Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Smilebit
Publisher: Sega

Would you believe this game is made by the same developers as the previous Jet Set Radio Future? Even odder, they’re also responsible for the upcoming, even other edutainment/survival horror Typing of the Dead. Even more depressing is that these days they’re responsible for the far less exciting Mario & Sonic sport games. It feels like a bit of a waste.

With that sad note, we come back to the end of our small XFest, starting with Midtown Madness 3. We finish with our eternal bane, a shoot ‘em up. While it’s the second most common genre on the list, the most common one, action, is one we pick up by default a lot more often. With how far behind we get then, having a game like it come up like this, rather than doing a few because we have to, is quite nice.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is the fifth and last in its series, all with the same style of gameplay. The fourth game will be covered in a future Dreamfest 2, but that’s for later. Let’s first see whether it’s as hip as Jet Set Radio Future.

Our Thoughts

First things first – that ‘Dragoon’ in the title – I’m fairly sure this is a misspelling and should be ‘Dragon’. After all, there’s no soldiers in the game, while you do ride around on a big-ass dragon. Yeah. This annoyed us. Apparently this is based more around the German for ‘armoured dragon’ despite the fact that the German for dragon is Drache.

So yeah, that’s the basic game. You are a girl called ‘Orta’ and ride around on a big-ass dragon. You fire lasers and missiles at enemies around you while your dragon flies mostly around a single path (you can adjust it slightly, but as this is a rails shooter, that’s to be expected. It means you can shoot on all sides, which obviously has plenty of use as they attack you from all sides.

This has one big advantage, though, although it doesn’t impact gameplay. As you’re flying around, you’re pulled around many gorgeous vistas. Endless forests, deep caves and marvelous buildings. That combines nicely with the exotic animals you face in some levels as well as the strange ships of the enemies you fight against. It’s colourful and imaginative and the lovely graphics make playing this game worth it.

Which makes something else worth mentioning here – you meet some allies along the way, and your opponents at least announce things to you (although why they’d tell you what weapons they’re going to use is beyond me). As a staple of the series (and probably to make translation easier), this is done in some sort of garbled speech that doesn’t make sense. They still, however, manage to be quite stereotypical with it. Yeah. The good guys sound Japanese, the bad sound Russian. Hmmm…. Actually it’s a made up language that is a mixture of Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek, still… I get props for recognizing the Russian.

The game itself then. One interesting thing – something it feels we’re no longer used to – is that it expects you to read the manual. A nice, big manual. As 90s as it feels, without it you won’t know your controls here, and while firing is on the expected key, Peter can testify that missing out on a lot of the additional options makes the game unnecessarily difficult. Finding out that holding down A leads to a homing attack really was a game changer.

It’s not that complicated, but between homing lasers and missiles, berserk attacks if you build up one meter, and gliding using another, it becomes difficult enough to keep track of it and figure out your tactics. As said, you have some control over your path – direction and speed – and while the former mostly matters for the mass enemy and fly-through sections, avoiding attacks – the latter comes into play with the bosses. One plant-based one requires you to move from its front to its back and vice versa as it keeps turning to avoid you, while the challenge with the ‘Catharp’ (possibly pronounced ‘Cat-Harp’ – an evil combination if I ever heard of one.) is that you need to overtake it to shoot at its vulnerable point.

But that’s where it is. The game starts off quite relentless and steps it up from there. It’s not easy to keep up with and gets incredibly frustrating. But it doesn’t take too much work to keep up with it either, and some stubbornness will see you through it… as long as you find out that one secret to finishing the boss.

Final Thoughts

Another shoot ‘em up with a very steep difficulty curve. We know that when we cover Panzer Dragoon Saga the difficulty will probably be amped up again. Great as long as you’re okay with a broken Sega Saturn controller.

Genre: Action
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2002
Developer: Smilebit
Publisher: Sega

I hate playing games out of order in this blog. It’s something we only do if we are unable to get an earlier game or if we are doing something special. So since we are doing X-Fest we are skipping over Jet Set Radio for now in favour of it’s sequel. Oh well, we’ll get to it in our next Dreamfest.

Our Thoughts

Last time I mentioned how it annoys me when games are desperate to be seen as cool. As the old adage goes; to be cool you should not care so much about being cool (which is why Marge Simpson will never been seen as cool by her children). This game goes against this in spades but instead of being groan-worthy it is a whole lot of fun. Although in a way, the reason it’s so fun is because it’s ridiculous enough about it that it doesn’t seem to try to be cool.

