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Gold Slam - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on Jul 30, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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 "Quick question, does anyone here actually like Tennis?"  For everyone offended by the question above, don't be. I wasn't making a joke at the expense of you're unnatural enjoyment for boring sports, I was asking in complete legitimacy, as in order for me to start playing Gold Slam again, I'm going to need to ask you a few questions. Actually, thinking on it more I don't even know if that would do any good. The reality is that even if you were a Tennis junky, and you did know the difference between a Slice, Splice, Volley, Backhand Lob, and mid air loop-de-loop you would undoubtedly still have a rough time getting the hang of Gold Slam. The reason for this boils down to two things, the Tutorial and the Controls. Now I've been told recently that my long-winded intro's can be a bit much to handle, so lets do things differently for a change and jump right into it. Half-Asian, Non-English speaking Tennis Coach says what? Put simply, the Tutorial in Gold Slam is a nightmare. The layout is very simple, your Tennis Coach will give you 5 simple tasks, and once you've completed them you'll be ready to take on the world at the Tennis Championships. The catch is that you're co |
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| 604 Views 3 Comments | Read More | |
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Atlantica - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on Jul 20, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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 "The lost city of Atlantis is still lost - will you be the one to find it?"  Turn based battle – my favourite style of battle, has been on the decline for a few years now. In reality it hasn't really been the popular choice since the days of the SNES, but some games still employed the system and in most cases successfully. Take the juggernaught Final Fantasy Series, who until recently have always used an imaginative turn-based battle system, and thanks to it has retained a loyal fan base for over 20 years. This was up until FFXII (Final Fantasy 12); in FFXII they decided to change the fighting system from turn based to a new kind of action system. For some, this was a refreshing new look at a perhaps dated system, for others like myself this prevented them from playing the game for much more than a few days. At the time I was devastated, I never expected the FF series to change from turn-based battles, in every addition to the series they changed characters, magic's, worlds, styles and systems, but they never changed the from turn based battles. Why now? Well, eventually I found that a proper turn-based system just wasn't good enough anymore and they wanted somethi |
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| 14029 Views 23 Comments | Read More | |
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Wizard 101 - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on Jul 15, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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 “Wingardiam Levio….wait a second…this isn’t Harry Potter!”  Anyone who has read the Harry Potter books, seen the movies or played the games should get my little funny in the top line there, and anyone who hasn’t shouldn’t be reading this, they should be reading or watching Harry Potter! For those of you who have experienced the phenomenon that is Harry Potter, you are about to have one of two very different feelings, you will either squeal like a school girl as you realise that Harry Potter Online is finally here (I‘ve always had a rather girly voice…), or you are going to be furious that someone has ripped of the brilliant works of J.K Rowling in hopes to leech some of her profits. Originally, I was the latter, because KingsIsle Entertainment really have gone out of their way to make Wizard 101 as similar to Harry Potter as legally possible. You start out as a child Wizard who has recently been accepted into Ravenwood School of Magic, and you begin the game by learning how to duel like a Wizard. Soon after you are introduced to your various teachers and settled into the school. This is exactly how I would expect Harry Potter O |
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| 2588 Views 4 Comments | Read More | |
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Rohan - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on May 29, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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<-- Like it? Digg it! “Lineage 2 meets World of Warcraft”  Everyone has their favourite games, the ones that you play for months at a time. When your playing them, you rarely want to play anything else. They have the best memories, the best groups, the best weapons, and you tell all of your friends to come and play with you because they clearly don’t know what their missing out on. For me, these games were Lineage 2, and World of Warcraft. Discovering shortly after logging into Rohan that it was the perfect mix of both of these games, I started to feel that favourite game urge rising once again. Logging into Rohan for the first time was an interesting experience, mainly due to it’s massive popularity the servers crashed seconds after opening. With hundreds of thousands of people trying to log in at once it was a very difficult start. Fortunately it wasn’t long until the admins had added a new sever and most of us were able to log in successfully. There were some lag issues, and the servers crashed occasionally, but a few hours later everything had stabilised and it was time to play. Naturally, the first thing to do was to choose a class, thankfully Roh |
