Spiral Knights

Steam added a few free games to the list this week, including Spiral Knights, a co-op RPG published by Sega but created by independant company Three Rings.  Three Rings have a rather interesting office, modelled after The Nautilus from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.. I can’t claim to know the book, but this still counts as an Awesome Office!

The Spiral Knights have been stranded on Cradle, an alien world, and need to work together to explore the Clockworks, the machine in the centre of the world.  This houses the dungeons, which are for 1 to 4 players, and contain a variety of enemies, puzzles, and minerals which can be collected to sell or craft better gear..

When you launch the game you’re first prompted to create your own cute little Knight with a choice from a small selection of helmet and body armour styles, which is customised a little by your choice of colour.. purple for me as usual 😉

You’re then sent through the tutorial, learning the basics at the Crash Site and going through to the Rescue Camp, where you first meet other players and learn about Cradle, the world itself, and take the elevator down to the training dungeon, Abandoned Depot.

As my friends were already in the main game, I joined a random group..

I think this is a fantastic inclusion, allowing a look at how dungeons would work in the main game.

Little communication was required.. it was all fairly simple with all players needing to be on the elevator to move between levels, and a variety of enemies dropping coins and ‘heat’, which are automatically shared between party members. After the dungeon was complete, the heat level of my equipped gear went up, though when I compared my sword with the sword of the same name from the merchant, I couldn’t see any improvement on the listed attack power and speed of the item.

In addition to heat, players also have energy.. you have up to 100 energy per day, which is used to enter dungeons, craft and purchase upgrades and to activate various devices.  Energy comes in two forms, Mist and Crystal Energy.  Mist Energy is replenished over the course of the day, but can also be refilled via rewards such as a Mist Tank, while Crystal energy is available via purchase from other players or with real money.

This means there is a limit to how much you can play without paying, which I think is fair enough.

After the training dungeon, there was one more dungeon, The Final Test, to get through before joining the main game and being able to play with friends.  This was still easy enough, with the addition of gates requiring keys or puzzles to be solved, such as placing statues on pressure plates or cogs which needed to be shot to allow the next gate to open.

Completing this dungeon brought me to Haven, the main area of the game with various different areas full of merchants, Strangers (Cradle’s natives), and the Arcade, where gates allow players into the Clockworks.

Here, I finally joined up with a friend, and we entered one of the easier dungeons together.  These were larger than the previous dungeons, with extra little rooms with treasure in them.. or hidden mobs!  Outside of the tutorial, I was also introduced to mineral gathering, with deposits hidden inside the dungeons.  As with the other loot, all minerals gathered are shared between party members, which removes the problem of fighting over it 🙂

After clearing the dungeon, the elevator allows you either to go back up to the Arcade, or down to the next dungeon.. we worked our way down a few levels meeting progressively harder enemies.. the zombies were fairly tough, taking a while to knock down.

The graveyard ended up being a bit too much for us as more and more enemies appeared! 🙂

When a player dies, a party member can revive them, or they can spend energy to revive themselves.  On dying, a player loses 30% of the heat they have gathered so far, and if a party member revives them, they gain that 30%.  This means that weaker players take longer to level up, while good players who are able to remain alive and revive others will level up more quickly. 🙂

The cost of reviving yourself also goes up with each death.. we had to quit after the cost of reviving ourselves was more than the amount of energy we had left.

As yet, I don’t have enough resources to craft anything, so that will come next time!

Free to Play Games on Steam

Steam announced some free to play games this week: RPG / MMOs; Champions Online, Global Agenda: Free Agent, Spiral Knights and Forsaken World, and an action game, Alliance of Valiant Arms.  Free-to-play games usually include some sort of paid features.. extra skins, more equipment, or faster levelling.. or serve up adverts or limit the places you can go in the game while free.. so this announcement got my attention..

