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| Sean's Video Game Reviews | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 13 2008, 11:03 PM (149 Views) | |
| Sean | Jul 13 2008, 11:03 PM Post #1 |
The ⑥of Four Against Nature
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Mining Boy Well, I decided to give a crack at Video Game Reviewing again after my last one (alone anyways) being on Gaming Overkill sometime when it was first made. I didn't want to do reviews on my own because I felt they were weak in comparison to Jeff's but then I realized I'm being a pussy and that the only way my writing as a whole is going to improve is if I actually write these things and take a few hits to the nuts by critics. Anyways, I was bored today and started wandering about ijji's site, and came across the game Mining Boy. I felt intrigued by the name and decided to try it out. The game starts out with a tutorial explaining the general concept of the game and how to do things. Basically, the idea involves drilling underground, collecting minerals, selling them for upgrades so you can dig deeper and fight monsters in order to save your girlfriend. You have Energy which you lose for getting touched by enemies or taking bad drops. You also have Air which you lose as you go deeper underground. If one of the two deplete, you die. Now this was an interesting concept, as I always liked the concept of drilling things and the idea of having to come up for air made some sense and despite the monotony of it all, I was enjoying it. ...For a while, anyways. The flaws started becoming evident as time went on. First issue is that there is no real action to it. Sure, there are enemies, but the only way you can defeat them is by buying bombs, and there are only a few enemies. Another problem is that you will not get far underground unless you get some upgrades...which take some time to get. It will take numerous trips of collecting Materials in order to successfully get the materials, which becomes harder and harder as you're forced to go deeper and cannot stay down much longer. Now, this problems could be bypassed by the ability to save and more or less having patience. I also do concede that the screenshots show some more battles in different terrain and boss battles, so I can assume that if you have some patience, you can get to some more enjoyable parts. ...oh wait, except for one issue. THE SAVE SYSTEM IS THE BIGGEST LOAD OF BULLSHIT SINCE THE SAVE SYSTEM IN BREATH OF FIRE: DRAGON QUARTER. You get ONE free save in the game. ONE. FREE. SAVE. How do you get so save more? YOU HAVE TO BLOODY BUY MORE SAVES IN THE MONEY SHOP. THAT'S RIGHT. YOU HAVE TO PAY REAL. FREAKING. MONEY. TO SAVE YOUR DAMN GAME. You need 50 G-Coin (something like...5 dollars?) in order to get like 5 save chances, and 100 G-Coin ($10 about) in order to get unlimited saves. WHO ON DEVELOPMENT STAFF HAD A BRAIN TUMOR IN THEIR HEAD LARGE ENOUGH TO THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?! So yeah, I used up my save point early on thinking I could actually save freely, and then found out I couldn't. I tried to get as far as I could but around getting 300 meters below surface I realized it was all futile and gave up. I mean yeah, it COULD be an interesting game and $10 isn't that bad for a game, but the game is still monotonous because 90% of it is gathering minerals while 10% might be actual fighting. As to if it gets any better I can't say. It might based on Screenshots but Screenshots have this tendency to ONLY show the good. You can TRY to see how far you can get in one sitting and decide if it's worth the money to be able to save but I think that feature right there is an indication of how this game will likely progress. Anyways, I'm Sean, and this has been a review. Yes, it's not a rant because I only used a particularly bad swear once.  |
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| Root | Jul 14 2008, 02:18 PM Post #2 |
The Speaker for the Dead
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I guess those Swearer's Anonymous classes really did help you Sean! All joking aside, I really enjoyed reading that. Keep it up. |
Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on" | |
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| Sean | Aug 28 2008, 01:28 PM Post #3 |
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The ⑥of Four Against Nature
