill available.

Next up: We took a quick peak into a wild museum with exhibits on unicorns, creepy goatmen and even a giant wookiee!

After that, we ran off to the marketplace to see what UTV had planned for the game's F2P aspect. Like with UTV other titles, Faxion will be a free-to-play title with micro-transactions. Just about everything in Faxion's game world can be earned from looting or purchased over at market with in-game gold. But what if you'd rather spend less time finding equipment and more time battling others? Well you have the option to purchase special coins with real currency to purchase items from the market as well.

This gives you the choice to either enjoy the game with time and/or money spent, and will make sure that Faxion will never have a "pay-to-win" issue. Now this is an excellent decision from UTV that many free-to-play publishers and devs should take note from.

It was then time to get our heavenly hands dirty with a little combat. We strolled along the city looking for some suspicious looking characters and ran into this big ugly shmuck. We tried to take it down, but most of us got taken out pretty fast. Dying in Faxion (currently) does not have any penalties whatsoever, so it becomes more of a pride and humiliation kind of thing.

The world of Faxion proves to be one that isn't for the weak, because you're never too far from a fight around here. This game is completely geared for PvP in just about every way. Sure, there will be a few PvE opportunities here and there, but ultimately, you're going to have to use your strengths to beat up someone in your opposing faction. For instance, both factions will be batting to control different areas to gain resources and special quests. When areas are controlled by Heaven, the sky will turn bright and blue, while areas controlled by Hell will turn dark and red. If you were on a quest in a particular area and it ends up getting taken over, you'll be cut off from that quest and would have to fight the opposing faction to get it back.

Now it was time for us to visit one of the many fascinating worlds in Faxion: The realm of the seven deadly sins. Currently, the gluttony area known as "the fields of hunger" was available, but soon there will be a realm for every other sin (can't wait to see what the lust realm looks like!) The fields of hunger had tons of trees bearing fruit and crops to be harvested. I saw several NPCs slaving over these crops while fat; disgusting dudes were having a feast. From there, the realm of Gluttony kept getting grosser at every turn.

I witness one of the most disgusting things ever in an MMO: This freakishly huge man surrounded by food and covered in slime stood in front of us. There was also tube above him that ran straight to his mouth so he could eat all day. The room he was in was also a huge mess, as there was tons of discarded and half-eaten food everywhere. When we first saw it, I and the others thought: LETS CLIMB MT. FATTY! We started jumping all over it to see if we could reach the top, but sadly, we couldn't. :(

Behind this huge blob of a man, there were hills upon hills of wasted, rotting food. As horrible as that was, Ashen tells us that these huge hills would be great places to jump off and glide to your next destination (if you have a pair of working wings.)

While there was several bugs and issues that occurred the experience, my preview tour of Faxion left me greatly impressed. The whole concept of Heaven vs. Hell is intriguing, and the constant struggle for supremacy will keep the excitement levels high.

---

Original article: OnRPG.com

Wakfu

Played a bit more Wakfu today.I went down to the Gobball farm to learn a bit more about the ecosystem. The farm is run by an old man named Wolfram and his two sons: Wolfgang and Mimi. They teach players on how to be trappers that effect and shape the world.

Whenever the farm had too many or too few gobballs around, Mimi (who supports acts of Wakfu) would come out and plant seeds everywhere to spawn more of them, while Wolfgang (who supports Statis) would walk around and eat every gobball in his sight. Personally, I thought it was more fun watching Wolfgang eat everything with his huge fork and knife, unlike Mimi walking around planting stuff with his huge bug eyes and flower basket.

The more I played Wakfu, the more I fall in love with the game’s buttery smooth animations that resembles the animated series quite nicely, all of which makes me feel like I im a living cartoon.

I'm enjoying myself a lot playing around and I barely left the starting town! I'm also reading into the story a bit more and I'm wondering if I should check out Dofus to learn a bit more of the game's lore.

Vindictus

Vindictus, Nexon's newest action title, is here and in full swing, and unlike Nexon's current lineup, this one plans to be the most painful MMO you'll ever play. This isn't your little cousin's MMO with cute monsters and such. Vindictus contains destructive beasts; deadly environments and balls-to-the-wall action that will make you squirm with joy.