The idea behind this game is that you reside in futuristic Tokyo where as part of a graffiti-spraying rollerblading gang you are fighting both the establishment and other rival gangs through the medium of tagging and skating. Due to this fact there is a nice piece of backtracking at the very start as Sega urge us as the games not to randomly tag our neighbourhoods because graffiti is illegal despite having artistic merit (I am paraphrasing here). I know it is Sega just covering themselves in case of graffiti-based lawsuits since we are all mindless sheep who do what video games tell us to. That’s why I eat falling leaves during autumn due to my undying belief that I will gain a tail and the power of flight. Rant aside, this was a fantastically entertaining game.

In order to set the scene there game is equipped with a very apt soundtrack featuring electronic, funk and hip-hop music (a personal favourite being the bonkers song ‘Birthday Cake‘). 

You maneuver around this interconnected sandbox-style city by grinding along rails, bouncing off of billboards and defying graffiti by going up vertical poles with very little momentum whatsoever. Some of these chains of grinding and jumping can be very tricky and picky in terms of timing. It can get frustrating but there is a lot on offer here that you do soldier on. Such as the graphics which, due to their cel shaded nature, still look as vibrant as they did back then, certainly better than how Killer7 looks under the lights of 2011-13. Some of the 3D models look a bit blocky but we are looking at a game 10 years later.

To add to the challenge of the game, you can find cassette tapes around the courses. These don’t give you music, as other games would do – not, they unlock new challenges in the area that give you access to glowing alien heads: You are able to collect different tags for your graffiti by collecting glowing alien heads which are in hard to reach places… some are really hard to reach.

To be fair the story is a bit weak and it feels like this game would have still been as good at it if they used a more Saints Row style play where you take on territory and defend it after getting warnings over your favorite pirate radio station (the DJ is frickin’ nuts). Then again, this works. It apparently worked in the original so why mess so much with the original… apart from getting decent sales that would have lead to a third installment. Ah, well.

Of course, half the fun is racing around the city doing tricks and reaching places. The challenges give you great reasons for doing so, but the story behind it is just not as relevant when you’re playing.

Final Thoughts

There’s places where this game is frustrating – it has random spots where the stunts suddenly become a lot trickier and there’s a few cases where, when you expect to lock onto grinding, the game doesn’t pick up on it. On the whole, however, the game plays well and it soon gets very addictive. That’s fun enough.

Genre: Fighting
Platform: PS2/Gamecube/Xbox
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: AKI Corporation, EA Canada
Publisher: Electronic Arts

It’s official, the drought of fighting games is now over. 50 games since we last covered one (Splatterhouse) and finally we doing our next one as part of X-Fest. The main reason for this is that as part of my 50 a lot of fighting games (as well as Resident Evil) has been off-limits since I played a lot of them… which is great for 8 games time since I can get back to breaking some skulls. I already miss my RPGs and strategy games…

Our Thoughts

I have a thing about games that are trying to be cool (one of the reasons that games like Tony Hawk and Free Running tend to leave me cold) and reading the blurb of this game on the back of the cover really began to get my hackles up. That and a lot of rap and hip hop music… plus Cher Lloyd. This is where I will draw a line under my own personal feelings about the desperation to appear ‘hip’ or ‘street’… I mean what the hell do I care I’m a teacher. Time to focus on the rest of the game.

Character creation is something that we see a lot of in gaming; especially in Western RPGs like Mass Effect and Baldur‘s Gate. It is a bit rarer to see it be such a central element to a fighting game. I mean it’s found in most wrestling games but, again, it isn’t an essential because you can always play as The Undertaker or whatever. In this game you can not only control how your character looks, dresses and sounds but also everything about your fighting. There are a number of key fighting styles and finishing moves you can choose for your fighter plus in true RPG style you are able to decide in what areas your character trains in. It is advisable to not neglect some of them because, you know, your opposition will make mincemeat out of you. It’s actually quite interesting how this game integrates it. While most fighting games go for set characters to preserve balance – great for multiplayer and to master a game, but less ideal for telling a story and make for a replayable solo campaign. The addition of this system made it immediately more interesting for me, both for the replayability and because it means you have your chance to master the inital game while giving you a chance to build up the moves you can use.