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Well, a while back, you may have recalled Jeff tearing Flyff a new one, and some time afterwards, I did an MMORPG Rant, where I mentioned Fiesta as being a far superior game compared to the other three I was playing at the time. I suppose It's time to do a detailed review on Fiesta. Also, I'm incredibly bored and waiting for someone to get Online so I have someone to talk to. Well, Fiesta is another free MMORPG, much like Flyff. Only Fiesta is GOOD. I'll try to keep Flyff bashing to a minimum but god I hated that game so I make no promises. Well, I don't know much about the plot, so I'm afraid I cannot really supply anything in that regard. I don't see much of it actually playing the game so I guess it's not that important. When you start playing and make your first character, you're given a list of classes and you choose right off the bat. I like that. Fiesta is straight to the point about what class you want. No beginner class nonsense where you spend the early game as a failure of life until you class change. You then choose your gender, and then your name and appearance. Sad to say though, your physical appearance can't be altered that greatly. You get all of three hair colors, three hair styles, and one or two face styles. Even Flyff had better appearance customization, but that's pretty much ALL Flyff has going for it. Oh, and flying, but that feature sucked anyway. Once you made your character you go back to the selection screen and can start playing! You start off in the town of Roumen, and will be given your first quest almost immediately by the Helper, Remi (Please hold the Remi\Remmy har har jokes because we've already worn that joke down until there's nothing left of it.). One thing you'll notice in Fiesta is the ABUNDANCE of quests in the game. I'm currently Level 23 and I only hit ONE spot where I found myself on a quest slump (at around Level 19), and even then grinding to the next level didn't take me very long. I'm practically ALWAYS finding quests and finding myself doing them. Another plus towards the quests is that as I mentioned in the rant, they're simple and somewhat varied. You either kill a certain amount of enemies, collect a certain amount of item, or go find a person. Sometimes these quests are mixed, where you have to kill a certain amount of a monster and get a certain amount of an item from them. The Graphics are very colorful and lively, which is very fitting for the game's name, but still wind up varied and appropriate for the game's areas, like the eerie Burning Hill, with its waters that look like bloody..well..blood. I'm not a Graphics specialist here but they work for me, at least. The Music is something I don't listen to always but I've found it to be quite catching, from the serene sounds of the towns to the sounds of areas like Sea of Greed and Burning Hill which get me pumped for battle. Of course, I'm not an expert on this either. Another thing Fiesta does is NOT make a bunch of useless features that wind up being borderline unusable (I'm looking at YOU, Flyff Party Skills. How the hell do you expect us to hit Party Level 20+ without playing the game three days straight?) Now, I've praised this game quite a bit but I will admit it has its share of flaws. There are a fair amount of glitches, especially with splitting items off of their designated pack (Example: Trying to take five scrolls from a pack of 50). I've gotten random errors and sometimes have had to do it twice or thrice. It doesn't happen ALL the time and there are ways around it, so it's not absurd. I've found also occasionally having issues with the game responding to me, which has caused me to die many a time as I was pressing my hotkey for my potion about five times to no avail and died to a major enemy. That's seemed to have improved lately though, as I've noticed it happening less frequently to barely ever now. And of course the usually MMORPG issues, the fact that even with quests, it's a repetitive grind-fest all the way to the end, which is why I reccomend playing this game with some friends. And voice chat, so you can make witty remarks while playing the game. All in all, the game is a very good MMORPG, and not to mention Free to play. If you like MMORPGs, I suggest checking it out. Oh yeah, my Main Character is OverlordSean on the Epith server, in case anyone was wondering.
Edited by Sean, Aug 28 2008, 01:29 PM.
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| Rem | Aug 28 2008, 03:05 PM Post #4 |
Why yes, I do like snickerdoodles.