Starting out

Right from the starting gate, there's a bit of both joy and disappointment. The character selection is currently only limited to three different heroes: Lann, Fiona and Evie, each with different playstyles. Lann is a offensive dual wielding fighter that sacrifices defense for quick strikes that can rack up the high DPS, Fiona is the tank character that has slow but powerful strikes with a sword and shield combo and lasttly there's Evie who is a master magician that can mix between close and long ranged magic attacks. Nexon and DevCat plan to add in more heroes later on, but the pickings sure are slim.

The first scenario you'll be dropped into is with a bunch of mercenaries trying to stop a giant white spider from destroying an old church. This scenario serves as your tutorial and does an amazing of getting you pumped.

Blood for the blood god YAY.

The control schemes available options between keyboard, mouse and gamepads. Keyboard only controls nicely and so does gamepads, but ultimately, the keyboard and mouse combo is the best option letting you aim your more accurately. So you're fighting the big bad spider until it gets impaled with ballistae, some oracle woman cries her eyes out over it and then suddenly: character customization time!

Character customization is fairly standard, offering adequate hair, eye, skin and body size options. Only downside with the customization is that every particular Lann, Fiona and Evie will have the same exact face, no matter what.

Anyway, the game world is another one of those heavily instanced game worlds like Guild Wars (town serves as a lobby, have to join rooms with other players, you know the deal.) The town is also your quest center to walk you through the story and lore of the game. Speaking of which: The story of Vindictus is a precursor to Nexon's other MMORPG title: Mabinogi, only set a century before it (how the story and lore went from grim & brutal to KAWAII DESU NE XD anime cuteness, I'll never understand.)

Gameplay

Try to imagine this: Capcom's Monster Hunter (MH) and Atlus' Demon Souls (DS) had a baby together and they loved that baby very much, but then DS found out that MH did it with Valve's source engine and DS wasn't the baby's daddy, so DS walked out them and MH couldn't support the baby much longer, so the baby was placed in a foster home where it was later then adopted and raised by another family (DevCat)

Silly as it sounds, that's the best way I can describe Vindictus in a nutshell. It plays just like Monster Hunter, but with more brutality. You can slam enemies into walls, perform backbreaking wrestling moves, shove enemies into steamrollers of pain and everything else in between. And the best part: just about anything in the area can be used as a weapon. See that pot over there? Go pick it up and throw at the troll you're dealing with. See that big stone column you broke? Take a piece of it and smash it over your foe's head.

One time when I was up against the Gnoll boss, I knocked its helmet off and used it to beat it to death (no joke!)

Beatdown in progress

Most missions are primarily focused on running through the same environments and areas over and over again, usually ending off with a boss battle. Environments are littered with traps and enemies that will try and get in your way, but really, after a couple of runs they'll become nothing more than an afterthought. The boss battles, on the other hand, are the major highlight of the game, shifting the focus over to teamwork to take them down (soloing is still very much an option, though.)

Boss battles won't seem like such a highlight until you reach Gnoll Chieftain, which is basically the first brick wall that will teach players that spamming attacks is not the way to go.

This baddie will break your button mashing ways.

Defeating the later monsters might seem tough at first, but it's really all about learning how to not be greedy with your attacks and looking out for a couple of "tells" in their animations that will give you a clue to their next assault. Once you know all the "tells" in their attacks, that boss that was kicking your ass a week ago will be a pushover.

When playing co-op, you have a bit more options towards defeating bosses, such as chaining the monster's legs down so your teammates can get some hits in. Employing strategies like this into combat was a nice idea, but team tactics end up resorting to making sure you and your team knows how to hit and run properly.

Outside of boss battles, you'll spend your time re-running missions to collect materials and earn ability points for increasing skill ranks. A good chunk of equipment can only be earned through crafting and while it may be tedious, earning the gratification to strut your stuff in your new digs should be more than enough to keep you going.