On the whole the story mode is very impressive and in depth for a fighting game. Personally I prefer BlazBlue because those sorts of Japanese anime story-lines are more my thing but hey that’s me. In Def Jam: Fight for NY you are in a posse and fighting random guys in bars until you are high up enough in the food chain to fight Foreman from House or that rapper who now has his own reality show. At the time the line-up for this game (and in face now it is still impressive) but playing this 8 years later it is fun to see who was cool enough to be in a fighting game where street cred might as well be currency. Snoop Dogg (now Snoop Lion), Danny Trejo, Lil Kim and Carmen Electra are still known but who remembers Redman? You know the guy who rapped on Christina Aguilera’s song ‘Dirrty’. What about Comp? No me neither.

Aside from the parts of the game that make me feel whiter than a sheet of plain A4 paper this is a game that offers a surprising amount of depth. Depth you would not expect from a fighting game that features a wide cast of rappers (and some casual sexism). Depth that rewards a very long time playing the story mode to work out the kinks in your character as well as the construction of your own crew. Which is apparently a good thing if you want to keep your territory… apparently… I prefer to spend my time watching forties movies on Netflix.

Final Thoughts

It’s not our world. It’s not a world that interests us much. But when you leave that, this is an interesting game whose fighting style is adjusted well through its multitude of options and provides a more interesting curve of improvement thanks to its basic RPG elements. Somewhat unexpected before we started. But it makes for something fun that’s slightly different – appealing enough to me.

Genre: Driving
Platform: Xbox
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Digital Illusions CE
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

As you know, we had to obtain an Xbox a while ago to go with our Steel Battalion controller. We didn’t make much use of it since, but knew we’d need it for the games that weren’t compatible with the 360.

When we picked a random game a while ago, Midtown Madness 3 came up, which never gained a backwards compatibility patch either. Combined with us gaining some extra free time over a holiday, we decided to take up the challenge and have an Xfest, similar to our Dreamfest a while ago.

Midtown Madness 3 is a driving game. I’ve played around a bit with earlier games in the series (although it was more my brother who loved it). Let’s see whether it’s a worthwhile start of… XFEST!

Our Thoughts

One of the ever-present questions that plague us at this blog is one of categorization: What is the difference between racing and driving games? They’re categorized separately, some being in both, others more complicated. With this game, at least, the distinction is clear. While you race, the focus on this game is on driving around the cities the game is set in, Paris and Washington.

The basic game, then, is first the sandbox mode. These two cities are fully modeled (fairly accurately for a 2003 game, in face this really was one of the big selling points of this game), with plenty of alleyways and different routes to get to places. This, of course, includes a number of collectables and such for you to find as you’re driving. In many ways this game really did suffer from the better selling Driver franchise which offered very similar gameplay and whose first installment was released within moments of the original Midtown Madness.

There are plenty of challenges still. Most of them are of the race form – go from place to place and be faster than everyone else. These, however, still offer more freedom – there can be multiple ways to get to your destination (even if there is one ‘recommended’ route) and in a number of them you can reach your goals in different orders (even if one is recommended and often faster, if you get lost they can give a way out). This creates a racing game that still takes place in a city, with challenges that aren’t about getting around a track quickly, but have their own goals, even if the basic gameplay is still the same.

These goals are the ones that get a bit odd at times. We started off playing the French missions and found that the voice acting was horrible. Overdone, terrible French accents that would be used as the funny part of a last sketch on a crappy sketch show. Borderline offensive, not very funny and completely unnecessary. What doesn’t help is that the worst offender here is also your main opponent during the Paris section of the game, taunting you as you race against her or she tries to ram into your car as you try to make an important delivery. To be fair the American accents in the Washington levels are just as hammed up, strange for a games company based in San Diego (which is weird considering how authentic their later game, Red Dead Redemption, was seen to be).  

Even so, with that the game plays well. Control is good, with cars feeling quite different between them without any of them becoming too awkward to drive around in it. There’s a nice variety in cars, although most of the more special ones are tied to specific challenges.

The challenge becomes quite large, with the game imposing some quite tight challenges on the time and some good driving from your opponents – despite their general annoyance, they have pretty good AI – making this a tough game to defeat. Not in the impossible range, but if you’re like me, you’ll struggle from the start. Probably not a bad thing, really.