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 I broke the game. |
 Have you ever wondered what color air is? | |
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| ddrattack | Sep 14 2008, 02:39 PM Post #5 |
The DDR of all things Rythm
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I found FIesta boring after a few weeks of play. |
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| Jeff | Sep 15 2008, 09:28 AM Post #6 |
Lord of Pie & BBWs
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Nice review, Sean. Good stuff. DDR-attack, I think Fiesta is one of those games enjoyed periodically, and not all at once. I've been pacing my play on it, and I've found it, so far, enjoyable. |
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Come visit me and my thought processes at my website: http://www.publishedauthors.net/tdotdw/news.html "In the cold light, justice and morality always look corny and you can't wave the flag and look cool. But like it or not, society needs its heroes." - John Hart; actor who played The Lone Ranger. | |
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| Sean | Sep 28 2008, 01:28 PM Post #7 |
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The ⑥of Four Against Nature
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Today's Review: AdventureQuest Now, I find myself occasionally looking online for a list of online games to play, because of boredom. There are three types of games I wind up finding. Paid games, where you have to actually buy it or buy a subscription or something to that extent. Free games, which obviously you can play for free, all you need are the system requirements to play and the space on your computer. I like these kinds of games. Paid games tend to be very well done because you HAVE To pay money (Sometimes monthly or yearly) so it has to be worth the money. I like Free games because I'm a cheap bastard. However, there's the third type. Games that are called Free, but are really castrated games that you need to pay to get the full extent of the gameplay. AdventureQuest is one of these. It's advertised as a FREE WEB RPG, but it really isn't. Now, I can understand certain things being available via a special currency only available using real money. Lots of games DO indeed do this, even Flyff did this right and that game was horrendous in virtually every other aspect. AdventureQuest however requires you to pay to do half of the stuff in the game. You see, free players are called Adventurers, which means "Can only play 50% of the game." Classes can only use half of their skills, there are dozens of areas blocked off, and several events cannot be triggered, and that's aside from the standard advantages that a Special Account gets in online games! Do you understand where I'm coming from? I'm not playing a free game. I'm playing a NEUTERED GAME that requires money to be able to play the other half. Oh, did I mention that Adventurers will never be able to play because of the rediculous player limits put on the server? Okay, okay, the AdventureQuest fanboys are probably going to start telling me how it's only like $20 to get the Guardianship account and I can play the full game. That's not the issue. It's the principle of the matter that it's advertised as a free game and it really isn't. Furthermore, the game isn't even worth the $20, since it's not all that good to begin with. Let's start with the real review then, shall we? First, the gameplay. You know how Jeff referred to having to click your way through Flyff? It's worse in AdventureQuest. That's all you do. Click click click click click. Click to go to areas. Click to choose options, click to choose skills, click to attack, click to do everything. Hell, at least Flyff, Fiesta, and the other games of their kind have Keyboard Shortcuts. Also, the gameplay is BORING. Every battle in AdventureQuest is one on one, unless you buy a pet or get a guest for a special event. Then it's two or three on one...except your partner or pet has like a 1 in 5 chance of actually doing anything on their turn. And they suck. Recent updates have made it so there's a group, but it's horrifically half-assed because it just changes the name of the enemy to "Enemy name" (#), and lets the enemy attack you more than once a turn. Guess what? You're still attacking one target, except it just randomly determines which enemy is the one who goes through the injury animation. Which brings me to graphics. The game's graphics have gotten better, I'll admit, but you can still go to events and areas made early in the game's creation and see crap that looks like it was made by someone in MSpaint in all of 15 minutes or less. That actually makes it worse because of the gross inconsistency. The Animations are dull and there are several monsters which are just lazy edits of others, or just palette swaps. Also, some of the weapons in the game just look bloody retarded or some share the same appearance. Just look at the Betroven Wind Gouger in the Inn's shop.  What the hell is that supposed to be?! Music? There is none. All there is in the game are sound effects for actions, and they're not that interesting or varied. Final Verdict? Pathetic Game, waste of the money it would cost to get a Guardian (or Guardian-X, Z, or whatever the higher one up is) account and a waste of time in general just to play for free. Ignore it. |
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| Root | Sep 28 2008, 04:30 PM Post #8 |
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The Speaker for the Dead
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I think I vaguely remember a few of my friends playing this back in middle school when the Internet Control proxy didn't block everything. Personally didn't even like the looks of it. Glad I didn't play it. Well done. |
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Does being the only sane one make me the insane one, in a sort of way? Though my eyes could see, I was still a blind man; Though my mind could think, I still was a madman... "Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run...there's still time to change the road you're on" | |
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| Rem | Sep 28 2008, 06:19 PM Post #9 |
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Why yes, I do like snickerdoodles.
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It is a boring game, yes. But my guardianship only cost me $4.99 and I have it forever... |
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Have you ever wondered what color air is? | |
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| Sean | Nov 7 2008, 10:06 PM Post #10 |
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The ⑥of Four Against Nature
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_JOSCbC6eA First of my Romhack Reviews Edited by Sean, Nov 7 2008, 10:06 PM.
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5:24 AM Nov 30