Presentation

Vindictus is a game that will make your PS3 and Xbox 360 jealous, because it has a strong console game vibe to it. The visuals convey a nice medieval world to explore, made possible by the power of Valve's Source Engine. (Finally, the source engine is being used for something other than shooting games!) Animations are all nicely done with anticipation of each attack you pull, so when you bash your foes in the head with that heavy object, you're going to feel it too, but in a good way!

The story that goes along with it is mandatory to participate in, but does a fairly good job of keeping you intrigued with narrative that doesn't bog itself down with unnecessary dialog. Most of the time, however, the story is carried out by NPCs that are nothing more than still portraits.

Quit staring, geez!

Cutscene moments that go with the story are few and far between, but strangely enough, I actually wish there was a bit more of them. The voice acting with each cutscene wasn't half bad, either.

The music made for Vindictus was slightly disappointing, especially compared to Mabinogi which had such wonderful tunes, but Vindictus the music is just... quiet... and almost non-existent. The only time you'll hear music is in town, during boss battles and post battle results screens. That's it.

My thoughts

The biggest gripe that players were having with Vindictus was with the token system that limits how many high level missions you can play through. Certain missions require silver and platinum tokens to be spent and you only get a handful of them. Once you've ran out of tokens, you're pretty much done playing until your tokens are re-stocked on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, or until you purchase some from Nexon. People that don't have much free time on their hands will find this to be a blessing and others that want to play for long hours without spending money on NX will see this as a curse. The token system is supposed to keep power playing in check, because even with the tedious mission runs, players can hit the level cap in around a week and will be burned out that they won't have anything to do since there isn't a lot of content at the moment. Nexon made several changes to the token system in an attempt to make all players happy, but I was fine the way it was either way.

One gripe I had with Vindictus was how poorly optimized it was. My PC build is pretty solid with a quad core processor, 4GB ram and whatnot, but I couldn't manage to get any more than 20 frames even with medium settings. People with similar builds have reported that the game runs flawlessly and others with more powerful PC builds have stated that it runs like crap. I don't know how DevCat managed to screw up optimization for the Source engine so much, but they pulled it off fantastically.

Conclusion

Vindictus aims to please anyone that's looking for a little more gruesome-ness to their MMO action. With the token system and lack of content being the only real turn offs here, Vindictus is easily my most recommended MMO of 2010.

Pros:
- Action MMO with brutal physics
- Interactive environments
- Simple but enjoyable co-op play
- Almost ANYTHING can be used as a weapon.

Cons:
- Not much content available at the moment
- Token system limits progression
- Game engine is not optimized.

Original article: OnRPG.com

AIKA Online

Aika Online is a free-to-play MMORPG with a strong emphasis on Player vs. Player (PvP) content. Players can create characters with allegiances to five different nations and compete in small-scale battles for glory and bragging rights, or engage in huge 2000 player wars that could shape the face of an entire nation. In this tour, we'll be taking a quick peek at some of the PvP modes that Aika Online has to offer, including Relic Wars, Battlegrounds, and the Aitan Arena. 

To be honest, when the tour first got started, I was feeling a bit nervous since this was my first time covering an event. I had the feeling that would miss some important bits information or something, but as we got the ball rolling, I felt more and more comfortable about the whole thing.
So for starters, I met up with GMAugury to take a look at one of the first PvP event of the day: The Battlegrounds.

Battlegrounds

The battlegrounds is a straight up team battle where players of each nation can join up with each other and set up battles against other players with several different match options. Players will earn points for defeating enemy players and the first team to reach the target score wins. Setting up matches in the battlegrounds uses a room based system which is simple and easy to use for creating and joining matches.

Battlegrounds waiting room

When I entered the first battlegrounds match, I quickly realized that I had forgotten to pick up some skills for my warrior. Luckily, I was able to make do without them thanks to the party alliance that was formed during the beginning of the match. My team was primarily fixated on rushing the other team down, and it worked to some degree. With my warrior, I attempted to go Rambo on some of the enemies and was able to take down a couple of them before falling to my doom.