Final Thoughts

The original Midtown Madness game was a pioneer of open world racing and was an influence on the Burnout franchise. It was a lot of fun and is a sad state of affairs that this was not patched for X-Box 360 backwards compatibility… makes no sense to be honest.

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: Jeremy Smith
Publisher: Superior Software

Now for a return to old style gaming. Games have for a long time tried to mix realism into their gameplay. Early on, Asteroids introduced inertia and related space flight to the games, and Lunar Lander later introduced gravity, as you try to land your ship.

Thrust appears to make use of a similar system, heavily influenced in both looks and gameplay by Thrust. The game seems to strive to go beyond that, though.

Our Thoughts

Sure, in style and basic gameplay, this game resembles Lunar Lander – rotation and speed, making for soft approaches and quick getaways – although the latter tends to rarely be a good idea where the former can be ruind by a single mistake.

Your goals, then, are what make the difference here. You’re not supposed to land – you can’t. Instead, you need to guide your way to an orb, activate your tractor beam to take it with you, and then warp off into space with it in tow. Intergalactic thievery of the rudest kind. This, combined with an uneven landscape that requires precise movements to avoid, is tricky enough. Just getting to the orb, in the first level, requires that you don’t fly into the walls on either side, or sling away at such a speed that you get lost elsewhere on the (luckily small) planet.

That becomes more difficult when you realise that a defense tower is firing at you (it sucks being on the other side of the Fieldrunners fence). Only one in the first level – more in later ones – but enough to make it difficult. You see, you can shoot, but only in the direction you are facing. The same direction you’d accelerate in, meaning that you have to combine avoiding shots, aiming and maneuvering away from all the walls at the same time. It’s tough.

As a last complication, there’s fuel. It’s limited. And all that moving around that I mentioned, trying to stay away from the walls, slowly eats it. Sure, you can refuel, but it does require you to get close to the ground. Tough enough that it’s something you will want to avoid if not necessary.

Written for home computers, this game doesn’t have the graphics of the arcade games of the time – in fact, it barely improves on Lunar Lander in that respect, thanks to a bit of colour and a few different structures on the surface. It’s still a big challenge, though, one that even now is frustratingly addictive, as we noticed in our repeated ‘one more try’. I do hate that computer games manage to trigger such a basic psychological response.

Final Thoughts

This game is easily available on the web if you are keen to play it but one thing I would suggest is to disable the sticky keys on your computer, there was many a time where I was close to hitching my tractor beam and then the sticky keys warning pops up and… well it was game over for me. You have been warned.

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1982
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

There is a big argument for doing games in strictly chronological order, that way we can see exactly who did what first and who influenced whom. Xevious is the earliest example of a vertical shooting game that appears on this list (yet is actually not the first to do so) but due to it’s early status we can automatically give it the title of influential. (Something that may not apply to all games of such an age. Who remembers Dig Dug or Mr. Do?) But does it still hold up?

Our Thoughts

The fact that iPhone games like Sad Robot are bringing interesting variants to the vertical shoot ‘em up shows just how essential this genre this is. We have already covered a few of these (one of the more recent one being Ikari Warriors) so it was interesting to see what was improved on in later years in order to make newer games…  the answer is not much.

Xevious already has pretty much all the essential components in a vertical scrolling top down shoot ‘em up (wow that’s a long genre). You have enemies approaching you in the sky which you shoot and then there are enemies on the ground that you bomb into submission. That fact that this game is actually set in a rich (considering the graphics in 1982 games) environment rather than the blackness of space is also a novelty for that era. Earlier game usually relied on a plastic overlay to achieve this effect (such as Boot Hill) but here it is fully rendered and has that simple retro look that we all know and love. It also makes the game feel more alive than the blackness of space. There’s more variety – you’re actually making progress traveling from one place to another, rather than floating in nothingness and no reference to scale.

It’s not exactly the riveting story found in games like Mass Effect but this is the eighties and outside of kill all enemies (we were still in the Cold War after all) there isn’t much driving this game apart from the fun… and the other thing. Other thing? Well, Xevious was one of the first games to include an Easter Egg. In fact, there are a number of Easter Eggs in this game… which neither of us found during our playthroughs but hey it’s amazing that more than 30 years ago this was an idea that was had and remained the bane of every completionist’s life (although the mentions of Xevious in Namco’s later Ridge Racer series is a nice touch).