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| 7396 Views 17 Comments | Read More | |
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Richman Online - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on May 23, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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 "Move over Monopoly, Richman Online is here!"  Yes, the first thing you will undoubtedly notice when you start playing Richman Online is that it is incredibly similar to Monopoly, well; it would be if Monopoly had landmines and nuclear warfare. After logging in and listening to some of the catchiest tunes in any MMO to date, you'll first be asked to complete the tutorial. Fortunately its brilliant, covering a vast majority of the game without boring you to tears. They've taken the 'learn by doing' approach, setting up a game with the rules specific to what they were trying to teach you, and then letting you battle it out with an NPC under those conditions. By the end of it you always have a full understanding of what they were trying to teach. After completing the tutorial you should be level 4, and able to join the main room, allowing you to play against other people. I found that after  sitting in the lobby for only a few seconds I was invited to my first game…it didn't go so well. I honestly had no idea of the rules outside of the tutorial, so naturally when my first turn came along and I saw 3 other players all neatly lined up next to each other I went with |
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| 1347 Views 2 Comments | Read More | |
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NeoSteam - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on May 20, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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  I've mentioned previously that I find it hard to beat the feeling of logging into a new game. There's an uncertainty in the air, most of the time I don't really know too much about what I'm going to be playing, and I'm a sucker for suspense. If I had to list out all of possible things that can happen in that first minute, a cinematic opening would be right at the top. So after lighting that 'new game ciggie', leaning back in my favorite chair and logging into NeoSteam for the first time, finding a beautiful cinematic waiting for me was so much more than a pleasant surprise, it was pure magic. Having had such a pleasant first few minutes in NeoSteam, it saddens me greatly to say that before I had even finished that cigarette, I encountered several massive disappointments. The first of which is language translation; from my experience every game seems to have their own level of translation ranging somewhere from  perfect English, to Engrish. From this point forward 'NeoSteam' is now the new lowest rank on the translation ladder, Engrish would almost be pleasant compared to most of the text here, and although for many people this isn't really a big issue for someone like mysel |
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| 3841 Views 11 Comments | Read More | |
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T-Crew - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on May 12, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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 "T-Crew, A world where teamwork and competition co-exist together peacefully"  I make myself laugh sometimes. Teamwork and Competition working together? That will be the day! It may look like it's working...for a while, but it doesn't take very long until you realise that this 'Teamwork' thing is really a facade, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Sure, at the beginning when you're still learning how to play, you don't mind when the bigger guys take all of the loot, you just want to learn the ropes. But before long that feeling of kindness and indifference disappears, and greed consumes you.See?! See what it's done to me?! It's making me sinister....sarcastic....almost evil! I haven't felt this way since....Gauntlet. Do you remember Gauntlet? The original Gauntlet? You spent the first hour of playing that game trying to get the hang of the system, working together with a friend or three, trying to find the invisible potion (It doesn't exist!!!) than all of a sudden, you notice the score on the side of the screen. "Was that there before?" I remember asking myself. Very sneakily, and not telling my 'teammates' I would begin to focus more and more on my score. |
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| 566 Views 4 Comments | Read More | |
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Aeronauts - Beta ReviewCategory: Beta Review Posted on May 04, 2008 Add to Bookmark |
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| 783 Views 6 Comments | Read More | |
I've been playing random MMO Beta's on the internets for years now. In fact, I played so many in the last few years that I think I've got testing them down to a finer art; I do it in an hour. I download the game (30 mins), Install and Update (20 Mins), Log in and make a character (5 mins), then play and uninstall (5 mins). It's becoming increasingly addictive, and it helps to distract me from how truly horrible whatever game I have just downloaded really is. (You know the games I'm talking about...they just wont uninstall fast enough!)The reason I mention this is because Aeronauts is one of the very few that caught me by surprise. It is the proverbial 'rose amongst the thorns' in every sense of the phrase. That's not to say that it's without faults, it just has far fewer than most other games I've played in a while. 