Aika PVP

My team ended up winning the match with a very strong lead and I managed to snag some honor points on the side. Honor points can be used to earn extra EXP, special equipment and more, so players that constantly use the battlegrounds can earn lots of great benefits for their character.

Next event up: Relic Wars

Relic Wars

Relic Wars is the most popular PvP event in Aika Online, where nations go head to head in large-scale wars to control objects called relics. Nations that have control over these relics can receive many different kinds of buffs. The buffs received from these relics can be stacked, so nations will do whatever it takes to control as may relics as possible.

During the first half of the relic war, I was greeted by Lord Marshall Lashen of the Alethius nation who gave me the basics of warfare. Speaking of which: Lord Marshals are the leaders of each nation. They control tax rates, relic upgrades, nation alliances and more. Essentially, their decisions can become major influences for the well being of each nation. Lord Marshall Lashen has been a part of Aika Online since closed beta testing and really knows a thing or two about how relic wars typically go down.

When the relic war began, Lashen instructed everyone to head straight for the temple at the Ruins of Algon. Unfortunately for me, I ended up heading for the temple at Tabaza, instead. GMLingo then ported me over to the ruins of Algon so that I could witness the mayhem. Players with alliances with other nations were gunning for the relics and each other. Even during the mass mayhem of a relic war, Lashen was calm and collected when giving orders (especially considering that he was working in the front lines of the war, too!). Lashen then redirected all units to head for the temple at Tabaza and we were able to capture the relic with ease.

Relic Warfare

After we captured the relic at Tabaza, Lashen ordered all players to rush back to the Amarkand Temple as the nation of Vanov was attacking a previously captured relic. (or was it the Algon Temple again? I'm not sure.) The confrontation with Nanov was fierce. Swords and shields clashed, magic was cast all over the place, and soldiers were dropping like flies. Trying to pick out enemies in on the battlefield was fairly difficult for me, but I would later figure out that I could have simply used the TAB key to locate and target the closest enemy. Despite the hectic action taking place, I was able to pick off a few players and assisted my allies to re-capturing the relic.

Last event: Aitan Arena

Aitan Arena

The Aitan Arena is another team vs. team based PvP mode with some special conditions. First off, players of the same nation compete with up to 200 players on teams of two. Unlike the battlegrounds, if your character is defeated in the Aitan Arena, you're out for the rest of the match. However, the rewards of surviving and defeating other players in the Aitan Arena can be great, as you can earn tons of honor points, medals, and items. These Aitan Arena battles are held twice a day from the PvE channels and anyone over level 11 can participate against others of equal level.

Since the Aitan Arena would be the last event I would participate in, I decided to have another player tag along for this one. I asked GMLingo if I could bring friend who was a fairly active Aika online player (level 37 spellcaster) to join me in the Aitan Arena. GMLingo agreed and warped my friend over to our position in a flash.

Both my friend and I joined the red team for the Aitan Arena. We didn't really have a plan or strategy going into the battle, so we both just winged it and rushed in as soon as the doors swung open. As the battle commenced, I noticed that both teams were running around in a huge circle formation against each other. I wasn't too sure of either teams' planning behind this strategy, but I went with it anyway.

Aika Aitan Arena

After a few minutes of running around in circles, I ended up stepping out of line. I ended up getting attacked and defeated by an enemy rifleman. As I watched the rest of the match with my lifeless warrior on the ground, my spellcaster friend managed to do significantly better and even managed to get a few kills in before getting thunder-shocked to death, Sith lord style.

Tour wrap-up

After all the events I participated and witnessed, my impression of what Aika online was all about was clear: PvP is everything. With the Battlegrounds, Relic War, Altar war, Castle Siege and Aitan Arena, Aika Online tailors to the most hardcore MMO PvP fanatics out there, and with the recently released "Ashes of Betrayal" expansion that features new skills and equipment, new additions to relic wars and a new nation balancing system, Aika Online's PvP aspect will be greater then ever.