Champions Online requires payment to play past level 40, which at least allows a good trial of the game, in which you play a hero going up against Dr. Destroyer and his minions.. the game also apparently allows you to customise your own character, but more interestingly, your own customised enemy to harass you throughout your superhero career.  This sounds rather interesting, though.. another game with a big open world?  I need more free time 😉

Global Agenda: Free Agent‘s free version allows all the game’s content to be played, but you can pay to speed up levelling and purchase better gear more quickly.  I actually bought Global Agenda back in March, just prior to it going free, but having the option of adding it to Steam is a nice one.  This might also help me keep it updated, though I’ve not actually played the game recently..

Spiral Knights, is also fully free to play, but as a co-op game, this will require friends to play with..

The fourth MMO, Forsaken World, has races and classes as I’m used to with WoW, but with dungeons where the difficulty scales with the players’ experience, and weapons and gear which evolves and changes.. another one worth a look.

The action game, Alliance of Valiant Arms, looks to be another squad-based shooter with teams of 4 or 5 players per mission.  Players rank up as they play; the highest ranked player becomes the Squad Commander, hopefully meaning good players can lead others, rather than a recipe for griefing.. another one I’ll have to rope the guys in for 😉

Darkspore

Darkspore is a sci-fi Action-RPG by Maxis Software, published by EA.  The player takes charge of squads of genetically mutated heroes which come in five types: Plasma, Bio, Necro, Cyber and Quantum, and fights to save the galaxy from the nightmarish Darkspore.. a hive mind of mutated creatures which are a result of genetic alteration gone mad.

Tim pointed Darkspore out to me a while ago, after seeing a rather nice trailer.. I signed up for the closed beta and had some fun with the first levels, using a couple of the heroes and messing around with the character editor a little.. though not creating any phallic creatures for which the original Spore was known 😉

I’ve been waiting for this to enter open beta so I could play with friends too, and so I was pleased to see it arrive on Steam this week.  Last night we got together to play the first two levels.. and for once it was me who was running off, using Blitz’s rather cool teleport ability to get right into the fight.

Of all the heroes I’ve tried so far, Blitz is my favourite.. look at those claws!  His teleport ability, ‘Ride the Lightning’, makes up for his lack of ranged attack, and he cuts through enemies fairly quickly.  His shield also comes in handy, zapping enemies who come too close.

During the closed beta, I unlocked Arakna, a Necro hero who collects the souls of downed enemies with one ability, firing them out around her in a rapid burst, where they then explode with another ability.  She would have been my second squad member, but my heroes were reset with the start of the open beta, and this time I decided to unlock some different ones, starting with Vex.

Vex is a Quantum Hero, with time-travel abilities.  The Chrono Blink reminded me of Blitz’s teleport, but seemed to use more energy, and I felt that his melee attacks were rather slow.  I replaced him with SRS-42 the Missile Commander, a Cyber hero who uses ranged explosive weapons.. can’t go wrong with that, huh?

SRS-42’s abilities include a Missile Barrage, which brings down 15 missiles in quick succession on a location of your choosing.. best used on a slow moving target, or on a unit stunned or incapacitated by an ally.  His other abilities are more for self-protection; one removes all status effects, while the other detonates enemy projectiles on-route to SRS-42.

The open beta is available via Steam until Monday 4th April.. I hope to get some more time in on this before it finishes so I can try out more heroes.. and I also want to try out the PvP 😉

Dead Island Announced

I checked Twitter this morning to see a few comments about an amazing trailer for Dead Island, visually and emotionally stunning, with some suggesting it might be the best trailer of the year..

Dead Island is a game being made by Techland and published by Deep Silver, and is an open-ended survival horror first-person shooter with RPG elements.. and zombies.  Zombies?  Count me interested..

I watched the trailer expecting to see hordes of zombies, some sort of survivors, maybe some guns, definitely some gore.  My initial amazement at the trailer, and the close-up of the dead zombie child, turned towards horror as I realised it was all in reverse chronological order..

(Trailer from IGN).