Final Thoughts

Games and genres don’t usually leap ahead – a lot of it can be incremental growth with each game adding its own bits and pieces. This is especially true in the early years of videogaming, where a lot of different things were tried. When it comes to visuals and interaction with the world, Xevious pushed the genre forward, and that’s something. Beyond that, even now this would be playable on mobile devices, as  casual game, which is something that’s always an accomplishment.

Genre: Driving
Platform: PSP
Year of Release:  2004
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

There’s several games in this series, with two others sharing the title, and one (the 1993 edition) being on the list for future play as well.

I guess that means it’s a notable, good racing game, but I’ll be honest, for this game, it’s hard to write an introduction. Racing game, techno soundtrack, hard to say what’s special about it before playing it. Similar things have been previously said about Wipeout HD, F-Zero GX and probably about the ghost scene in the second Matrix movie.

Our Thoughts

Let me just prefix this with my first negative bit of impression: I couldn’t beat the first round of the first part of the competition. Yeah. The very first race, where you have to finish third or higher, I couldn’t. It’s mostly my fault, but it seems worth mentioning.

As said, this series (and in fact, the first tracks) dates back to 1993. I suppose this is where it shows. It’s not impossibly difficult once you find out what to do (use the blue car!), but it can stump you, and it’s not the guaranteed first win most other games would give you. Unless you are me and have played a number of racing/driving games then the first level is a bit of a doddle. The place where it begins to get difficult is around the fourth racing tour where instead of just good driving you need to be adept at drifting, something I personally find difficult.

There is one bit of what feels like clearer cheating though. While in most games, you start on a starting grid where all cars are fairly close to each other (you’re usually last, but can still get far simply from a good start), in this game you start several car lengths behind the car before you, and the first car seems to be halfway around the track before you even start. It probably adds to the challenge, but feels like a cheat.

Why drift? Well with every drift and handbrake turn you earn a bit more nitrous to launch your car down a track like a rocket. In tight situations this is very very useful and when well timed is essential to winning the race. Eventually you do get used to these tracks seeing how there are only 12 in the game (24 if you count the same track being mirrored in a similar manner to Mario Kart games). This is a bit of a short-change especially since none of these are originals seeing how they have been lifted from previous games in the series.

In some ways this game feels incredibly scaled down compared to the likes of Pure since it is a (excuse the pun) a pure racing game without many excessive thrills minus graphics, which still look gorgeous on the PSP, but Ridge Racer is all the better for this. Due to this Ridge Racer has a real pick-up-and-playability unlike many portable racing games not set in a futuristic environment.

Final Thoughts

This isn’t a special game, with many flashy features or special tricks. The graphics, thanks to its handheld nature, aren’t great. But this could still rate as a high point of the genre. It’s a good, solid racing game, focusing slightly on the drifting and speed boost, but just as much on pure, quick racing. You need to be accurate, you need to be fast, and you need to pay attention to what you’re doing. Scary, but in the end absolutely fun racing.

Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Introversion Software
Publisher: Introversion Software

Some time ago – about two years by now, in fact – we covered a lovely game called Uplink. Interesting in its own way, it was a hacking simulation, in a way that felt like it emphasised realism over graphics or flashiness. It worked incredibly well and was very tense.

It is the first of Introversion’s games, who’s other two games (both listed) deal with vaguely similar themes. DEFCON, which we’ll discuss at some later day, is pretty much about all-out nuclear war, while today’s entry deals more with the computer side of things. In Darwinia, you enter a world filled with artificial intelligences that you have to rescue and keep safe.

Our Thoughts

Somehow the description above doesn’t seem right. Yeah, it’s what you’re doing – removing the viruses in a computer system, restoring the Darwinians to life and fixing the connections between parts of the system.

The way to play this, however, is fairly simple. You get a limited number of units – initially three, although this goes up through subsequent upgrades. Until you get the appropriate amount of research, you direct them to attack, first with lasers, later with grenades as well. They learn to defend themselves down the line… this just takes a while.

You do similar micromanagement on other units – while engineers will gather souls (freshly harvested from dead viruses) nearby to be reborn as Darwinians, you still need to guide them in the right direction, especially when you want them to reprogram the control towers and other useful structures in the area.