---

Original source - http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/AIKA-1063/review/Aika-Online-Review-PvP-Tour-with-GMs

Spiral kinght - review

The Clockworks are in full rotation as Three Ring Design (with some help from Sega) released a brand new multiplayer adventure called Spiral Knights. Through the power of JAVA based programming, Spiral Knights mixes classic dungeon crawling with tons of MMO goodness, all working within your internet browser!


Crash landing on a strange planet, you and a bunch of other knights must explore the world that waits below them in order to build a new ship and make it back home (or wherever they were going...)

For starters: Creating your knights gives you a small but adequate amount of choices, along with different color schemes that will stick with you depending on the different armors you will be equipping later on.

The game gets you up to speed with a control scheme that is incredibly simple. So simple, in fact, that you can play the game with one hand: Hold left mouse button in a general direction to move, press left mouse button to attack and use the scroll wheel to switch weapons.
You can also use keyboard for more options such as blocking and using vials. Controls for keyboard & mouse work great, but the lack of gamepad support is fairly disappointing considering the game could easily pass as a console title.

The amount of weapon types at your disposal is small, but the variations between each one is vast. Each sword, gun and bomb type work differently and have different attributes, such as Cutters that can perform lighting fast attacks or the slow and powerful hatchets that can cause a stun effects with heavy blows. This will give players a small amount of strategy before heading into dungeons, but you'll most likely find one or two weapon and armor sets that will work best for you depending on which tier you've reached.

My personal favorite was the Autogun because it looks suspiciously like a Nerf Maverick.

Awesome!

The overall presentation of Spiral Knights screams "nostalgia" at every turn. The visual style and level designs look like they came straight out of a Legend of Zelda game. There is also some pleasant and epic music with a 16-bit vibe.

The difficulty curve for each dungeon seems to be nice and appropriate: Tier 1 dungeons are a cakewalk, Tier 2 dungeons get a little more complicated and Tier 3 dungeons requires some serious skill, patience and teamwork. Venturing through each dungeon is as simple as defeating a couple of enemies in one area, moving on to the next area, fight some more enemies, find some treasures and head for the exit. It's nice and simple, just like a dungeon crawler should be.

Most of the monsters you will do battle against are fairly predictable to take down, but when you have to deal with huge mobs of them, battles tend to get fairly frustrating at times.

One common mistake that most action/adventure games have when setting difficulty curves is when they simply give enemies higher HP and higher attack power instead of making them smarter, but enemies in Spiral Knights do indeed get smarter at higher difficulties. This is especially true of gremlins that will dodge bullets like crazy and run away to heal themselves when they are low on health.

As fun as adventuring into the Clockworks can be, the biggest issue with Spiral Knights is a lack of content and the energy system.

While you are essentially not required to buy anything with real money, the energy system in Spiral Knights serves as an elevator key, a crafting substance and a pseudo-fatigue system. Energy is used for just about everything, and you will need to keep your energy up by either buying some with real money or by exchanging your hard earned crowns (in-game currency) for some.

For anyone that's willing to drop in a few bucks from time to time, having a constant supply of energy will be no problem, but for anyone that doesn't want to pay will have two problems: When all their mist energy (free rechargeable energy) is gone, they'll have to exchange their crowns for crystal energy to continue venturing the dungeons while potentially missing out on being able to purchase new equipment and recipes for a while, or they will simply have to wait up to 22 hours for their mist energy to refill back to 100.

Of course, there is somewhat of a solution to the first problem, and that's heading back to the surface and selling your stuff, but it will usually be stuff that you'll need to craft your own equipment to continue on, so the dirty cycle continues. The current energy system only gives free players around two hours of play time, and that's only if they don't they don't screw up and die constantly, forcing them to spend more energy to revive themselves or hope that other players are willing to use their energy to revive them.

Not to mention: Energy costs for reviving double each time.

If you're looking for a casual experience, Spiral Knights will be perfect for you. However, there isn't enough content here to keep a power player busy, especially with the lack of content stemming from the lack of different stages to explore. The Clockworks promises to have tons of new stages to explore, but in truth, many stages you visit are simply re-tooled with different monsters to fight against.