After watching, I felt really, really bad for the family.. but no less interested in the game!

It seems there’s quite a range of views on the trailer, with some condemning it for portraying a child’s death.. and some going as far as to say this sort of content is ‘wrong’.  I think the trailer does a great job.  You’re meant to feel the despair and horror of all those lives lost.. that little family ripped apart..

I really hate the pro-censorship types who have been parading their views around the web recently.  There are far worse things shown on the news.. things that are happening to real people.. but this lot would rather try to stamp on the games industry.  Pfft.

Dragon Age: Origins

Along with Darksiders, I’ve also been busy with BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins..

I started off as a Human Noble, in Cousland Castle.  At first, I have to admit I was a little put off by the amount of cutscene dialogue, which just seemed to interrupt me in exploring the castle.  These were needed to set the scene though, and I don’t think the game would have been the same without.

So, after being awoken by an attack in the night, and finding that my family have been betrayed, I go off with Duncan and Dogmeat (the dog) to become a Grey Warden.

My first stop is Ostagar, an ancient fortress surrounded by Darkspawn.  As part of my induction, I’m sent out into the wilds to kill some darkspawn and collect a few vials of their blood.. and then yeah.. interesting cutscene.. 🙂

Fighting is done by clicking on your target and then either allowing a normal attack, or using special moves from the quickbar.  Pausing the game between turns is definitely the way to go as it allows for more fine-tuning on your attacks.  You can also control your party members the same way, or if you prefer not to worry about them, you can use the tactics system to give them instructions for various conditions.  I found myself using both methods, with the tactics system as a fallback.

Graphically, the game looks great – with the exception of the blood spatters over your character and party following a fight, which just don’t look right at all.

I accidentally found one way of getting rid of these though.. which was a little disturbing, if not downright revolting.  I had Dogmeat in my party near the beginning of the game, and after one such fight I clicked on him while trying to loot the fallen enemies.
One of the speech options that appeared was something to do with “getting rid of this gory mess”, which I assumed to mean getting rid of the bodies and leaving the loot behind..  Selecting this, however, initiated a cutscene of him stepping towards my character, and the screen going black for a moment.  After that,  my character was spotlessly clean again.. 😮

So, aside from being bathed by my dog, there were also a number of funny lines from my party members, including sniping and put-downs between some characters, and my character being chatted up by Alistair and Leliana!

I’ve not finished my first play-through yet, but I’ve already decided I’m going to play this through again but with an evil, twisted character, and access the options that my goody-two-shoes character this time just won’t do! 🙂

Risen

When I first heard about Risen, I was told it was “like Oblivion” – and in the best way – open world.  I spent a lot of time on Oblivion, and before that, Morrowind.

So, Risen, an action RPG by German developers Pirhana Bytes, and published in the UK by Deep Silver.

First impression, I was a bit disappointed I couldn’t create my own character.. that’s something I always really like to do.
Not a big deal though, because let’s face it – once you’ve left the character creation screen you never really see their face again anyways, especially once you’ve found some armour!

So.  I woke up on a beach, shipwrecked.  It’s dark, and the waves are crashing around me.  There’s plenty of junk laying about, and some dead bodies to loot.. and a tutorial character, Sara.  She wusses out as soon as we start exploring and I try to go into a cave where there are some little beasties – and when we find the first house, I’m somewhat relieved to find I get to leave her behind.

Surprisingly, the stray creatures in the world are tougher than I expected.  From what I’ve read, that’s normal in the Gothic games (the previous games by Pirhana Bytes).
I decided I’d rather level up a bit before exploring too far – if one ugly, warty hog creature can be such a problem, then two or more is just suicide. 😉

Two options – go and join The Don, a kind of outlaw – or join the Monastery.  I thought I’d go and check that out first, but as soon as I got near their little camp fire the recruits jumped me, and I was forcibly inducted into the Order.  Oh well.. I didn’t want to be a bad guy.. did I?