Similar things apply to other units, requiring you to spend quite a bit of time on each unit. This is one reason why the small group of units works out, but even then the amount of micromanagement can get frustrating. Not so much to direct them for their usual purpose, but because, for example, their path-finding is so simple that they can only go in a straight line, and a two-square diversion around a wall is impossible for them. At best, it may take more time. At worst, it means they waltz through an everything-destroying wall without any regards to their safety, immediately killing themselves.

Once the game gets going, though, it gets quite addictive. Blasting viruses is quite satisfying and seeing the Darwinians regenerate after you collect their souls, it does make you feel better.

At first glance the graphics in this game are pretty simplistic, but they do serve a purpose. With the exception of the trees (which are beautiful) everything looks fairly retro and pixelated. The Darwinians themselves are green and two-dimensional (to the point that they are so thin that they disappear from view if you rotate your view to the right point) to the point of looking like a cool clothing logo. The viruses are very very red and range from arrows lighting up the ground to tentacled UFO things that lay virus-filled eggs. There are even some interesting virus-laying flora which burn in a rather satisfying fashion when you throw a grenade at their roots.

As with Uplink and many games of the early nineties the closest link you have to human contact is slightly moving photograph of a talking head. It’s slightly disconcerting since it is just one step away from South Park’s much beloved Terrance and Phillip with their heads flapping up and down. Don’t get me wrong, your contact is very helpful since they are there researching away in the background to make sure your weapons pack a mean punch and the Darwinians don’t remain completely helpless as the viruses draw near.

In terms of strategy… there is not too much that is too dissimilar to the likes of Populous. Kill the enemies, take over the once-yours bases and escort your people to safety. The real novelty of this game really does lie in it being set inside of a computer (much like the controversial episode of Pokémon where many Japanese children were overcome by epileptic seizures). Due to this the time sink that certain escorting things become bareable. To be fair the idiocy of the Darwinians does put the floating head in Perfect Dark to shame… but it isn’t their fault because (in many ways) they are newborns unlike the head who must, therefore, be brain damaged.

Final Thoughts

This game has its flaws – mainly around its flawed controls and requirement to stay close to a lot of the action even when there is more going on elsewhere you want to attend to. Still, the game’s look and feel are charming, and you do really want to save the Darwinians. It certainly appeals to older gamers in its look and gameplay, but it’s just cool enough that you want to keep going and find out what else happens during the story.

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: CCP Games
Publisher: CCP Games

Eve Online is an odd game. As I mentioned, I often speak with people who know a thing or two about video games, and today the subject of Eve Online happened to come up. An article about someone who lost over $6000 worth of ingame credits, and while I didn’t know the specifics of the ship class (“it’s a beginner’s ship”), I quickly got what it was about, where the loss came from and how stupid it was. And why it’s something you can expect in Eve Online.

This game has a reputation for being lawless and allowing almost anything. It feels edgy and dangerous. And it clearly proclaims this is not a light game you can just play for a bit. Not something that matches our quickfire way of judging a game, but let’s see how that ends up.

Our Thoughts

Wow. Let’s start with the greatness. We’ve played some lovely-looking games, like Aion, but space has its own set of lovely sight and Eve Online makes full use of them. It makes for lovely travel around the galaxy.

You’ll do that a lot when playing the game. The game makes maximum use of its space setting by setting its missions in different galaxies and solar systems and requiring you to travel through space gates to get there. Although it can, at times, be beautiful, it’s just as obvious that the time it takes can be annoying. That’s why one of the first features the game introduces to you in its tutorial is the auto pilot. Turn it on and go off to do your laundry, and half an hour later you arrive and can continue playing.

This tutorial is a lot more bearable than Runescape‘s, being short before allowing you to play normally and pick your own way, with an interface dotted with help that allows you to learn about the other features as you play.

Still, its mission structure seems almost like a token effort, done because other MMORPGs have it and to set up a structure to the game. I just didn’t get the feeling it mattered as much – the game certainly doesn’t point you to them or encourages their use much. Instead, it focuses on the larger picture.

You start an empire to hang out with and shortly after the tutorial are further encouraged to specialize in one or two roles, doing some specific work – mining, trading, researching or such. From there on you move on to the next step – organizations. These are pushed heavily in the interface, the guilds or clans of other games, and that seems to be the big feature of the game.