Did you enjoy playing that fire themed stage over and over again? Well good, because now you get to play an incredibly similar stage with an ice theme!

Just to give you a general idea about how much content we are dealing with here: Some players have already been spotted with 5-star equipment, which is supposedly endgame equipment and the game has only been out for a couple of weeks...

One thing I really got to say, though: The community in Spiral Knights is probably one of the nicest online communities I have ever played with. Everyone playing acts like a total bro, always there to lend a hand and everyone is always doing their best to conquer dungeons with you. I have never come across one rude player. Not one! But then again, the game is centered on PvE, so the community has no reason to be full of elitists or anything like that

Overall: Spiral Knights is a great game to those looking for a casual pacing and a bit of nostalgic gaming. Those that are looking for a much more extensive experience will probably have to wait awhile for more content to roll in, and judging by the constant amount of updates being churned out by Three Ring Design, that shouldn't be too far off.

---
Original article: OnRPG.com

GunZ 2 - first ever gameplay footage revealed

MAIET Entertainment has been very hush about reveal details regarding to the sequel of their popular third person shooter title: GunZ: the Duel. Finally, some beans were spilled and a 30 second play spot trailer was released on Thisisgame.com and YouTube.

The footage shown is very rough, but it gives a good idea of what they're going for. What the footage shows is re-introduction of old gameplay elements such as wall running, wall hoping, slashing enemies into the air, etc. It also shows off some new elements such as weapons like flamethrowers, immersion between players and physics, huge ass bosses such as a giant mech and other small tibits.

Personally, it's looking pretty damn good so far despite the footage being incredibly short. Everything looks fast, fluid and sticks to what the first GunZ should have been. K-Style seems to be absent from the footage, even though they've mentioned that they would keep it in, but after seeing the footage, I'm not sure if K-style will really be needed here.

Anyway, here's the footage:

Can't wait to see where MAIET plans to take this.

Source: Thisisgame.com and MAIET Facebook Fanpage

Elseword

A new game publisher named Kill3r Combo is breaking into North America and starting off strong with a much anticipated title named Elsword. For those that don't already know, Elsword is the spiritual sequel of Grand Chase. Elsword promises to feature fast and easy arcade action, off-the-wall anime and manga visuals, RPG elements and all that good stuff we come to expect from free-to-play titles.

To be honest, I was a bit on the fence about giving Elsword a try since I did end up playing East Fantasy Online (better known as "Fists of Fu") before playing this, and as I mentioned in my previous review on Fists of Fu, I didn't really like it that much. I was kind of thinking this was only going to be slightly better than Fists of Fu, since this was not a cheap imitation of another game. But on the other hand, I did enjoy playing the original Grand Chase way back, so I decide to give this a try after all.

From the get-go, the connection this game had with Grand Chase became more clear, as the main heroes available: Elsword (The male swordsman whose name is the same as the game's title), Aisha and Rena all bare resemblance to Grand Chase's first generation of heroes, Elesis, Arme and Lire, respectively. Well since I liked playing as Elesis and my first intention for any MMO is to pick the first class I see, I went with Elsword.

After I selected my character, the game's tutorial started off with a few comic book pages and a few cutscenes of Elsword about to beat up some punks. I controls were intuitive right away since it retains the same exact feel of Grand Chase's control scheme. Getting through the tutorial was simple and only took around a minute to blow through.

When I was dropped into the newbie town, I started to take in the scenery a lot more. The game definitely presents itself better than that rip-off game did, because the game sure has a lot of colorful and beautiful backgrounds that almost made me wish I could pop into the background for a bit and explore. The newbie town seemed a bit empty during my first play session, as I could only find a few players to try out the beginner dungeons with.

When I finally managed to get a full group together, lag issues started popping up. When my party started the mission, there was so much lag that no one could perform combos properly. Five minutes into the mission, everyone lagged out and I had to finish the mission solo. Yeah, connections issues are pretty bad at the moment. But that is to be expected in a closed beta so I carried on.

Doing a few more missions by soloing, I started to get a better feel for my swordsman and managed to learn a couple of slick juggles despite the lack of branching attacks available. I also started to get a bit of a Super Smash Bros. vibe when playing some of the beginner dungeons on higher difficulties. Along with the light platforming, there are a couple of power-ups you can grab that will give different stat boosts, as well as others thrown in for comical effect.

Big head mode is BACK!

I'm not too sure if the EXP curve during closed beta is intentional for live service, but it seems pretty light and easy to level up. I managed to hit level 15 in a couple of days, and the current level cap is set to 30.

After completing all of the beginner dungeons on all difficulties, I moved onto the next town. That is where I found the rest of the closed beta testers hanging around. The next town was a rather large city called Elder Village, featuring several pathways and cute NPCs full of quests.

The place was also filled with commotion from players talking about which characters they wanted to play as when the game goes live. Many of them were anticipating the arrival of such heroes as Raven and Eve. Personally, I'm interested in the arrival of Chung, a hero that uses a giant cannon weapon like a tonfa. Only problem is that Chung was recently released in the foreign version, so I'm probably going to be waiting a long time for him...
It was time to get my hands dirty with a little PvP. I went down to the PvP channel in Elder Village and then picked some battle rooms at random. I did a few 1 on 1 battles, a couple of team battles and a few free-for-all item matches.

After several matches, I started getting a pretty sour feeling in my gut that this was going to turn out to be Grand Chase's PvP all over again. While the game shares a lot of Grand Chase's good qualities like its fast pacing, it also shares some of its bad qualities. Combat is primarily focused on offense with little to no defensive options available other than general zoning. With combo strings relatively easy to pull off and invincibility frames all over the place, PvP in Elsword may turn out be another case of swapping hits and going through the motions. Damage scaling also feels awfully low to the point where matches feel like they could take forever if not for a limiting timer.

The biggest issue I have with PvP was that matches with more than four players can feel like a real clustering mess. Kill stealing happens often in free-for-alls and it's a real pain when you finally get your opponent's HP down, only to have another player swoop in and take it.

Despite all this, I still enjoyed what Elsword CBT had to offer even with the very little content available for us to try out. I do look forward to what Kill3r Combo has in store for us with Elsword, I just hope they do something about the PvP.

---

Original article: OnRPG.com

GetAmped 2

So today I wanted to stock up on some cores for accessory alchemy. As soon as I logged in, I was invited by Zenora to a quick run through Bafaboon's dungeon in attempt to get some Charm Cores. We failed miserably on that part, sadly.

We also did a couple of runs in Dr. Diaper's dungeon on LV5 difficulty. Also: A random newbie played with us and he didn't know what the hell he was doing. He didn't even know how to pick up recovery items... He was literally standing there for like 30 seconds... staring at the damn thing.

Zenora: "It's like watching a gerbil..."

LOL'D.
 (Wish I had taken a better screenshot, though...) 

After that, I joined up with Clazziquai and other guild mates for more runs in Dr. Diaper's dungeon. It was all fine up until we got to Valkyrie and Odin. Not only was Odin doing his usual butt raping, but Valkyrie didn't glitch up and started attacking us as well. Everyone except Clazzi got taken out, but amazingly, he solo'd the crap out of Odin while dealing the non-derped up Valkyrie, and even afterwards soloing Valk was easy for since backtapping her to death was still an option.

And near the end of my session, I dueled with a pinoy that wasn't a complete jackass and gave him a few battle tips.

Freestyle street basketball - review

Back in 2007, South Korean developer JC Entertainment and US publisher Sierra Entertainment released a new kind of MMO that mixed RPG elements with old school b-ball, and they called it “FreeStyle – Street Basketball” (or FSSB for short.) Despite some strong publishing support back then, the US version of FSSB was shut down with very little signs of a revival.
The game was then resurrected for the global market and published directly by JC Entertainment under their GameKiss portal. Since then, the game has been given several updates and additions to keep it afloat. But with such an old game out in today’s market, does FSSB have enough going for you get in the game or should you stay on the sidelines for this one?

Let’s find out.