As said, the game is very much focused on the social aspect. The economy is open and a lot of what happens in the game is up to players to define – it’s clear this is where the appeal comes from. The fact that this game has a real life economist on speed-dial to make sure it’s running according to real-life models really let’s you know that they mean business. Not being involved in that as much, and not seeking the cooperation, feels dangerous – you wouldn’t want to play this game for the pretty sights and the missions, as it feels like there’s just too much that could threaten you to mess you up.

We’re not the most social players when it comes to these games and I’m sure that removed some of our enjoyment of the game. As cool as the things in the game are, not wanting to invest in knowing people removes a lot of the fun. We didn’t have as much of a chance to, considering the time we spend on each game, so missed out… if we felt more drawn into that at the start, I can see how it might really become addictive.

Final Thoughts

The main thing that prevents us from playing this for very long after the needed time is the price. I know it sounds cheap but freemium games like Aion have more to offer us since we are unable to invest a lot of time over a long period of time into an MMORPG, let alone one with a monthly plan.

Of all the MMORPGs this was definitely the most gorgeous and, arguably, the one with the most in-depth game play. With only one on the 1001 list to go… things are looking good for EVE Online.

Genre: MMORPG
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: Jagex Games Studio
Publisher: Jagex Games Studio

 This MMORPG is a bit of a different one. Probably one of the first of free to play, later taken on by smaller and larger MMORPGs including even World of Warcraft – a fact we’ve taken advantage of in some of our reviews so we can play the game more easily.

Runescape started off with that… and I noticed. My brother loved the game – addicted is a big word for it, but I know he played it quite a bit (and for all I know, still does, although Minecraft seems to have replaced it). I’ve avoided it so far, but let’s see whether it works.

Our Thoughts

Right, I have to complain about this. I know this was transient, but it’s left such a bad taste in my mouth that it immediately made me dislike the game more. You see, they have a tutorial in this game, as so many. It’s what you start of with. It feels mandatory and to honest – when I play a new game like this, I want to go through one so I know what I’m doing. Especially when I am going through it for a blog like this, where I want to get to know the game.

So imagine my annoyance when, about twenty minutes in, I got stuck in the tutorial because the game refused to recognise that I mined copper. I tried for about an hour and a half more, googled and found others were having trouble, but no reply and no solution. I came back to the game almost a week later and it was fixed, but I wasn’t happy.

You see, you’re trying to sell a game. The tutorial already contained a lot of ‘this is for paying members only’ stuff – in fact, I believe the whole tutorial area is. Getting people stuck twenty minutes in does not sell the game. If not for this blog, I’d have not  come back.

Even without that complaint, the tutorial is terrible. It lasts a long time – I think we properly played it for at least three hours and didn’t even finish it – and is boring. There’s a veneer of story, but it’s trite, boring, unbelievable and, well, just crap. It’s not compelling and didn’t draw me in further and certainly didn’t make me want to play. It was difficult to remember stuff anyway – they’re introducing thirty or so different skill, most of which I don’t care about, lots of which don’t mix, and really, when they’re only good for healing, and you heal rapidly anyway, why would you have five different ways to make food?

And that is the other part about gameplay. There’s lots of options, lots of skills, but most seem a bit too awkward, unnecessary to use or unnecesarily complicated. The game is a sandbox, and I just don’t find myself wanting to go in. In part because it’s too constrained – you just need to keep getting the same stuff in the same places to make the same thing. It is very grindy and just gets boring real soon. Even the different crafting skills are the same – harvest something, take to place, make it, there’s not much to it.

Beyond that, the game feels unstable as hell. The normal smoothing of action other MMORPGs do are absent, making movement jerky. Clicking a button is ignored sometimes and is instead interpreted as a movement click. Not that you can tell they do half the time, the window is that unobtrusive.

Graphics… dated but okay I suppose, just not as intriguing. I can see why the game appeals to its audience, and when you’re drawn in it would get a lot better, but it’s just not got that appeal. Too complex, too involved, and nothing to look forward do it feels. Maybe if you make it through the tutorial, but I can’t imagine many people would…

Final Thoughts

Normally I would have chipped in before now to offer something (anything) positive is when I would normally try and chip and in and offer something positive about the game but to be honest I could not think of anything to really recommend this game over other MMORPGs. In fact I can not understand how this is still around and City of Heroes is not. Why is this game so popular? Unless you started playing it 11 years ago when it first came out I just don’t understand it.