First off: You must pick a general position class for you character. You can play as a Guard, Forward or Center, and each position has different strengths and weaknesses.

There’s a huge lack of initial character customization options for both male and female appearances, so you will have to look like some average joe for a while before you can look stylish and fly on the court. One aspect that I found interesting regarding initial character creation, however, was that your selected character’s height has an overall effect on your character’s starting stats, so deciding how tall or short your baller is has to go into consideration.

Hopping straight into the tutorial: The game explains the basics of basketball at a snail’s pace, but if you have ever played a basketball video game before this, you should already know exactly what to do, so you can just skip the tutorial altogether.

The amounts of modes available in FSSB are fairly moderate. You can play quick 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 pickup matches, or assemble a full 3-man team with friends and strangers. If you’re not confident enough to go against players in a live match, FSSB gives you options to hone your skills with practice modes, mission modes, NPC battles and a free court feature that lets up to six players shoot some hoops with no ranks on the line.

FSSB also features an open court lobby that lets you walk around in a murky urban town, allowing you to chat with other players, but this town is pretty much empty and holds almost no real purpose since the features available from the lobby can be accessed from the main menu. But hey, there is a few amusing things you get to see around here, like a bunch of crazy disco dancers and a freaky looking dog.

Hey look is that Spuds Mackenzie?!

The overall themes with FSSB are all about urban culture and youth, but it’s a hit-and-miss thanks to the game’s somewhat lackluster presentation.
The thing about FSSB’s urban theme is that it feels too forced, too marketed and too tacked on. All of the character voices (especially the in-game announcer) come off as cheesy and may get tiresome after hearing their voices over and over again. FSSB’s visuals are simply dated and have not aged well at all. Even with the game’s nicely cell-shaded character models, textures for the environments are muddy and low-res. Plus: The max resolution available is only a mere 1024x768, which looks awful on newer PC monitors.
The only real upside with FSSB’s presentation is that it comes with a really stealer original soundtrack. Well… that is if you’re into Rap, Hip-hop and Jazz like I am.

Getting down to the actual meat of game, FSSB plays just like… well… a basketball video game. Controls are handled with the arrow keys for movement and the WSAD keys before both offense and defense. All the general commands that you would expect to find in a basketball video game is here: You can pass, shoot, dunk, screen, steal, etc. All the mechanics here are done pretty well, but not well enough to stand out in comparison to other basketball video games out there.

After playing several rounds, your character will earn a few levels, RPG style, allowing you to increase your stats and play your role more efficiently. Once you hit LV15, you can advance your character with a sub-class like Shooting Guard or Power Forward, but these sub-classes only increase your stats further and do not involve any changes to core gameplay.

Using different skills on the court is all a matter of having them unlocked after meeting certain requirements such as having enough points earned from games or achieving a high enough level. These skills are separated as basic skills and freestyle skills. All of the basic skills you can earn are useful, but not so much with the freestyle ones. Freestyle moves are just flashier versions of basic skills that are performed at random. Besides from some crossover moves, there’s very little point to having freestyle moves for anything but showing off.

The community you’ll be playing with here is a mix between sweet and sour. The players here seem to be really serious about their b-ballin’. Once you hit the later levels, everyone expects you to know your role by now, and if you don’t , they WILL nag on you about it… not that there’s anything wrong with that, since it’s a team game and having synergy among your team to make up for weakness is important. When you’re doing your part to help out your team, players will mostly be enjoying themselves regardless if it’s a win or lose situation. Just make sure you’re aware of everything that’s going on and yell out a few commands here and there by pressing the 1-6 keys.

Overall: FreeStyle Street Basketball plays a pretty decent game of B-Ball, but it simply doesn’t try to push any envelopes for both basketball video games and with MMOs in general. It may be enjoyable to play every now and then, but if you’re looking for a deeper, richer basketball game experience, you can do far better than FSSB.

Pros:

• Simple controls
• Great OST for Rap, Hip-Hop and Jazz lovers

Cons:

• Dated visuals
• “Marketed” urban style
• Gameplay mechanics are basic and uninteresting

---

Original article: OnRPG.com